We had the good fortune to awake via a hotel alarm just before 8:00 am today. Never did hear what the alarm was about but we had been sound asleep. It rang only briefly but long enough to make me come fully alive and ready for action: I pulled the blanket over my head.
We all walked the 10 minute hike to Trinity College, home of the Book of Kells, a lavishly decorated Latin version of the four Gospels of the New Testement, transcribed in the early 7th century. Its origins are believed to be in Scottland but those pesky Vikings kept plundering the Scottish coast and monks fled with the book to Ireland in the 9th century, and the book remained there, sometimes with known whereabouts, sometimes not, until its current home at Trinity College in Dublin. It is presenttly housed in a darkened room, in a glass case with special lighting and lays open so that it is possible for visitors to view the contents of two pages at a time. Photography is strictly forbidden and the pages are changed once every twelve weeks.
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| Ogham Stones, with medieval Celtic writing from the time of the Book of Kells. |
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| They typically signify boundaries. The writing is actually quite simple and is easily translated, consisting simply of horizontal and vertical lines and some dots for the letters. |
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| Our guide Katie described the skeletons as "deer", belonging to the oldest known and largest mammals in Ireland. |
I've known some moose that would be pretty intimidated.
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| The Bell Tower. |
We started with a tour of the campus guided by a plucky university student just ending her degree in English and Sociology. She mentioned numerous times that once the tour was done, we would all be crying in our beer for missing her. She had been leading such tours for a couple of years and somehow managed to bring her own flair to her instruction. She happily told us about the most daring superstition on the campus, which is that if a student walks under the Bell Tower and the bells ring, the student will fail all their exams. As such, she guided the tour throught the tower passageway but she gave it a wide berth and met us on the other side. The bells ring on a secret schedule so students cannot anticipate the ringing.
Part of the tour package included a walk through the Old Library, which, as a "national library" had the rights to a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom since 1800. The place had been largely cleared out of the books but a few stacks remained for display sake. The library is about to undergo a 10 year renovation which will improve its fire safety, facility and structure. The roof had already been raised once to accomated more books in 1859-61 We saw videos in the library that demonstrated the process used to remove the books, photograph the bindings and catalogue them. This also included removing with special care the Genuine and Certified True Genuine Library Dust which coated the tops of many of the books. They all looked very old and very delicate.
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| A copy of the original Proclamation of Independence of the Republic of Ireland in 1916. In actuality, Ireland didn't become fully independent until a few years, and skirmishes later. |
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| Stacks in the Long Hall. |
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| The Long Hall. The globe is not from 1800. |
In the afternoon, I went for a walk around the park while the other members of my posse took the afternoon off. I actually had the tracking device turned on but it only pinged a couple of times, despite my being out for an hour. I'm thinking that trees in the park and buildings along the sidewalk prevented a clear shot at a satellite.
We ended up at a restaurant inside Temple Bar. It was above a very lively and packed pub with live music. Amazingly, we could hear very little of the music from our vantage, which was good. Not that we aren't keen to hear some Irish music live but it was so loud we were pinned to the back wall as we walked through the bar. At dinner, it seemed that we were surrounded by foreigners. I asked the server "are there any locals here? He said "none". But the food was good and plentiful.
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| At dinner. |
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| Bridge over the River Liffe. |
