The end of Drogheda and the beginning of Dublin

Sorry it's been a while since my last update, mostly because our place in Dublin didn't have internet. Boy, do we have stories.

To start with:

On our last day in Drogheda I went out on the first of what will be many solo adventures while Jay worked. I went to the Old Mellifont Abbey, which is an old ruin of a building that is free to walk around and SUPER fun to take pictures in, so I got to walk around, peaceful, and have fun taking framing shots and fiddling with my lens and aperture and stuff like that.

I took way more pictures at Old Mellifont, so I picked three of my favorites.

The round tower

After that I went to Monasterboice, which is the site of three high crosses, which Ireland is famous for, and a round tower. Round towers were the monasteries response to viking invaders. They were over 100 feet tall and used as watchtowers. When an invading force was spotted everyone would climb the ladder to the entrance to the tower, which was 10-15 feet above the ground, and then haul it in after them. Then they could sit out the raid until all was safe. The round tower and high crosses were cool, but it was all part of a still-in-use graveyard, so modernity kinda detracted from the ancient structures. Also, a tour bus had gotten there just before me, so the place was swarming.

I started getting creative with angles. (The round tower)

The best part about Monasterboice was the view

I should mention at this point that I'm getting pretty comfortable with the left side of the road thing. It'll be useful for oxford.

That evening Jay and I took a nice walk around the countryside, Jay got stalked by a rat terrier, and we turned in early cause jetlag was still dogging us.

We woke up, together, independently, at 5 am the next morning suddenly over our jetlag. It was like a switch flipped and we were ready to go! So we packed up, headed out, and had no trouble getting to Dublin. The only complication was when we had to find a place to fill up the car. We had to back track a couple times before we could find a way in to the station, but we made it with our marriage intact. We ran into some trouble with the gas cap though. The gas cap on our rental car required the key to get in to it, so we put the key in and turned it and tried unlocking the cap and it just spun and spun and spun. We probably spent a good five minutes struggling with the thing before a stranger took pity on us and came and did it for us. I still have no idea what he did differently than what we'd been trying. We dropped off the car, got to the shuttle and rode in to Dublin.

The stop we got off at was right next to Trinity College and a Tourism office which had a left luggage facility. They have a basement they get into through an external door and you can tell that it is the staffs' very favorite thing to do by the sighing noise they make when you ask if you can store your luggage.

So we ditched the 25 lb backpacks found a coffee shop and headed to trinity. We went in to see the Book of Kells. It's beautiful and a national treasure, and it was cool to learn about the work that went into making the vellum and the ink, but the coolest part for us was the long hall, which is an old part of the Trinity Library. The hall is lined with busts of great thinkers of the ages and Jay was just a little miffed to see that they had Bacon, Milton, Locke, but no Hobbes. Though, he reasoned, it would make sense that the Irish wouldn't be big fans of a royalist philosopher.

Some shots from Trinity College and the Long Room at the Library.
Also a quidditch poster cause I thought it was funny.

After Trinity we went to Beshoff Bros for fish and chips. I know fish and chips might seem like more of a London thing, but this place had gluten free fish and chips, so I got to eat fried food.

It was awesome.

Fish and chips!!!!!

Jay was kind enough to get gluten free also so that we could each get a different fried fish and then share, but it was so good I don't think he minded.

After that we headed to the Chester Beatty Library, which has free admission and has repeatedly been rated one of the best libraries in Europe.

Their exhibits are devoted entirely to BOOKS. I think they had manuscripts from as early as 1000 AD from Europe, Asia, and North Africa. A lot of the books were religious, as is often the case with well preserved texts, but there were a smattering of non-religious texts depicting legends and history, and in one, a manual for the care of elephants. Some of the books were tiny little things and some of them were easily 3 feet tall.  The illustration and illumination in them was spectacular. Some pages in one copy of the Qur'an that we saw was so densely dotted in gold ink that it looked gilded. The current special exhibit was of a specific Qur'an, the Ruzbihan Qur'an which was created in the mid-1500s and is a stunning example of Islamic art and illumination. It was awe-inspiring to look at and the Beatty Library put a lot of effort into restoring it and preserving it. At the exhibit they had each of the pages available to see, because in order to save it, they'd had to unbind it, but at the end of the exhibit in 2017 they're going to rebind the pages in a manner that will better allow for preservation. The also provided magnifying glasses so that you could examine the pages more closely, and you truly needed them to appreciate the detail and precision.

All and all, the Chester Beatty Library was a very cool (free) stop in our day. It's also in the middle of Dublin castle, which is just kinda fun to walk around.

Dublin castle

After the day takes a bit of a sour note (though it all worked out in the end)... Coming soon.