Pubs and Libraries

Location: still headed toward Cadiz, Spain!

Ireland, Day 3 (9/22/13):

I had to head back to Dublin on the 5:30pm bus, and I had already seen the lake, so I decided to dedicated my second day in Glendalough to visiting the round tower and the ruins of the monastic settlement in the ancient graveyard. I asked around town for the best place to have breakfast (which at some hostels is included, but at the Glendalough hostel is not) and was told to head to the Wickalow Heather Restaurant, which was about a mile down the road. I wasn't in a hurry, so I decided to walk there and then come back and view the ruins afterward.

Aside from an impressive number of wasps which eventually drove me inside, the restaurant was nice––I decided to forgo the traditional Irish breakfast on account of its similarity to the traditional English breakfast (seriously, beans are not a breakfast food!) and instead got poached eggs which came with two pieces of toast. Then they brought out another six pieces of toast! Who on earth needs that much toast? I ended up eating most of the toast and then making a butter and jelly sandwich with some more so that I could have it for lunch later.

And then I spent the rest of the day ambling around Glendalough, sketching the monastic ruins and graveyard, and finding a quiet place to sit in the forest and draw while listening to songs from the Lord of the Rings. When it was time to catch the bus back to Dublin I felt very refreshed, and was looking forward to going on the city's famous Literary Pub Crawl, which I had booked a spot on that evening.

There were already a lot of people waiting for the bus, and by the time it arrived the crowd was large enough that I was pretty sure not everyone was going to fit. I quickly established myself toward the front-middle of the line, at which point the driver announced that those with return tickets could get to the front of the queue. Fortunately that is what I had from the day before, so I was able to get on. I knew that the bus was going to be full, so I looked around for someone I'd like to sit next to for the next hour. Then I noticed a girl who I recognized from Semester at Sea, though I hadn't actually spoken to her before, sitting near the front of the bus.

Her name was Kira, and while I was trying to think how I knew her I remembered that it was because she was our student-presenter for Russia––she goes to school in Moscow, but is originally from St. Petersburg. Kira had actually come to Glendalough on the 11:30am bus, done the really long hike up the mountain and all the way around the lake, and then come back to the bus to leave at 5:30pm the same day. She was understandably a bit tired. But when I mentioned that I was doing the Literary Pub Crawl she decided to come with (you can also buy tickets at the door), so after the bus dropped us off in Dublin we headed to the Duke Pub, which is where the Pub Crawl begins from.

So what exactly is a Literary Pub Crawl? Well this particular one is famous because it is led be professional act ors who act out pieces from the works of famous authors from Ireland, and they lead you around to the different pubs that those authors used to frequent. Kira and I arrived a little early, so we went and sat in a side room to wait until we could purchase her ticket and claim mine.

We ended up sitting next to Fernando, a guy interning in Wales who is from Argentina and was visiting Ireland. So the three of us hung together while the Pub Crawl group moved between four pubs and a handful of other notable locations at which one of our guides would fire off a string of facts a mile long which I remember few of now but were really interesting to listen to at the time. In between we would have fifteen minutes or so at each of the pubs for people to hang out and get drinks. Kira and I hadn't had dinner yet and were not really in the mood to drink anything (I don't particularly like alcohol anyhow) and Fernando doesn't like the taste of beer, so our little company consisting of a non-drinking American, Russian, and Argentino made just about the most unlikely group possible to be on a pub crawl in Ireland.

And that is pretty much the gist of my third day in Ireland!

Ireland, Day 4 (9/23/13):

Which brings us to (dun dun dun)... my last and final day! I had one big goal for day four: go to Trinity College and see the old library and the book of Kells. The consensus seemed to be that to get the full experience one should sign up for a walking tour of the college, which includes the entrance to see the book of Kells and is only a couple Euros more.

So after wandering around Dublin for a while in search of breakfast, that is what I did! Our guide told us all sorts of things about the college (he was actually about to graduate and go to Oxford, so he said to forgive him if he got a bit nostalgic) and about the Book of Kells, which is considered one of the world's finest illuminated manuscripts and a national treasure of Ireland. There is a several-room informational display about the book's history and construction before you actually see it, so by the time I had gotten breakfast, did the college tour, and read all of the information the day was getting pretty far along (remember I have to be back on the boat before on-ship time at 18:00!)

The book itself was neat, but there were so many people crowded around that you couldn't really just stand and look at it for very long, so I think I actually enjoyed learning about it beforehand the most. For example, the Book of Kells actually contains the four New Testament Gospels, but the Celtic monks who created it were much less concerned with the content than with the style and beauty with which that content was presented, which meant that parts of it are hard to read because the monks would skip or forget bits and then add them later completely out of sequence, or they would abridge and abbreviate other parts.

We weren't allowed to take picture in the exhibit, but if you want to see what the Book of Kells looks like I would highly recommend googling it (or using the handy Wikipedia search bar that I put on the right-hand side of the page just for you guys!)

I then entered the Trinity College Library, which consists of one large and very impressive room with shelves of ancient books spanning multiple levels. Apparently it was mostly built to just be impressive, because at the time (according to our walking tour guide) there were only enough books to fill about 1/3 of it. The books were also organized in a most peculiar way: by size, with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top, because it looked good. No idea how anyone ever actually found the book they were looking for with that system.

I cruised around the gift shop for a little while, before looking at the time, and realizing that while on-ship time is at 18:00, the last shuttle to get back to the ship leaves at 16:30. It was 16:15, and I still had to go and get postcards and a pin (I'm collecting them from each country.) Oops! Fortunately I knew exactly where I was going to get the postcards and the pin (then why hadn't I gotten them earlier? You've got to wonder...), but unfortunately they were in the opposite direction from the shuttle. So I'm speed-walking through the streets, getting everything that I was going to get, and arriving at the place the shuttle is supposed to be at 16:27––––but there's no shuttle. Great. They must have gotten full and already left. I had never actually had to walk back to the ship before, and although there was still technically an hour and a half until on-ship time I was still a bit nervous. I could see the ship waaay in the distance, so I spent the next half an hour speed walking there. Then I spent about ten minutes being lost in the harbor before finally finding and boarding the ship with almost 40 minutes to spare. Whew.

And that was Ireland! Stay tuned for when I get around to Portugal (no idea when that will be), and as always comments are very much appreciated!