Dublin, May 30

Another day on my own in Dublin so I'm off exploring. This morning was an adventure on buses. I caught the bus into City Center, got all the way there and discovered I didn't have the ticket from yesterday that I needed to ride the Hop On Hop Off bus again today. If that had been all I had left behind I wouldn't have bothered going back to the cottage. However, I also left the media card for my camera in my laptop after I downloaded the pictures last night so I wouldn't have been able to take pictures today. I got back on the bus and went back to the cottage to get these items and came back to City Center. That was about an hour's worth of traveling back and forth.

Note to self: ALWAYS check the camera before I leave the house!

 I ended up spending three hours in EPIC Irish Emigration Museum. It is a modern, immersive, fascinating place. It's housed in an old warehouse on the docks. Walking from room to room it tells individual stories of why people left Ireland (voluntarily or not).

These were some sculptures you walk around going from one room to another.

This was a beautiful metal sculpture as you start going through the museum. It has models of all the ships people would have used from the little rowboats on the bottom far right all the way up to modern cruise ships on the top right. I might go back there before I got and take a video of it to see more detail in each of the ships.

They had a lot of interactive tables. This was in a section that was all about the contributions the Irish have made to the world of sports. There were little pucks in a trough around the edges of the table with symbols on them - the olympic rings, football, etc. When you put it on the lighted ring on the table it would activate and show you photos and a little information about atheletes related to the particulare subject (here it show me Irish Olympic athletes)
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I guess this would be the social media room. This is in a room where you can take selfies. One side of the room is wall to wall, floor to ceiling mirrors and the other wall has the TV screens you can see behind me showing various locations a people of Ireland.

I was hungry after my walk so I went into a salad and noodle place. They had Tom Kha Gai! Yeah, I know it's not Irish food but I was too hungry to choose something else. I do that. I skip meals and then get so hungry I almost can't eat. Going to try to not do that here. The soup was delicious!

Cooking at Howth Castle May 30

Wednesday, May 30

Jane surprised me with a hands on cookery class in a castle on Wednesday night. We collected Allison, her sister-in-law and met two of her friends at the castle. There were about 20 people (only one of them was a man, but he seemed to have a good time).

The menu:

• Marinated Beetroot with Grilled Goat Cheese
• Baked Sea Bass with a Cannellini mash and Basil Sauce
• Green Beans with roasted red peppers and pine nuts
• Lemon Roasted Potatoes
• Yogurt, Orange and Cardamom Panacotta with Poached Nectarines.

We all worked together to prep the ingredients and then we sat in the Butler's pantry and ate the meal. Everything was delicious! There wasn't anything I didn't like. LOVED the Lemon roasted potatoes! They gave us printed recipes for everything so I can cook any of it again when I get home. I definitely will do that!

Dublin City May 29

Tuesday, May 29

I decided to do the whole loop on the tour bus first then when it started around again get off and visit places. I had a notebook with me so I took some observational notes as they came into my head.

• Dublin has a lot of Georgian architecture and reminds me a lot of New York.
• The locals have funny nicknames for places or landmarks - They call the Natural History Museum the "Dead Zoo". There a massive spire in O'Connell Street that you can see from almost anywhere. They call it "the pole in the hole".
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• I realized I had been in Dublin for three days before I ever saw/heard an emergency vehicle.
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• They have a building here, 1915 Garda Station, Pearse Street, that has "keystone cops".  

"Designed for the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and now the main Garda Station for the south city, Pearse Street Station is a large building in the Scottish Baronial style. Sited on an awkward corner with Townsend Street to the rear, the building manages to turn the corner successfully with the use of a curved bay. An unusual feature of the building is the ‘keystone cops’, corbelled heads of policemen used to support segmental arches over the doorways. Maintained in good condition, this is an interesting building often overlooked by Dubliners."

 I haven't gotten a photo if them yet, but I hope to before I leave. I have to wonder if this has any relation to "keystone cops" of the Hollywood silent movies.

• I found out that a leprechaun is a cobbler to the fairies. I never knew that!

My first stop was Trinity College to see The Book of Kells. This was the first thing I saw when I went into the courtyard.

It's a giant gold sphere with bars and things inside. Its called Sfera con Sfera by a sculptor named Arnoldo Pomodoro. I haven't had time to find out more about it than the name and artist, but I'm wondering if this isn't by the same person who made the sphere I saw in Battery Park that moved me to tears. That one had originally been at Ground Zero on 9/11 and was salvaged and moved to the park. I will have do some more research on this.

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript that is over 1,000 years old and "contains lavishly decorated copy, in Latin, of the four gospels." It was stolen in one of many raids and in 1653 was send to Dublin "for reasons of security".  It came to Trinity College in 1661.

Photography is not allowed in the room where the book is kept. I heard a gentleman telling someone that the book has been separated in the four parts. Two of the parts are in a display case and Jane tells me they turn the page to display a new one every day. If the book was split in parts the whole thing must have been a massive book. Each of the two parts I saw was about as thick as a dictionary.
 
After you leave the room that the Book of Kells is in you go upstairs and through the old library, which is beautiful!

They have the oldest surviving Irish harp - which is the national symbol of Ireland.

This is just a shop I saw that I though has a funny name - Knobs & Knockers. They sell hardware for doors and drawers

My next stop was at Dublinia, which is a museum showcasing the Viking influence on Dublin.

They have a great model of the city and they turn on and off lights to highlight the areas that are being talked about in the narration.

This is a Viking weaving loom. The warp threads are tied to stones at the bottom. I'll have to do some research to see if there was some advantage to the stones as opposed to tying them to the bottom of the frame as in Navajo weaving. They had a lot of these small dioramas in the exhibit.

If you scroll back up to the photo of the building you can see a tower behind it. I walked up all 96 steps to get to the top of that tower. There's a lovely view from up there. Below is the overhead view of Christ Church Cathedral across the street.

This is the crossover from Dublinia to Christ Church (it goes over the road).

Christ Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the United Dioceses of Dublin.

This is the pulpit. It has beautiful, intricate carvings all around it. Below is a very ornate baptistery (it holds the holy water where babies are baptized).

My last stop for the day was at the Guinness Brewery. They have a very nice self guided tour on how they brew their beer. Before you start the tour they give you a short orientation that includes showing the 9,000 year lease Arthur Guinness signed over 250 years ago. It's encased in a display set into the floor.

I liked this display. It represents the 1,000 bubbles in every pint of Guinness. I had a ticket to get a free pint, but as you can imagine, any of the areas where people could taste or drink were packed and I didn't feel like standing in any of the lines.

 I did go up to the very top of the building to the Gravity Bar. It has a 360 view of the city (and it was massively crowded).

Jane met me in the city after she got off work. She showed me how to find the train to go home. We came home and she picked up some fish & chips for us to eat. Fish and chips here are very good!

This ends my 3rd day.

Dublin-First Full Day May 27 & 28

Sunday, May 27

It rained on an off all day.

We drove around the area a bit and we walked out to Howth Lighthouse during a break in the rain. Mostly we just chatted and watched TV today. Just a nice relaxing day.

Monday, May 28

Jane teaches school so she had to go back to work today. I'm on my own to explore the local area until she gets home. I walked to a little commercial area about 2 miles away. Check out the grocery store. They have mostly the same kind of produce we have, but much of it was in plastic bags, not piled up in bins the way ours are. They had a lot more lamb in the market than I'm used to seeing at home. I was watching TV last night and could recognized products that we use at home but have different names here because the commercials are almost exactly the same just the product is different. There was a Starbucks in the shopping center so I went in there and had my Chai Latte and watched people go by for a bit.

The walk to and from Jane's cottage is along the Baldoyle Estuary. If I had a place like this to walk I'd probably walk every day!

When I came by here on Sunday the tide was out and there was NO water in it at all, just seaweed lying there. I'll get another video of it during low tide. Jane says that in dryer weather they can walk across this to Howth, you just have to be aware of the tides.

When Jane got off work we took the bus into city center. There are two buses that stop right near her house and she gave me schedules for both of them. I bought a cheap cell phone in the city because mine doesn't work here and I wanted to have a way to call her if anything happened and I needed help of if she wanted to meet up with me after she got home from work.

I wanted to pick up some fabric while I'm here. I have a flower garden quilt on my bed at home that I made more than 20 years ago and it's starting to fall apart. I found this lovely packet of fat quarters in the first fabric shop we went into.

I liked the greens and didn't need to get the cliche shamrock print. I'm planning to make a Tumbling Blocks quilt and can get other colors when I get home. That way I'll know that all the green pieces are the fabric I picked up in Dublin.

I also picked up a Dublin Pass. It's like a City Pass. I can ride the Hop On Hop Off bus all day and get around the city. It also gets me into different tourist places like the Guinness Brewery, Dubinina and Christ Church and others.

My plan for tomorrow is to spend the day in city doing touristy things.

Ireland adventure May 25 & 26

I went TO the airport really early! I took the Flyaway. It was Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend. Not only was there a possibility that airport would be crowded it was almost certain the freeway getting there would be. The freeway was crowded and it took about an hour and a half to get there. Surprisingly, the airport was not as crowded as I expected and I got through everything and to my gate with plenty of time to spare.

Taking off in a plane is always a magical experience for me. I know the aerodynamics of how a plane flies it's just so mind boggling that something so big CAN fly. I left LA around 7:40 pm and was treated to this lovely sunset over the ocean.

Unfortunately, I can't say the fight itself was magical or enjoyable. 10 hours sitting in a tiny seat with no way to put my feet up wasn't comfortable. The meal they served was pretty good. I dozed on and off for most of the flight. Tried reading a book. That gets tiring after a while. Unfortunately, I somehow left my Kindle on the plane. I discovered that when I went through security to get ON the fight to Dublin. I was required to take my laptop and Kindle of out my carry-on to go through security. I didn't think, at that point, that I had time to go back to the arrival gate I'd just come from. I filed a report while I was waiting to board my fight from Heathrow to Dublin. Had I known when I landed that THAT flight was going to be delayed for at least an hour I would have gone back to the arrival gate and tried to get my Kindle back. That situation was an inconvenience. At least I didn't lose my laptop and camera - THAT would have been a really bad thing!

The airport in Dublin was an interesting experience. In LA, we meet our people first on deplaning and then collect our luggage. In Dublin it's the opposite. It was surprisingly empty in Dublin airport and I followed the signs to baggage claim. But when I got down there I realized I hadn't seen Jane and I didn't know where to meet her-that's when I discovered I couldn't make calls on my cell phone. It took forever for the luggage to get unloaded and while I was waiting I asked someone who looked like a local and she told me that Jane would be waiting for me just beyond the baggage area.

I felt sorry for one young mother waiting for her luggage. Her toddler was just NOT happy (he was probably tired). He was screaming and crying, didn't want to be held, didn't want to be put down, laid on the floor and cried for a little while. She looked tired and like she wanted to cry herself. By the time the luggage finally started coming around he had calmed down. Probably wore himself out. Another woman met her and took the boy. She looked so relieved!

I collected my bag and Jane was right outside the baggage area so she was easy to find. She drove me to her place and we had a relaxing evening.

End day 1