Sleep! Real sleep! Comfortable bed at Kelly's Hotel—a fairly rustic and hip-a-delic hotel south of the Temple Bar district. They provide ear plugs instead of mints.
Steve hanging with an old friend of his from his College Days
First planned event was a visit to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College about five blocks away from our hotel. Photographs were strictly forbidden, even of the reproductions blown up in the good overview in an explanatory exhibit. The truly amazing thing about the Book of Kells is that they have survived down through the millennia (800AD), once recovered after having been stolen, also escaping destruction by Vikings and later Cromwellian soldiers. We were able to look at two pages on display in two folios of the gospels. The work was so fine and unimaginably executed. No two designs in the thing are identical. This was a pilgrimage for me; my father, an amateur calligrapher, was besotted with these manuscripts. I now understand.
The very page of illumination that we saw, its subject: "With him at crucifixion were two thieves" Be sure to look at this one in large format. Photos off the internet
Another of the fascinating things in the exhibit was a huge thistle brooch (900 AD) from Cashel, the birthplace of my great grandfather. This brooch must have weighed two pounds and was about six inches across.
We saw the oldest harp in Ireland in the fabulous Long Room library, the basis for all of the harps woven into my inherited Irish linens, a fundamental symbol for the Irish and for Guinness beer. The library is gorgeous.
The oldest harp and the longest library. Be sure to blow this one up to full size.
Photo off the internet
The library: the happiest place on earth
We left Trinity College and strolled down a pedestrian street full of street performers and expensive shops in order to reach a 22 acre patch of green —St. Stephen's Green —and lake that actually has birds other than pigeons—though there were plenty of those. I saw two lovely long-tailed tits, and a blue tit that were all quite titillating. I had to make that said before you did. Also Eurasian blackbird, magpie and robin. Now we're talking travel!
Street sculpture performers, you donate and they move slightly. On Grafton Street
We had stumbled upon a small sign and locked foyer of a yellow and white row house that said Friends Meetinghouse on our first hallucinatory amble through town before check-in. We noted the next Meeting for Worship time was 6:15 the following day. We managed to arrive there on time, get buzzed in from the street. Fran with a thick brogue, all in green welcomed us warmly. It was a surprisingly small room with chairs and detached benches set up in a square. About ten people were there. We had tea afterwards and learned of the odd growth of Dublin's Meetings. We were attending the Dublin Preparative Meeting which was derived from the larger Dublin Meeting which still owned the building but had branched into three locations in south Dublin that were more in the suburbs. About thirty to forty members still clung to a Temple Bar presence here while the larger Meeting was renting its original men's and women's Meeting rooms (rooms as at Arch Street in Philadelphia) to the Irish Film Institute.
We talked of Irish Quaker history over tea, how banished former Cromwell loyalists fled England and settled the north of Ireland. How these became identified as Quakers we didn't manage to discover, but by no means did Irish Friends attract lapsed Catholics in any great number but rather were displaced English. We talked of similar Quaker trends of declining membership and how children had become certainly a rarity at the downtown site. There is no parking and little residential proximity. One man commented in general they are fewer but now more effective in their activism.
A blue tit
Photo off the internet
Had a great dinner at an insanely packed alley full of people of all ages having their pints, what a press of flesh.The concept at this restaurant 'Jo'burg was to pick your burger type - beef, lamb, chicken or two kinds of veggie, then pick your bun or no bun or just one bun, and then pick your flavoring —in my case I had peach curry and emmental, and Steve had roasted red pepper and almond pesto.
And as if the day weren't full enough we went to a pub called M. Hughes where traditional Irish music of the sort that Steve is fond of is played from 10 PM on. We listened for a while in the room that was closed off from the rest of the pub, what Steve says is a "snug." Between sets there was indeed the famous "craic" (pronounced crack) he had hoped to hear. Outrageous stories of spilled beers on famous players, or insults deftly delivered and descriptions of odd characters were given as punctuation to the music. Steve took up his mandolin for about a third of the tunes though he stayed out of the inner circle, and we were by and large ignored.
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