Ireland!

It took us the morning to get to Ireland.  The trip across was pretty uneventful on a smallish Aer Lingus plane.  If we had needed advice from the staff we might have been in trouble, but customs was easy as we were the only "non EU" passengers on the plane, so we had our own queue.

We checked in at the hotel, and then headed off to have a look at Trinity College-using the local tourist map to find our way. On the way we happened to chance upon Merrion Square where artists display their work on Sundays.  All along the fence were works of art for sale!

The old buildings of Trinity College are quite impressive.

the building which houses the long room and book of Kells

Library Square

We stood in our very first queue for the trip (only a few minutes) and paid our money to view the book of Kells and the old library-remarkable history right before us! !

It is hard to fathom that something as old as the book of Kells exists-and to be standing looking at it is simply unbelievable.  Such a beautiful work of art and labour of love, and so much effort had gone into preserving it.
No photos of this as they are not allowed.

Then we headed on to see the great long library which is totally awe inspiring. So many books ( and overwhelming book smell) with those wonderful high ceilings and such a feeling of history. This would have to go down as one of my favourite rooms ever. I could have just stayed there all day breathing it in. The busts of historic figures just made it even more special.

Then we wandered along until we located one of the local hop on, hop off buses and hopped aboard.  Commentary was great- the Irish seem to love their history,  and there are a lot of old old buildings here, despite the fact that they seem to have had a number of rather destructive events which involved burning buildings or razing them to the ground. 

I liked their pretty street lamps

they have a wonderful bridge shaped like an Irish Harp which even makes music on special occasions.

There were major traffic disruptions due to an accident and we were treated to an impromptu tour of Dublin streets not usually followed by a double decker bus. We ended up walking home to our hotel and getting ourselves a bit more of a glimpse of
Dublin.

This powerful sculpture depicting the famine was by the side if their grand canal.

And so we head to bed, to have our last sleep before we head into "tour mode".  Wish us luck.