First Time Driving In Ireland

Took the bus to the Hertz rent a car on South Circular road. passed some pretty doors along the way. I was worried that we would not find the right stop but eagle eye Maureen got us there safe and sound. Only about 14 blocks away from the college.

We got there around 430 so had time to get directions out of the city. They gave us this little map which made it look easy.  Just left out of the lot. left at the corner, across the bridge, turn left, follow the Grand canal past five bridges , then turn right onto the N11 which at some point turns into the M11 and your out of town. OK, sounds easy. We are packed . We are ready.  Three lefts, five bridges and a right, how tough can this be?

We exit into the street, South Circular Road and realize that everything is backwards to what we are used to.  

We are on the wrong side of the road. 

We are each on the wrong side of the car.

Maureen is driving with her left hand doing the stick shift. The traffic, which all seems to be hell bent for leather, is all driving two inches away from our vehicle on all sides. 

Maureen says" tell me how close we are to anything on your side of the car". I tell her we are too close to everything on my side of the car.  She says " I am used to having the car end at my left side and so can't quite get  where the car ends on your side" which is of course the passenger side of the car over there.

 I'm thinking "Oh great, I am going to die!" 

At one point there was a bus that pulled up beside us that was literally two inches away from my side mirror. I held my breath as he pulled away. 

We did manage to go around the correct  corner in the left lane. We did cross the bridge  and we did manage to turn left in the left lane so that we could follow the Grand Canal. 

What turned out to be a little confusing on top of everything else we were dealing with at the time was that there seemed to be too many bridges as compared to the little map that the Hertz guy gave us  and no sign for the N11. 

We saw swans. We saw people walking with carriages and people fishing and more swans. We passed six bridges and then our road kind of vanished in an odd corner turn which we took because we didn't see the sign but it seemed to be well travelled and everyone else was going that way.  That would have been Upper Leeson Street which I looked up on a map later but which we did not know at the time. We did not see any signs until we were about 15 blocks past the odd  corner. Both of us  had had at least ten heart attacks and we had, of necessity,  worked out a code by that time.

Maureen decided that my yelling TURN or MOVE OVER was not the best advice, not so useful really, she thought that maybe my just saying left or right would be best. Sometimes tis the simple things that really do work well. 

Finally a sign, but it was a bad sign as it was half covered by trees so we were in the same boat not really sure we were going the right way. Then, suddenly, there were too many signs and we were trying to drive slow enough to  find our sign and where it was pointing without stopping all traffic.  Needless to say we did find the N11  and so the M11 and bravely headed off into the Irish countryside, seekers of adventure us.

The Long Room Library

After leaving the Book of Kells we went up a grand staircase and onto an impressive landing with giant wooden doors. The doors were open   and beyond them was the Long Library.

It is the most impressive library I have ever seen. It is the only library in the world where the books are sorted by size!    All dark wood with a high vaulted ceiling.  At one end on the second floor, not accessible to the public, is the book repair area and behind that, the study area for scholars using the material from the library and another area on the opposite end is for study of the manuscripts that are kept in the basement area of the building. 

In all there are over 200,000 books and 1/2 million manuscripts.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Again no pictures are allowed to be taken so I will look for public domain pictures to give an idea of is beauty.

The construction of the original Building, designed by Thomas Burgh, began in 1712 and was finished in 1732.   After its completion the acquisition of the books which formed the foundation of the library was undertaken and it is now one of the finest collections in the world.  Of course if you had been collecting books for going on three hundred years I would expect you to have a nice collection too. the original ceiling was flat but in the 1800s it was changed to the barrel vault that is there now.

There were glass cases running down the center of the main aisle filled with books. The theme was Mysteries. There were first edtion Miss Marples, Inspector Poirots,  Sherlock Holmes, Ebenezer Scrooge and many many others. There was also murder mystery type paraphernalia.  It was all dreadfully fun and extremely interesting. 

I love libraries anyway but this one is most certainly my favorite. I really wanted to go past the ropes and pick up a volume of anything just to leaf through the pages, but I controlled myself.  I did ask about their location system . Each books dimensions are measured when it comes in to the library and it is then assigned a location based on that.  The largest at the bottom and smallest at the top. Very fun. So the only way you can get a book out is to go to the catalogues with the help of the staff and look up its location on the shelf. of course us everyday folk cannot just go and get a book out. scholars and researchers allowed only.

When we were through there we departed through the gift shop picking up t- shirts and postcards and family histories too.  A most wonderful gift shop with lots to entice.  It was raining outside so we went to the arts building and had a quick bite to eat before heading off to  Hertz to get our car. Thank goodness for umbrellas.

Tuesday afternoon - The Book of Kells

We went into the gift shop and purchased our tickets to see the Book of Kells and the long Library. 

It is dark as you enter. There are wonderful displays and historical notes around the room with so much information about the Book of Kells, the Book of Darrow, the Lindisfarne Gospels  and the Book of Armagh  that it takes an hour easy to take it all in. 

 I know I have to read more about the history of the books. It turns out there are 4 copies of the book which I did not know. They have two on display in the inner sanctum and the other two are safely stored away.

There is no photography allowed so I will try to find some public domain photos to add to the blog. 

After we admired all the photos and tried to take in all the information in the first room we entered the inner sanctum which holds two copies of the Book in their protective  glass box with its special lighting focusing on each book.  It is all very theatrical but obviously necessary to protect the 

books.  

Marvelous! Fantastic!  Incredibly beautiful! 

 

Need I say more? Are you getting the idea that these are worth seeing?

  Each book is opened to a different page and they change the pages every so often. One will show an Illustrated page and the other a text page. They were both  so awesome. The colours were amazingly vibrant and clear. It looked like gold leaf on one of the pages that was displayed. For a 1200 year old book it really was  remarkable. I have seen a few books on the book of Kells and the reproductions do not do the originals justice.  I could have spent another hour in there but time was slipping away so we exited, reluctantly, to go and see the Long Library.

Trinity College on Tuesday afternoon

It was sunny and warm with periods of cloud and rain, typical Irish weather. Maureen and  I went into a little book store on the corner across the street from trinity.   I picked up the little book the 'Birds of Ireland' by Gordon Darcy. All sketches and lovely. 
Also the Irish Potato Cookbook by Eveleen Coyle.  Num, num, num.  Maureen found quite a few books that she wanted.

Trinity College here we come. The entrance way or Front Arch is very cool, very wide, very old. In 1751,  any  unspent money by  the Irish parliament was supposed to be returned to the English so when the board of the college asked for financial help in reconstruction the Irish MPs were more than happy to spend their money on the college.  The English architect Theodore Jacobsen was hired and we see the results. Trinity  college is housed more impressively than any college in Cambridge or Oxford. What I thought was of all the people who had walked through this archway. Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, thousands of students who went on to do greater things and maybe some not so great.  

Originally the 150ft long structure was to be topped with three copper cupolas , one at either end and a huge one in the centre, until  someone who had political connections noted that they had never seen anything like that in  Italy . The plans were changed to a plainer front even though some of the construction work had already begun.

The sidewalks are cobbled.  Just inside the gate was a sign for tours which would start in only a couple of minutes so we decided that the 30 to 45 minutes would be well spent going on the tour. The quadrangle or  square just inside the gate came to be known as Parliament Square named after the generosity that allowed it to be built. 

Our tour guide was a postgraduate of trinity and he was very funny and informative.

Trinity was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth  to help consolidate the rule of the

 monarchy  in Ireland,  and for much of its history it was seen as the university for

 male Protestants. It was started outside the walls of Dublin in the old Augustinian monastery All Hallows and is now pretty much in the center of Dublin. Even though the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade Catholics from attending,  threat of excomunication, until the late 20th  century,  Catholics  have been permitted by the  college to enter as early as 1753 but there were some restrictions on their membership to the college until 1873.  Women were first  admitted to the college as full members in 1904 and the first woman professor was appointed in 1934.  The college is now 90% Catholic and 60% Women. Way to go us.

The first two buildings that you see to the left and the right as you enter parliament square 

are the

the chapel  

and the examination hall, 

and they are basically mirror images. They were designed by the swedish architect Sir William Chambers  in 1798, and when he decided to use the same fronts for both buildings, the college  decided not to pay him as they had hired him to design two buildings. It didn't actually seem to bother him as he never  actually set foot in Ireland anyway. Too Funny. 

We proceeded down the sidewalk,  to the tower in the center of the square. It is called the Campanile and  was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon in 1854 and was finished in 1857. very cool.   The two trees behind the tower , one on either side, are each two hundred years old.

When we turned around and faced back the way  

we had  just come we saw the entrance way. 

The music school is above the entry arch  and the Irish dormitory, where only Irish is allowed to be used on pain of fines, is to the right (the chapel building I think).  

From where we are standing by the Campanile when we 

turn left we see the dining hall which was originally built 

in the 1740's by Richard Cassells but the roof collapsed twice so it was rebuilt by architect  Hugh Darley.  

The rules around the dining hall are quite interesting. It seems that they lock the doors before dinner and if 

you are late you don't get in. Postgraduates eat free but they have to eat fast as the headmaster or provost ? of the dining 

hall decides when the dinner starts and  ends.  When he is done eating everyone else is to, so, if he doesn't like his meal   or is in a hurry they may only get five or six minutes to eat. One never knows. 

When we turn to the right from the Campanile tower 

there is the reading room which is attached 

to the long library by a tunnel and is used by postgraduates doing research.

  

We go along the museum building passing a statue on the other side of the green that was placed there because the artist said that he would not donate it if they put it anywhere near the arts building that he thought was the ugliest building he had ever seen.  unfortunately I do not recall the name of the artist. 

 Hilarious! 

The museum building  was designed by Sir Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward 

and was completed in 1857.

 

 

The architects thought that they would give the stone carvers free reign and let them design their own capitals.

There are over 180 different carved capitals around the building. I did not take pictures of all of them all only a few.

 Over one door there is a cat with a rat in its mouth , a fox and a cherub. I don't know what it is supposed to mean or signify. We did not go inside this building but I have since seen pictures and it is gorgeous inside. Great long wide staircases.

At the end of the walk at the corner of the Long Room, which holds the Long library and the Book of Kells,  is the Rubricks. One of the oldest buildings on the grounds, 1700,  it was once used as dorms and was home to some very famous people like Oscar Wilde.

  

One night,  three young  inebriated  students came to scare one of the proffessors that they did not like.

 They were at the door making so much noise that the proffessor thought that they were seriously going to harm him so he waved his gun  at them and they left only to return with a gun and  there  was a gun fight with the students ending up shooting the professor.  They went to trial but were acquitted. 

One of the boys later became a Judge and another a  parliamentarian. Only in Ireland you say. 

After this we went to the arts building which actually was  pretty ugly.  I understood what that artist meant. But there was a really cool sculpture outside the building . 

A spinning sculpture by a finnish artist? very interesting. It seems that when it was first installed the wind could turn it.  As time went by it slowed down and eventually stopped altogether. Well, the college brought back the artist who looked at it and discovered that it had filled up with water so now there are some very small holes in the base of the sculpture to let the rain water drain out. I did push the six? foot tall six? foot circumference ball, it and it did spin. Very exciting.  If you look at the reflections on the front of the ball you can see me taking this picture. 

Then our tour guide told us about the  Arts building based on the"hanging gardens of Babylon" and how it won an award from the concrete companies of  Ireland for being a great building. (It is made up of a lot of concrete). It is on Fellows Square where no one is allowed to walk on the grass except for one day a year and  is right across from the main entrance to the Long Room which holds the Long Library  and the Book of Kells. So Exciting!! We have reached the end of our tour. The long Room or Old Library was designed by Thomas Burgh and was built from 1712 to 1732. Deane and Woodward added the timber tunnel vaults in 1858 to 1860. Now  we can see  the Book of Kells! and just in time too as it is starting to rain. 

Tuesday- renting the car

We took a cab to the  Hertz car rental on South Circular Road.  We checked in at the desk and the fellow behind the counter said that before he could give us our brand new Renault there were two important questions that must be asked. 

So Maureen said 'What colour is it? 

and the hertz guy asked 'What colour are your shoes?

The answer to both was black and the car was ours. 

we rented it for 10 days with the stipulation that the car be back by 1230 in the 10 day and full of gas. We asked if we could load up our luggage in to the car and leave it at the hertz lot until later as there was still a few things we wanted to see in Dublin.He said no problem , just be back before five. He gave us the easy directions to get out of Dublin onto the N7 and so with the car loaded and locked we took a cab back to Trinity college which was just down the street from our hotel.

Tuedsay - Early morning in Dublin

Beautiful morning, . The air is cool but not cold, a little early morning mist.  Yesterday we had discovered the church and Maureen decided to go today so all we have to do is find it again.  I will find the laundry and then we shall go for breakfast together .that is the plan. The Launderette was open and Teresa explained how they worked. Quite simple really. Told me that they did a lot of the hotels and hostels laundry requirements and that some of the hotels charged quite a lot for the service they provided. When I looked at what some hotels charged , ours was actually very reasonable. I wrote postcards on top of the washing machines. After Maureens clothes were washed and I had transfered the wet laundry to the dryer I  went to find the mail box. 

 side note. the mail boxes in Ireland are green. and they vary in size depending on the amount of use they get. In some towns the mailbox was 12 x 8 x 6  inches. I found that interesting. very efficient.  This does mean that you have to pay attention to where there might be a mail box as they are all different depending on the size of the town 

 

Of course I took photos of everything. It was just down the street and easy to find so I wandered around a little bit. It was quiet. There was very little traffic unlike yesterday which was insane. They drive 3 inches away from each other and figuring out crosswalks was tense as sometimes they would stop at the corners and sometimes they would not. They being drivers of vehicles and they drive really fast it seemed to me. 

Sidenote

 When I first got into Dublin and was walking around with my map, I could not find a single street signpost. 

I finally asked somone and he told me they were on the buildings. I could not see what he was talking about but said thank-you and continued wandering around trying to see what he was talking about. 

Finally I saw a sign. Up high on the corner of a building. The street signs in Ireland are usually on the sides of buildings, on the corners, to be more specific. 

The rule seems to be that the name of the street will be shown at either end of the street up on the corner of the building.  Sometimes they will be on every corner because the streets are very short so you have to pay attention to what street you are on as there may or may not be another sign for some time. 

I did find the mail box and I did find Maureen and we did find the launderette again which was good or Maureen would have had no clothes.  

Went for breakfast at the Central Hotel. Scrambled eggs, toast,  fruit and tea. They didn't put out very much at one time so you had to wait to get your portion.  Nice hotel but more expensive than ours and very busy. We went back to our hotel and packed things up. Have to say that the staff at the Adams Trinity are very helpful. Archie was great. kept us laughing.

Second Half of Day One

In the afternoon we went through my Village Walks of Ireland box, that the ladies I work with at  Le Papier had given me for my birthday and picked out the walks we wanted to do in Dublin with the time that we had. Even though she loves Dublin, Maureen wants to get out of the city, so we arranged to leave  a day early. She is more of a country girl. an island girl really.Our first card to be used was Number Six- Merrion Square. It brought us to the Dublin National Gallery and it was marvelous.

  Among the  hundreds of beautiful paintings,

 Monet and Renoir, two of my favorites.

 Could have spent the whole day there but we only have so much time and too much to see.  Merrion Square park

 was lovely and the doors of the stately Georgian homes that line the north side of the square are a knockout. 

Took lots of pictures. 

 Stopped for a baileys hot chocolate at the Earl of Kildare Hotel Pub which was built in 1837.

 A  lovely little break in our meanderings. 

Some window shopping on Grafton street where we picked up postcards from little shops.

 It did rain on us but we were armed with raincoats and umbrellas. 

A little side note.  They use paper bags in Ireland. You hardly ever see plastic bags. The first time I bought post cards and they placed them into a paper bag, I thought  'are you mad! it is raining outside and the bag will turn to mush and my cards will get ruined'.  Of course I didn't say that . 

What I said was  'thank-you'.  Yes my paper bag did get a little wet but things did not turn to mush

 and nothing got ruined. 

 Anywhere we went we saw very little evidence of an  irresponsible use or abuse of plastic. There are very few plastic bags hanging around in trees or blowing down the streets in Ireland. Actually there was very little garbage on the streets any where. A very tidy country. 

 

Decided we were famished  so pulled out Village Walks card Number Two- Temple Bar and bravely sallied forth. Maureen in her bright green raincoat with the reflective tape strip across the front and back which looks really cool in flash photos and I in my green raincoat with the light plaid liner in the hood. 

Wandered around  the temple bar area in the rain seeing  the famous ha'penny bridge , built in 1816, and all the way down to Fishamble lane, one of the oldest streets in Dublin. We saw the entrance to the castle gate but not a great view of the castle, oh yea, it was raining and dark by now.  A lovely  dinner at La Pino Restaurante in Temple Bar. Very Tasty. We had already had our first  Guinness   "Slainte"   earlier in the afternoon at the Stag Heads Pub which  is steps away from our hotel, (our uneducated palates thought the beer  bitter),  so for dinner we had wine. After  a large dinner a little more wandering around temple bar to walk off dinner,  more of a waddle really. History ! History! History! Vikings are in Maureen's family history so found the village walks card number One-Viking Dublin, very interesting  The rain was gentle  but steady and we found a hostel which charged almost as much as our hotel with not as many amenities ! We finished off our first evening in Dublin  tucked into our warm, dry beds in the Hotel ,talking of all the experiences  we had that day, planning our activities for tomorrow,  content in the knowledge that we were in Ireland .