I woke up this morning and saw that it was starting to get light. Thinking it was nearly time to get up, I glanced at my phone and did a double-take. The time was 4:30am. That made me wonder just how far north we were. I’ve always thought of Ireland as somewhere around the latitude of Michigan, but when I looked it up, Dublin is at a latitude of 53 degrees, which is more north than all of Michigan and equivalent to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in latitude.
No wonder it’s cold here.
I did manage to sleep again until 7am and then we had to scramble to make it to our first outing of the day at 9:30. Sounds like a lot of time, but we needed breakfast and then to navigate the rather opaque Dublin public transit system in that amount of time.
Breakfast was easy enough, since it is included in the room rate and served downstairs. They have a lovely little dining area and we were the first to arrive at 7:30am.
This time, I tried the traditional Irish full breakfast, described as grilled ham, sausage, black and white pudding, and eggs. I couldn’t imagine what breakfast would include pudding, but this is Ireland and I wanted to experience Irish food.
Irish pudding is not the quivering, slimy gel served in a bowl like in the US. It’s more like a small puck that looks like a blackened cookie, has the consistency of ground sausage, and tastes nothing like any of these. I’m not sure I’m a fan. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste. The rest of everything was very enjoyable.
The public transit system in Dublin has a reputation for being hard to figure out. It is a reputation that is well-deserved. Google maps makes a gallant effort of showing routes using public transit, but the route you looked at five minutes ago will be different than the route shown now. We had mapped out a route yesterday and when we walked to the pickup stop, it had a different stop number than the map showed. But it looked like Bus 68 left from this stop and went in the right direction. So we waited for Bus 68.
Bus 68 came around the bend in the street and sailed right by our stop. Still haven’t figured that one out. So now it’s bus 122 to the river and then bus 69. We got on Bus 122 but overshot our drop-off, so we had to walk back towards the river. By this time, Google Maps was recommending Bus S1, and we could see the bus approaching the stop as we walked, but we were on the wrong side of the street. Quick check to the left for traffic, then we jaywalked (or rather jay-ran) and made it on the bus.
Another hike from the drop-off point to the Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced “jail”) and we made it to the gaol just as the scheduled tour was starting.
All this planning, all this hassle, just to go to jail.
But it is an interesting place and very integral to the history of Ireland. It has a very sordid past since it was built in 1796: public hangings, executions, men, women and children all incarcerated together, and children as young as three years old imprisoned for petty theft.
Our guide was a very knowledgeable person who must have been an actor in a prior life. From dramatic pauses to facial expressions and gestures, he really brought it out. He was a bit hard to understand because of his thick Irish accent and the acoustics of some of the rooms we were in, but it was a well-done tour. Definitely worth the confused bus ride to get here.
We took the paid self-tour of this cathedral although it was less enjoyable than the cathedrals we toured in the Netherlands. It was quite crowded and access was only on the main floor. In the Netherlands, we were able to climb to the top of the spires.
One thing we did see while we were there, a high school performance choir came in and sang for a while. It was a language that I didn’t understand so it sounded more like a chant. But it illustrated the amazing acoustics of the place. You could hear the choir well, no matter where you were in that big space.
We stopped briefly at the Dublin Castle and then on to the Chester Beatty Library, managing to get in just as it started to rain. We’re 3 for 3 on the rainy days.
The Chester Beatty Library was established in Ireland in 1953 to contain the collections of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, who made his fortune in the mining industry and had a thing for collecting Western, Islamic and East & South East Asian artifacts. Among those collections is some of the oldest known papyri manuscripts of Old and New Testament books. All four gospels and the book of Acts, as well as several Pauline letters are represented here, as well as some pages from Revelation, dating back to as early as the second century.
I had to sit down for a while because my Ménière's disease was acting up, but Deb spent some time browsing this amazing collection and I was able to see some of it after a while. It certainly was more significant to us than the Book of Kells, and a lot less crowded. It was profoundly meaningful to see these significant pieces in person. We serve the same God and use the same scripture, nearly 2000 years later.
We had dinner at the Bleeding Horse, a pub near the Kilronan House, arriving early because we had tickets to Riverdance a little later on. Shortly after we arrived, the place was packed and a band set up to play just as we were leaving. It was getting rather noisy, with several people standing near our table, pint in hand, talking over the noise. Must be a popular hangout with both the locals and the tourists.
After dinner we walked to the Gaiety Theater for a production of Riverdance, a show of traditional Irish music and dance. These guys travel all over the place, including the US, but Ireland is their home, and we were able to see them locally, in a rather small venue that allowed us to be close enough to the stage to see good detail.
Quite an amazing show, lots of talent there.
Now we’re back at the Kilronan House. Tomorrow it’s a four-hour bus trip to the other side of the county where we’ll have an entirely different feel than downtown Dublin.
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