Vive la LIFE: I am alive and well and in Dublin...

Hurray, I arrived in Dublin just fine. I have to say, it was daunting to realize that I was in a foreign country all by myself. This is not the first time I have traveled to Europe, but it is the first time I was completely alone. I got here just fine, found my bus just fine, was dropped off on the main street to then find the next street that my hotel is on just fine then promptly got lost, for about an hour. The directions that I was given would have worked out really well if I would have been traveling on the opposite side of the street and coming from the opposite side of town. Thanks to a very nice man I found my way, dropped off my luggage (too early to check in), picked up a map of the city and started out. It was chilly and there was a nice cool wind, but it was not bitter cold so I was happy and I had a plan (sort of). I realize that these blogs will be really long if I do them by day so I am going to do them by historical point. The first place I planned to visit was Trinity College, by way of a big beautiful park just a couple of blocks from my B&B.

This looked like a movie set, with the gardaí just there.

Lakeside View

My first dream house

To get to Trinity College and the Book of Kells I also had to go through the "shopping district". It is completely for pedestrians and just full of shops and places to eat. All of the cities that I visited during my stay had them and it was a good directional landmark for me.

My first and only Leprechauns

See.....only people

Trinity College was founded by charter of Queen Elizabeth in 1592. While the college is extremely old, the actual buildings on campus date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The oldest building on campus is the Old Library, build between 1712 and 1732. The Library Dublin is one of the world’s great research libraries, holding the largest collection of manuscripts and printed books in Ireland. Since 1801 it has had the right to claim a free copy of all British and Irish publications and has a stock of nearly three hundred million volumes housed in 8 buildings. The Old Library houses the Irish medieval gospel manuscripts, principally the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh and the Book of Durrow. I took a guided tour of the main campus and then ended with a look at the books that are located in the Old Library. It was amazing look at history.

Entering Trinity College

Me on Parliament Square (The Campanile is the tower in the background)

This tree is from Oregon. They normally don't grow this large but because Dublin is on the Poddle (the underground river) it is a tree on steroids.

This is the Philosophy professor that was our tour guide. He was very good and highly entertaining.

At the end of the tour, we ended up at the Old Library, where the Book of Kells is located. It contains lavishly decorated copy, in Latin, of the four gospels. It has been associated with St. Colum Cille (c. 521-597) who founded his principal monastery on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland in about 561. The Book of Kells was probably produced early in the 9th century by the monks of Iona, working partially at Iona or at Kells, where they moved after 806 A.D. The Book of Kells was sent to Dublin around 1653 for security during the Cromwellian period.