14 Sept 2006 Thursday - Dublin

Another busy day on the streets of Dublin. We woke up, ate our unimpressive breakfast and hit the streets. Yesterday, Christ Church was closed because they were filming some big television show called the Tutors or something, so today we walked back to the church to see it. We reluctantly paid the five Euros and went in. The church was beautiful, but the walls were obviously leaning in one direction.

The church was very beautiful, and we took lots of photos,

but I thought St. Patrick’s was more beautiful. Kathy disagreed. She thought it was better than St. Patrick’s. So we decided to walk back to St. Patrick’s to see it and take better photos.

St. Patrick’s is fantastic inside. It is definitely one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in many churches including St. Peter’s Basilica, the Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and many more. I spent a long time walking slowly through the church taking photos.

After the two churches, we walked over to Trinity College

and saw the real Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a very famous copy of the New Testament made with very ornate and beautiful lettering and illustrations. The book dates back to around 800a.d. so it is roughly a 1200 year old book. Very cool.

After that, we walked through the old library, which had some very old books. It was very interesting. It also had the oldest harp in Ireland. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos.

After the Book of Kells, we were tired. We stopped and ate, then walked to the Dublin Museum of History and Archaeology. That was cool too. There were Viking battle axes and swords, St. Patrick’s bell, various reliquaries, and Egyptian mummies, but the highlight was a room that had mostly artifacts made of gold. It was beautiful.

Eventually we walked to the big park across the way.

We sat and rested our bones for a few minutes, then walked back to the hotel, dropped our things, then ate at another Indian restaurant. Now it might sound like we’ve been eating Indian food a lot, but this was only the third time this trip. The rest of the meals have been traditional Irish meals like leg of lamb, Irish stew, fish and chips and such. Great stuff. As for tonight’s Indian food, it wasn’t very good compared to most I’ve had.

Back at the hotel, we had to pack for the trip home tomorrow morning.