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the tart with the cart
Dublinners like to give their statues nicknames. this is the unofficial moniker for this particular statue I got up today, got packed and headed for the airport. Ryanair managed to pull an extra £40 off of me b/c i misread their policy for online login, which i could have sworn made no sense. Ends up, it makes sense if you speak British English :P which i should be fluent in by now. aaaaanyway...
I got on the plane, got a pic of Scotland and Ireland from the air, and caught the perfect bus to get where i needed to go. I will say this about Ireland: since landing here, all of the little things have gone right. I haven't had to wait forever to cross a street, or...anything, really. The hostel i'm staying in, Abigail's hostel, is $18 a night. That's a pretty good price in my experience, and it's a nice place. it's clean, i'm using free wi-fi, the whole nine yards. good stuff.
I had two things i wanted to see in Dublin (not that there's not more to see): The Book of Kells and Strongbow's tomb. I was worried that i might have to choose between the two because of my arrival time and the listed closing times of the exhibition in
Trinity College's library and of Christchurch Cathedral. I picked the Book of Kells, but i was torn about it. I went with the Book because it fits my theme of movie-driven vacation events. The Secret of Kells is an Oscar-nominated animated film, featuring the voices of Mad-Eye Moody and others. Strongbow (Richard de Clare) is cool as hell historically, but i picked against him. The book was awesome to see, and it made me appreciate the film better: the animation style is actually an adaptation of the colored illustrations in the book itself! Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in any part of the Exhibition. After the Book (which was made in the 8th century, and has one helluva crazy history), the path directs you to a room called the "Long Hall", in which pictures were still disallowed. Old. Books. Everywhere. it was like stepping back in time to a library centuries ago, and while i'm not the biggest reader, it was still really cool to see. There were busts of famous intellectuals from history, starting with Homer, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It was 8 Euro to get in, but i felt like it was worth it.
After that, i
figured I'd wander over to Christchurch, just to see the building. Ends up, the guy working the desk decided to stay open an extra hour today!! Their closing time is listed as between 5 and 6 p, and it was about 5:15 when i got there! Sooooo...I saw Strongbow's tomb! : ) For those of you who have been following my pics on facebook closely, you'll notice i haven't taken a single pic inside of a church. I didn't even take a picture of Michaelangelo's "Madonna With Child" in Bruges. I made an exception for Strongbow, primarily because his tomb is not a famous work of art, he doesn't belong to the church, and i wasn't interrupting anybody's privacy/sanctity/religious time :P
I headed for a pub for dinner next. The desk guys at the hostel told me to head to this place called Gogarty's, which was an ABSOLUTE madhouse. I went in and ordered dinner and a pint lol I had some kind of chicken casserole, the recipe for which comes from 1780 according to the menu :P It was amazing. It was actually a baby roasted chicken in guinness sauce and veggies, with some broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots
on the side. Do the Irish know me or what?! lol The waiter was a really nice guy, and brought out some Guinness bread and my pint of Harp, an Irish lager, right away. I didn't even get to start on the bread by the time the food got to me. normally i'd like time between the two, but i was by myself and taking my time : ) Dinner was ama-za-zing, and i followed it up with some fancy chocolate cake with rum raisin ice cream. I'm pretty sure that between the pint, the guinness sauce and bread, and the ice cream, i was starting to get a buzz when i walked out of dinner hahaha. I've got pics of all of it, but I left my connector cord for the camera in Aberdeen, so i won't be able to upload pics until i get back!
I bought my train ticket for tomorrow to Kilkenny already, so for the rest of the night i'm going to figure out how to get to my hostel and what to do in Kilkenny!
Also, it's been a serious test of will to not buy every cool looking thing in every
shop. So far, so good!
Adventure Awaits!!
Jordan
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