Dublin II and a Rare Bog

The next day we awoke in our Rathcoole B&B, breakfasted, loaded the car, and drove back to the Luas station for round two of Dublin. This morning our objective was Trinity College and the Book of Kells.

Trinity is an old college. According to the bus tour guide it was founded by Queen Elizabeth I to make the Irish "civilized, protestant and educated" and it failed at all three. Actually, the Irish were civilized and educated while the Saxons were running around in loincloths, but that's another story. Suffice it to say that Trinity is one of the world's great educational institutions and possesses a library of rare books the greatest treasure of which is the Book of Kells. This is an illuminated version of the four gospels copied and illustrated by Celtic monks around 800 A.D. For more information, I'd suggest the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells.

We arrived in Dublin on the Luas tram and after a brief stroll arrived at Trinity College.

Roz and Michelle on the Quad at Trinity

Another view of the Quad with a mixture of students and tourists

After a stroll around the campus quadrangle, we found the building - the old library - which housed the Book of Kells. After paying an entrance fee, we were admitted to a darkened room which held several volumes of the precious work. Not unexpectedly, we were not allowed to photograph the pages, so I will insert some illustrations from the Web to give one an idea of what we saw.

I believe this is supposed to be St. Matthew - one of the gospel's traditional authors


Another illustrated page from Kells

While seeing this ancient and beautiful work was moving to all of us, I believe it was particularly meaningful to Roz whose life's work as a librarian involved books and the knowledge they preserve. From the chamber with the Book of Kells, we went up a flight of stairs to the "Old Library" filled with rare and ancient books.

Roz in Librarian Valhalla

As with every tourist attraction, the Kells tour dumped you out in - what else?- a gift shop. One nice thing they had though, was a free service where a young gentleman would look up your Irish surname on a computer data base and tell you what was known about it. Michelle had him look up her grandmother's name: Fanning. It appears that in the olden days the Fannings were big shots in Limerick and eventually spread across Ireland. Anyway, it was kind of a neat thing.

After Trinity, I sort of dragged everyone up the block to the National Museum of Ireland's Archaeology and History Museum to see the gold work that has been dug out of Ireland's bogs. Somehow, I managed to get ahead of everyone and Roz and Michelle ended up with hand-knit sweaters from a shop along the way.

The Irish National Museum of Archaeology and History on Kildare Street Dublin

Gold Torcs (necklaces) and a cloak pin dug from the bogs. These were produced in the Bronze Age

An Irish sweater - but not the actual ones bought on our expedition.

Anyway, it was still well before noon and it was time to move along on our whirlwind tour of the Emerald Isle. I must say, I would have liked more time to explore and savor Dublin, and I hope to get back there again someday.

But now, it was back on the Luas, back in our car, and off to the valley of Glendalough, site of one of the earliest monastic communities in Ireland. On the way, and completely by chance, we traveled through one of the scenic wonders of Ireland - a pass through the Wicklow Mountains called the "Sally Gap". When leaving the environs of Dublin, we entered the location of Glendalough in our GPS and blithely let the "Bitch in the Box" guide us on our way.

The way she took us was along a narrow, somewhat scary, and utterly spectacular road across the beautiful Wicklow Mountains, through peat bogs (the first we had seen in Ireland) and down forested mountain passes.

A typical stretch of Sally Gap road - yes, it was that narrow

We saw some impressive scenery - that's a peat bog in the foreground

Incidentally, peat, which is compressed vegetable matter that forms in the wetlands has been an important source of fuel in coal-less and tree-scarce Ireland. It is cut from the bogs and dried to serve as fuel for homes and even to generate electricity.

More bog land and hills

Some of the locals - Don't know who owned these sheep, there was nothing for miles.

Finally, after some scenic but white-knuckled driving, we arrived at the village where Glendalough was located. We had lunch in a quaint country restaurant and headed for the monastery of St. Kevin.

Next: Glendalough and a spooky coincidence.