Playing Catch-up (Part V)

Okay, time to do another marathon catch-up post. I'd also like to mention, lest you think that my first week in Ireland was all day trips and mountain climbing, we did have class three times, alternating between our apartments. And we watched this really emotionally powerful (sounds corny, I know) movie called "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." Like everything else in Ireland, it was tragic. Ho hum

Anyway, I left off in Galway. On Sunday we packed up and left there, heading for Dublin! En route, we stopped at Conmacnoise, yet another early Christian monastic settlement founded by St. Ciaran in the 6th century. This one had a number of ruined churches and abbeys and some pretty amazing Celtic crosses and another round tower, but I couldn't quite enjoy it fully because I was in a bit of a grumpy mood; I was a bit tired of being on coaches and having lots of stops. The "audiovisual presentation" at Clonmacnoise brightened up my day a bit. These AV presentations can be found at nearly every site we visit; they're basically videos about the place. This one was hilarious because it used these ridiculous cartoon-type illustrations of monks in its treatment of the history of the place. Everyone was cracking up; it was definitely the high point to my day. Anyway, after that we headed straight to Dublin and arrived in the early evening at University College Dublin, which was (and is) our home sweet home in dear dirty Dublin (sorry, that's the Joyce getting to me - it's really not so dirty these days, thankfully.) We were met at Roebuck Hall by our Dublin liaison, Seona, who runs USIT, a student travel organization here in Dublin. She was responsible for organizing all the seminars and day trips we attended during our stay in Dublin and was really helpful. As we all were issued key cards to Roebuck, we stared at the obviously very new building in apprehension - we didn't know what to expect. We were all surprised for the better when we discovered that our flats are, in a word, amazing. UCD's campus houses many new buildings, and our apartments are less than a year old. We live in 6-person apartments with a shared kitchen/lounge but individual single rooms with, get this, individual bathrooms! No Carleton dorm can boast that amenity. Although the dorms really lack character, for a month-long stay, I'm not complaining. They feel mostly clean and have really big windows, which are really nice at night because you don't have to turn the lights on until at least 10:00.

Anyway, that was our arrival to Dublin. We bought some food at the (highly overpriced) Centra grocery store on campus and ate dinner, noting with sadness our lack of an oven. We were all pretty tired and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning, we had class with Connie and then departed UCD for an "introductory tour of Dublin" that was really much too fast-paced. I think our first stop was at Trinity College, the traditionally Protestant university (UCD is Catholic), to see... the Book of Kells! If you hadn't figured it out, that's where my blog gets its name. If you don't know what the Book of Kells is, Wikipedia it. :) The exhibit leading up to the actual book was really impressive; it was a big collection of information and pictures about similar documents/books that have been found, along with information about how they were made and the history of the Book of Kells and its connection to Iona and whatnot. Finally, we progressed into a darkly lit room with a glass case in the middle, featuring the Book of Kells, obviously open to one page only, and two others, the books of Armagh and... maybe Durrow? There are four other books which are shown on alternating days. I have wanted to see the Book of Kells for quiiite a long time, and it didn't fail to impress me. The illumations were beautiful, and it was really amazing to see "in person." Then we passed into the famed Trinity Library; you've probably seen pictures of this absolutely beautiful old library at some point. It's got spiral staircases and high, high bookcases and is amazing. The bibliophile's dream room was kind of marred because there was a display featuring WWII propaganda currently there, but it was still gorgeous and made me wish I had a legitimate research project that would gain me access to the books themselves. :)

Afterwards, we visited Dublin Castle, which is a weird mix of old castle and new buildings; it has been used as a government building for centuries and was kind of the embodiment of British colonial rule in Ireland for quite a long time. We were given a tour, complete with a foreign tourist who videotaped literally the ENTIRE THING, which was weird, and then we were led underground into a really quite old Viking "defence bank" and tower, which was discovered when some group was doing roadwork or something a while back.

Then we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral, but were thwarted by a visiting choir group from Germany or something, so we couldn't stay for too long. We poked around and saw Swift's tomb, but didn't really get to see too much, which was kind of disappointing. Then our tour guide wanted to take us somewhere else, but we had a "reception dinner" to get to, so our whirlwind tour ended a the Purty Kitchen, a trendy, swanky bar/restaurant in Temple Bar, the artsy, funky, but also kind of commercialized portion of Dublin. We had been expecting a full-out dinner, and were disappointed to learn we'd only be receving appetizers. However, the plates of appetizers just kept on coming and the wine flowed freely and we all ended up with full stomachs, so we were appeased. Plus we got to mingle with Jim and his wife Jane for the last time, which was really nice.

I ended the night with a lovely ramble through the city with Esther, Bonnie, Liza, Sherry, and Kate. We explored a bit and began the process of acquainting ourselves with the strange, haphazard arrangement of twisty streets whose names change completely arbitrarily at random points. Then we got our initiation into the Dublin City Bus system as we took the 10 bus home. Throughout the past few weeks, the 10 bus has been our connection to the city, and it has served us well - except when we're forced to wait nearly an hour for a late one or have just missed it or have had to watch it fly by down the road without stopping even though we were CLEARLY waiting for it - and we love it. Haha.

Okay, whoa. Enough for now.