Dublin City Center, June 6

Wednesday, June 6

Jane is back at school today and I’m off to City Center again. I walked over the Ha’penny Bridge (officially the Liffy Bridge), built in 1816 and around Temple Bar. I’m getting pretty good at getting around the city with my map! 

 The Ha'penny bridge is so called because that was the toll amount to cross it at one point in time. The Liffy River divides Dublin between north and south.

Ha'penny Bridge

 Temple Bar is the area south of the Liffy River. Originally this area was outside the walls of the city of Dublin. This is the area for nightlife in Dublin.

 This building houses a store called The Pen Corner. As the name might suggest they sell pens and other writing supplies. I couldn't find out anything about the architecture of the building, which I really like.

The Pen Corner

After a rather circuitous route I found my way to the National Gallery. 

There was an exhibit of Harry Clarke stained glass. I was able to get very close to these windows.

 

His windows have a beautiful, jewel-like quality to them that I don't see in other stained glass. It's almost as if he made them out of jewels, instead of colored glass.I didn't even bump up the saturation on these photos. This is the actual saturation of color in these windows. Just beautiful!

Parquet floors, chandeliers and a massive painting at the end of the room. So impressive! I don't know how they get pictures that size into these rooms. Do they bring in the rolled up canvas and then stretch them on the frames once they're in the room? The painting is called The Marriage of Longbow and represents the Norman conquest of Ireland.

 

 I am always amazed at how sculptors can make marble looks like soft, flowing fabric.

There were some beautiful enameled copper pieces in the museum. The were quite small. Maybe a little larger than a silver dollar. Two of them were portraits of Victoria and Albert. 

Also in the portrait hall is a recent portrait of Graham Norton. A contest was conducted to see who would be chosen to paint it. It was done in 2017 and I think it's a great likeness of him.

All the walking I've been doing for the past week and a half is catching up with me. My feet started hurting so I headed back to Jane's to relax.

Later this evening Jane, Allison, Lucy and I went to see a play at Bewley's Cafe Theatre. The play was called Burdian's Ass by SR Plant. It's a two-man play set in a taxidermy shop that is falling on hard times. It was really well acted and quite absurd. We had a good time.

Inis Meain June 1

Friday, June 1

I stayed home and had some down time yesterday. Jane loaned me a copy of Graham Norton's novel, Holding. It's a murder mystery and it's quite good.

Jane starts her mini vacation today (Monday is their Bank Holiday and Tuesday is a school holiday) and we’re off to the west side of the country or “down country” as she calls it. We had light traffic and cloudy skies so it wasn’t a hot drive through the country. They have a lot of roundabouts in Ireland and while I have been through the few we have here in California I was glad I wasn’t driving as they were confusing as to which exit to take. Jane decided to try voice navigation on her phone for the first time on this trip. She named her navigator Fred. At least HE can pronounce the names of the streets! I was hopeless as a navigator other than saying go left or go straight.

We arrived on the west coast and stopped at the Galway Bay Hotel for an early dinner. Great food and a beautiful place!

This photo of Galway Bay Hotel is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Then we continued on another hour to Rossaveel to catch the ferry to one of the Aran Islands. I was fascinated by the reflection of the water on the ceiling of the ferry. It was very magical looking (apparently it doesn't take much to impress me, ha!).

 The trip was quite smooth. I would imagine it’s not as pleasant on rough sea days. We were truly blessed with excellent weather. 

There are three islands and we went to Inis Meain (Middle Island). It’s not the smallest of the three islands, but it is the most rural, the most Irish and if you like to walk, hike, bike ride or kayak it’s the perfect place...because there’s pretty much nothing else to do there.

We stayed at a B&B, An Dun, located almost at the highest point on the island. The only place higher was the ruins of Dun Chonchuir an ancient fort across the street from where we stayed. 

Dun Chonchuir

We had some tea and homemade scones then went out for a walk. Walking west we got to the cliffs on the edge of the island in about 15 minutes. We could see Inis More across the way. It was cloudy but not really cold and there was a break in the clouds to the west so we were treated to a lovely sunset.

Jane at Sunset

View from the "main" road

 Plantain grows wild on the side of the road there. It’s one of the few herbs I can recognize on sight. It has excellent healing properties and is good in healing salves. Plants grow in the cracks, on the side of the road, in between the stones on the walls, everywhere! Other than the stone walls and a couple of deliberately planted fields it’s very “wild” here. Jane was very happy to hear a cuckoo calling (cuckooing?).

Plantain (herb, not the banana)

We walked back the other way, looking for the pub and just missed it because we turned left and followed the main road instead of staying straight and going into what looked like more private homes.  

Old House at Sunset

Went back to the B&B and ended our day