Ireland 2

Hi again. I've decided to procrastinate from packing by posting again. What a shock, eh? :-) Our first night in Dublin, I met up with some of the folks from the tour at the Arlington hotel for the free Irish dance and music show. It was awesome. The dancers performed (adapted) numbers from Riverdance and the band was great. I bought their CDs and they signed them. [Take that 'Cow-Tippers' ;-) ] We had a good night, except for the girl who had been pickpocketed on the way to the show. But we got her all sorted and she ended up having a good time in the end too.

Yesterday, we slept in, but did still manage to make it down to breakfast. The really hard part was moving after we had returned to our room. Actually after breakfast I walked down the street to the pharmacy because my knee was really bugging me and I foolishly didn't pack my knee brace;-) After I returned we were still really not energetic at all. So we went shopping:-) We ventured down to Temple Bar and then Grafton Street. Steph managed to find U2's hotel too, so she was happy:-) We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (thanks Joe!), then wandered home.

Today we got up earlier, ate breakfast, then walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral to 'hop-on' the City Tour. Steph and Laura rode about 2 stops before getting off to tour the Guinness Storehouse. I stayed on and toured until we arrived at the Dublin Writers' Museum. It was really quite neat, but not the best laid out museum I've ever seen. Admission included an audioguide, but there was so much information posted on the walls that it took forever just to get through the three rooms of the museum (small but wordy:-) ). I shopped a bit in the gift store, then caught the bus over to Trinity College.

Trinity is cool. I took the student-led tour. It's only 30 minutes or so and costs €10, but includes the Book of Kells entrance fee too. Plus it comes with a really cute tour guide, so it's all worth it;-)

The book of Kells exhibition was very good, but very busy (though less so than it often is so I'm told). They have displays explaining its contrution and significance before you reach the actual book, but you need to jostle around people. See the actual book is much the same. They only display 4 pages from Kells as well as 2 from each the Books of Armagh and Dimma(?). They're in a table/display with a crowd so you need to wait/push there too. The pages are awesome... I do not have the patience for that type of detailed work though. Also cool was the long room upstairs. Apparently all students there can access the library, but as the books are all catalogued by size, they're a bit hard to find;-)

Anyway, I shopped at that gift shop too, caught the rest of the tour back to St. Pat's and met Steph and Laura at the Hostel. We lazed for a while before going out to dinner, then coming back to pack... so I should go. Ta ta!