Dublin

Ahh...good times. I meet up with some of the the girls that I met on my trip to the north coast. Met them for dinner and drinks on Saturday night and then hung out and chilled on Sunday. A nice and pleasent place enen though it was kind of overcast most of the time I was there.

First Day

Turns out Dublin is much smaller than I thought it was going to be. When I got into the train station after my two hour trip from Belfast, I started walking towards Trinity College. I figured it would take half and hour or so to get there but it was actually only about 15 minutes. I looked around for a little bit and then called Kara and to set up sometime to meet. We agreed on 6 to meet at the entrance to Trinity. It was noon so I had a good bit of time to do my sight seeing. I took the tour the library had for the Book of Kells. There were some really neat parts to the exhibit. They had chronolgies of the time when the book was made (around 800 AD), descriptions on how it was made and what other books were similar to it. The book itself is a collection of four books each of one of the gospels. They have two on display at all times along with a book from the Book of Durows and another one as well. Each of these books is very impressively detailed and decorated. After the display with these books, you go upstairs to the Long Hall. This is a library with dozens of rows of ceiling tall bookcases of old books. There is even a second story that has more. This is definately a place any Fletcher would love to see. After the Book of Kells tour, I wanled around the grounds some more. There is a really neat statue called Sphere in a Sphere. There are an old building and the arch as well that were worth taking a picture of. I finished up with my walk around Trinity and left. I was going to try and find the TI. It turns out that the TI is a renovated chruch. I actually walked past it once before I realised that it was the TI. I got a map and then headed west towards some of the sights to see.

I just happend to notice the entrance to Dublin Castle as I walked past. There wasn't much to it. From the outside there was only a small secion of it that seemed to be correctly called a castle. There were a few statues that were nifty but other than that, I wasn't too impressed with the castle. The gardens out back were a different story though. It was beautiful with every corner holding a different set of plants and flowers and some statue. The open area in the middle of the garden were really cool as well. The interalacing paths were in the shapes of snakes that wound thir way all of the field. I took a panorama that hopefully shows the entire garden, but I have to wait until I get back to the States before I can put that together and post it.

With the let down of the castle behind me and the gardens still fresh in my mind, I made my way over to Christ Church Cathedral. This was a really cool place to look through. Though they allowed you to take pictures, there was not enough light to take any nice picutes. All of the ones I took with a flash didn't look very good. Oh well. I did get a nice picture of the outside and some of the stain glass. They do have a crypt underneath the church with a little exhibtion about the church's history. I headed over to St. Stephen's Green after I was doen with the church. It was a very nice place to sit and have a bit of a read for a while. The center of the park was a relaxing with its flower beds and greenery.

With dinner time bearing down I head back to Trinity to meet Kara and Shannon and the rest of their crew. We went out to dinner at an outrageously overpriced Italian resturaunt. It was good, but not that good. Now would be a good time to mention that Dublin just recently passed Helsinki as the most expensive city in Europe. Anyways, I had dinner with Kara, Shannon, Maureen, Skye, and Allie. It was a lot of fun. The girls are studying in Dublin in an Irish literature, history and politics program for the summer. After dinner we said goodbye to Maureen and Allie and the rest of us went out for some drinks.

The first pub on the list was the Octagon Bar in the the Clarence Hotel (owned by memebers of U2). This turned out to be a very pricey place to get drinks. Here is a picture of Kara, Shannon and Skye with their &eruo 16.50 cocktails. I had a &euro 4.50 beer. Mmmmm.... The waiter tried to take the girls' glasses before there were done, bad move. They made sure they got every cent of alcohol out of those drinks as possible. We rapped up the night by stopping by The Dawson Lounge, the smallest pub in Dublin. It turned out not to be all that small. They could fit at least 20 people in it. Oh well. With the night coming to a close, I headed back to my hostel where tje other seven people in my room were just climbing into bed. We stayed up and a had a bit of a chat for a while and the crashed. There were six kids over from London on a school trip and one girl from New York. The English kids has set their alarm for 7am but didn't get out of bed until 8:30. It was pretty funny watching them try to hurry and get out of the room.

Second Day

My second day in Dublin was pretty uneventful. Having seen most of the stuff I had wanted to on the first day, I just jumped on a bity bus tour and rode that around for a while. It toured all over the city and you got to see a lot more than you woulde have on foot. I got off that and walked around north of the river for a while, but there wasn't a whole lot that I wanted to see there. They do have a huge spire and a statue/monument, but the light made for poor pictures. I eventually just ploped down in front of the Customs House and read until it was time to go catch my train back to Belfast.