In Dublin's Fair City...

Every time I go away and it’s a Monday I always smile and take stock of where I am, and where I’m NOT, namely: the office.  Still, for a Monday where I wasn’t going to the office I was up awfully early!  We had to drive the hour and a half to Dublin airport, get the car dropped off and Marnie checked in for her flight back to Rio...naturally! It was a quick goodbye as she had to hurry through the customs line thereby ending our short but sweet reunion tour.  I have to say that there is no one else I would have wanted to spend a few days in Ireland with more than Marnie and I was so pleased that she managed to make it work. 

Once on my own, I found the left-luggage’ area and hopped onto to a city-shuttle bus into Dublin city centre for a few hours of site-seeing before my own flight.  I didn’t have a whole lot of time but I hit a few hot spots.  My first destination was Trinity College.  I was there before to see the Book of Kells and the library and I knew it was worth seeing again. It is fascinating to see the pages of the book explore in such detail. They also had an interesting video on the binding of books. I don't think I ever appreciated what it took to make a book! And then I went up to the long room where I saw thousands and thousands of old books! It was crowded but I managed to ignore a lot of people.  There was an exhibit on 19^th century medicine and I couldn’t get over some of the symptom and cure combinations they came up with.  I wish I had written some of them down – they were ludicrous.  Very creative!

 After a walk down Grafton Street, popping into a few shops here and there and watching buskers, I wandered through St. Stephen's green. I always love finding green space in the concrete jungles that I visit.  I had lunch in a funky, yet strangely empty, bar near St. Stephen’s and then headed back up to stay close to the bus stop where I needed to catch the return shuttle back to the airport.  I had a few spare minutes to head down to Dublin Castle thinking I’d never been and would like to see it.  Once there, though, I was struck with a strange sense of déjà-vu!  I seemed to recall an exhibition on some underground tunnels there but when I wandered through the gates this time, I mostly found parking lots and a small gift shop.  It’s one of those things that I’m quite sure I did but was left scratching my head thinking I was going crazy.  That was part of the fun of this trip!

I had been meaning to get back to Ireland ever since I left it in August, 1996.  I never thought it would be 15 years later.  The country has a special place in my heart and I’m really pleased that I made the time to get over there while living here in Europe.  It would have been a shame to miss it and what a great 5 days it was.

New Memories: Loughcrew and Trim

Ahhh...a truly lazy Sunday.  We slept in a bit, got big breakfast courtesy of Etina and hit the road to check out this Loughcrew we were told about.  It was only about a thirty minute drive away from where we were staying.  It turns out that it’s a site run through the office of public works and it’s NOT wheelchair accessible.

We had a nice, short hike up to the top of a hill to find a simple passage cairn we could get a free guided tour into.  It’s not a theme-park (yet?) and is still quite undiscovered by many – which made it perfect!  That’s our kinda place!  We had a lovely tour guide, Lara, who explained a bit about the passage cairns and where the sunrise hit on the interior on the vernal and autumnal equinox.  The site is actually older than the pyramids, over 4500 years old.  It’s truly amazing.  We stayed for quite a while on the site just wandering around and checking out other nearby cairns. 

Afterwards we hit the road and headed for Trim.  I’d been there before but Marnie wanted to see a castle and besides, my memory was a little foggy.  Everything was pretty much as I remembered it but it all seemed more impressive this time around.  We wanted to go into the castle so seeing as we’d just missed the 14h show, we popped into to a nearby coffee shop for a delicious lunch.  We then went back to the castle and wandered around some more before going inside – which I don’t remember doing in ’96.

Four nights out and we had reached our grease-threshold.  We stopped in the grocery store (which is always a lot of fun when travelling) to grab some grub and we took it back to the B&B to have a little picnic for dinner.  It was just right and left us some room for beer!  We headed back to the Abbey House, partly hoping to see those smiling Irish eyes again, but not before wandering around the famous abbey at sunset.  We were disappointed to miss the brothers but we weren’t disappointed by the abbey!