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| Ha'penny Bridge |
After sleeping for 12 hours, we got up and headed down to
breakfast. Breakfast was a choice of ordering
off the menu or doing the buffet which was a traditional Irish Breakfast. We
ordered off the menu. We both had Belgian waffles with bacon; the bacon was sandwich
between two waffles. The waffles were
good but a but sweeter than what we get in the US. The waffles were supposed to
come with a berry compote but only came with syrup, disappointing. After breakfast we went back to the room to
get ready to head out for the day.
Our first stop for the day was Trinity College to see the Book
of Kells and the long room of the library.
The ticket said it was a tour, but it really isn’t a tour, it is a self-paced
walk through some information panels describing the history and making of the
Book of Kells, then you walk into the room where the book is housed. It is a book with fancy pages. I saw it and can now check that off the
list. After seeing the book, you walk up
a set of stairs to the “long room”. The room
is supposed to be filled with books; however, they are doing restoration work
so there were no books on the shelves, except for one tiny section. My husband was like “we went to a library
with no books, that is disappointing.” In
the library they also have the Brian Boru's harp which is both the symbol used
by Guinness and by the Irish Government. After viewing the library, we took some
pictures of the bell tower on the grounds. Apparently students do not walk
under the belltower because superstition says if they are under it when it
chimes they will fail all their exams. Since I’m going to war college in August, I
felt it was a lot safer not to walk under the bell tower, don’t want to chance fate
and see if applies to non-Trinity college students. Afterwards we stopped at
the hotel quickly to grab bottles of water, then headed out for the rest of the
day.
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| Alcove with books |
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| View of Long Room |
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| Trinity Bell Tower |
We walked over the Liffey River and O’Connell bridge so I could
get a picture of ha’penny bridge. Then walked down the street towards ha’penny
bridge through the Temple Bar area to our next stop, Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle is now a government building,
but they do tours of some of the historic parts. We went for the guided plus self-guided tour
options. This allowed us to see a few
more areas of the castle including the powder tower and the old church on the
grounds. The guided portion of the tour
was good, and the self-guided portion which we did first was also nice. In the self-guided portion, you get to see the
throne room, the formal sitting room, the ball room, and some other miscellaneous
rooms. After the castle we had lunch.
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| Church at Dublin Castle |
After lunch we went to both the Irish Museum of Archaeology
and the Irish Museum of Natural History which are both free. The Irish Museum of Archeology was ok. They did have one interesting exhibit “Kings
and Sacrifices”. The title just sounds like it will be a great
exhibit, but you walk in and there are all these large round pillar things with
information plaques on them which makes it seem less exciting. It is obvious at first, but you are supposed
to read the information board then walk around the pillar through a spiral
opening to see the actual preserved dead person and or body part in the center.
I know why they did it this way, so little
kids and people wouldn’t be disturbed by the desiccated remains of people missing
heads and other body parts. After the Museum
of Archeology, we headed over to the Natural History Museum which is also known
as the “dead zoo” due to the amount of taxidermy animals on display. I was excited to see this museum because the
pictures I saw online just gave me old 1800s museum vibes. Sadly, the museum was under partial renovation
so we didn’t get to go up to the second floor and they put a ceiling in between
the first and second floors so you couldn’t even look up and see the old iron and
glass ceiling. It was good, just not as
great as expected. After the museum we
called it a day and headed back to the hotel for a little rest.
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| Ancient Irish Deer |
Tomorrow, we leave Dublin behind and head down to Kinsale.
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