Our Visit with Ellen - Dublin

Our good friend Ellen Bonnell is finishing up a Masters Degree program at University College Dublin, and we have been meaning to visit her while she was still there. We finally did it last week.  

We had trouble finding a hotel and we didn't know why until we got there. It was Dublin Horse Show week, a huge event that draws an international crowd. We had to settle for a hotel that was a bit above our usual price range.

It's a long walk to Reception

After two months in Italy with temperatures in excess of 35 degrees, it was a joy to go someplace where it barely got up to 20. BTW, if you don't react to the hotness or coldness of that, it may be because you live in one of the few countries (specifically, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, Palau, and the U.S.) that does not use the Celsius scale. But I digress. Ellen had a major paper to finish on our first day there, so we toured Dublin on our own. With rain coming down intermittently, indoor venues were welcome, such as...

It was very educational. We learned how to properly pour Guinness. Carmen showed some flair--hers is the one with the little bump on top. The Guinness people have made their brewery into a mini-theme park. The picture to the right is at a big waterfall where they extoll the virtues of the water they use.

After Ellen was done with her class, we headed for the west coast of Ireland for the weekend. That was so different than Dublin that we will report that in a separate post. Returning on Monday, it was already early afternoon when we set out for Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Late for lunch, we found a welcome pub.

Since it was almost three o'clock by then, we asked the waiter near the door if they were still serving food. He said, "Yes, but..." and hesitated, not sure if he should tell us more. He finally decided to go ahead, and said that in five minutes, the place (which now was totally empty) would be mobbed with students getting out of class at Trinity. That sounded like a recommendation instead of a negative, so we sat down and ordered. On the bar, the bartender was filling and lining up pint after pint of Guinness in anticipation. Like clockwork, the place was mobbed five minutes later.

The entrance to Trinity College

The Library at Trinity College is home to the Book of Kells, regarded as the finest example of an "illuminated manuscript" and as Ireland's finest national treasure. Pictures of it are not allowed, but you can see an image of one of the pages we saw here. Climbing up to the main floor known as the Long Room, we found the oldest known Irish harp, the model for the coat of arms of Ireland. Legend has it that it was the harp of Brian Boru, high king of Ireland in the early 11th century, but scholarly research places its origin around 1500. Photography is allowed, but it is a difficult shot due to the reflections from its glass case, and here is the best we could do, with our apologies, along with a shot in the stacks:

Just about everyone who comes to Dublin has to have their picture taken with the statue of Molly Malone. We are sure you know the song that has enshrined Molly in Irish lore, but if not, we will arrange for Ellen to sing it for you--she has learned it by heart from many a night in an Irish pub.

On the subject of Irish music, every night we were in a pub listening to great music, Irish and otherwise. The first night was the rowdiest: dancers were pounding the floor of the upstairs room so hard the bartender kept threatening to throw them out, and finally did, only to have them run back into the room for one last hurrah, to the cheers of the crowd. On our last night, the six-man band below, Mutefish, was busking for free on a street in the Temple Bar district. They played for about three hours. They are an incredibly tight band and bill their eclectic instrumental music as "progressive techno folk".