Dublin was pretty cool. It was basically just like a big city at home though, so I’m really glad I’m living in Galway instead. Kevin gave us all 2-day tour bus passes, so we could get around the city and hop off to see whatever we wanted. My two favorite things we saw were the Guinness Storehouse and the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The Storehouse was huge. On the route the tour bus took it was right past two giant Cathedrals (Christ Church and St. Patrick’s), so the bus driver kept referring to the brewery as “St. Arthur’s Episcopal, the biggest Cathedral in the city”. It was great though, I loved seeing all the ingredients and old equipment, and there was a whole floor dedicated to advertisements and the origin of the Guinness Book of World Records. Each person also got a pint and a half of free samples of the product. The Guinness family seemed like a decent bunch. They apparently were big into worker’s rights and took good care of their employees, and they also donate lots of money all over town and the rest of the country. No wonder Arthur gets his own holiday.

We saw the brewhouse Saturday afternoon, then went to Charlie One’s Chinese fast food for dinner to complete the Irish experience. Then we went to Whelan’s Pub, which is where they filmed PS I Love You, because one girl here is on a mission to re-live that movie I guess. It was a cool place, and pretty cheap, especially compared to the Temple Bar where the other API people went to, which is apparently the most expensive bar in the entire country.

Thanks for that pocketknife Old Granny

The next morning we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was beautiful but there was lots of stuff in there. It wasn’t “cluttered” per se, but it was more like a museum than a church. Lots of graves/memorials/displays all along the walls and floor. It was cool to see Jonathan Swift’s grave though. Afterwards we went to the Kilmainham Gaol, where they executed 14 Irish rebels, thus spurring the rest of the country to revolution in response. The history majors I was with loved it, but it was no Alcatraz, so I ended up leaving halfway through with some other people to see Trinity instead. They told me all I missed was seeing the courtyard where they lined prisoners up to be shot, so wasn’t terribly broken up about it.

The Book of Kells was by far my favorite thing on Sunday. The exhibit had a ton of information on how the monks wrote it, how they got the different colored inks, what the pages were made of, everything. It was fascinating (to me at least). The detail on the lettering and pictures was so incredible. You aren’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibit, but I pulled some from Google that are higher quality than mine would have been anyway. The gift shop on the way out sold Book of Kells coloring books, but unfortunately they didn’t quite capture the same awe as the original.

After that we bused it home. I finished Irish sock #1 on the way. So Dublin was nice, but like I said, I’m glad to be where I am. I’ll be back there again tonight anyway for the lacrosse tournament. Lacrosse is still going great. We had a scrimmage Tuesday night, then went out to the college bar for some bonding. The scrimmage was a blast, it was raining the whole time and half the players didn’t have cleats so we were falling all over the place. Anthony annoyingly informed me that Irish people say “boots” instead of “cleats”, so I started saying that to the lacrosse people, but because they hang out with Americans so much they actually do all call them “cleats”, so I was wrong anyway.

The sky was a really strange color today, I’m not sure what it means. There was also a weird yellow circle floating above us all day. Weird.

                   

                                                                Not my picture, but this is what the sky looked like.

Extra pictures here.