My friend from California, Hayden, and I went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library. It's a 10€ entry fee, but so worth it. The Book of Kells is a lavishly decorated four volume book of the four Gospels of the Bible. The exhibit shows how much effort went into the text and it is unknown who created it. They do know that there were multiple artists and scribes because of the different styles. It is thought to be written around the year 800. There were so many different resources they used for decorating the pages with such vibrant colors, even roots from trees were used. Some things were familiar and I realized how similiar they were to symbols in Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. I wonder if any famous authors paid a visit to Trinity College for some inspiration. There was an emphasis on the symbol of the peacock having to do with the resurrection of Christ. I couldn't take pictures, but here's an example of it used from the Internet:
There were symbols for words like and or the. I don't know how anyone read this book, but it's beautiful. As you move closer to the Old Library it gets very cold. I'm assuming they do this for preservation. I could take pictures at that point in the exhibit so here are just a few:
The place was giant and absolutely incredible. You cannot go to Dublin without spending some time there.
Saturday morning six of us got up early to get a taxi for around 6:30am to bring us to our Air Coach bus that left for Cork, Ireland at 7am. We slept most of the bus ride, but I woke up when the sun was rising over grass hills and Mumford and Sons was on the stereo- perfection. It finally felt like I was in Ireland. We checked into our bed & breakfast, the Lisadell House, around 10:30am. The couple that runs the B&B was so kind. We were quite literally guests in their home. They showed us pictures of their children and grandchildren and made us a generous Irish breakfast (the one you can actually order in Ireland, not the drink). I ended up having two of them because our French friend, Marine, said she could only have coffee and bread/pastries in the morning- how French of her :). We were only about a two minute walk from the bus stop so we headed out for the Blarney Castle. The entrance fee was around 11€ (student pricing). I read online that the castle looks different from various areas on the estate. Sometimes it looks like it's from a fairytale and sometimes it looks like the set of Game of Thrones. I don't know if the pictures will do it any justice, but here they are:
We thought we were going into the castle through some secret entrance and started walking into a cave. It was NOT an entrance. It kept getting smaller and smaller as we went on and then it just stopped with an opening big enough for two people. I had a cluster phobic moment when we tried to turn around and realized a tour group of almost twenty people had followed us into the cave. We did eventually make it into the castle- the correct way. On the way to the top, we passed through a bunch of old rooms with little stories of what they used to be. Going up was very narrow. We were all wondering how people even got through the doorways, let alone the stairwells, in huge dresses or being overweight.
The legend of the Blarney Stone is that if you kiss it, you'll receive the gift of eloquence, or speaking well. It was interesting to find out all of the well know public figures who had paid a visit there... Kissing the stone is no easy task. You have to grab bars and lower yourself down into a hole that you could easily fall through that goes all the way to the groud. There is a guy that holds you and tells you that you won't fall, but it's very intimidating when you're trying to reach the stone. It's much farther away than it seems.
After we all kissed the stone, we attempted to climb a giant tree. The pictures on Facebook are the after math of numerous attempts to get on the tree branches. We went to the "house" on the estate, but the inside was closed.
There was a lot to explore throughout the estate. We saw a fox and it was giant. I've seen plenty of foxes, but I've seen three since being here and I swore out loud the first time because I was so shocked by its size. We got about 15 feet away from the one here before scaring it away.
On our second day in Cork, we walked around a park and around the city until we happened upon this incredible church:
It's called St. Finn Barre's Cathederal and it's just on a radom street in town, totally out of place.
Incredible.
We got back home to Dublin before 9pm on Sunday. Last night I went to a trip through my university, UCD. we went to a pub called Mary Ploughboy and got a free drink and a free show of traditional Irish music and some Irish step dancing. I'll put a few videos up on Facebook of my time there. When we got back, Hayden and I planned two trips, one to Prague and the other to Amsterdam with Adriana.
Today was Larissa's birthday so we threw her a surprise party. Our friend Daniel was eating ketchup on his popcorn! He also puts it on pizza and chips along with various other snacks. The Brazilians think I'm crazy for drinking milk with my meals, especially with chicken. When I questioned what Daniel was doing to his popcorn he said, some people put butter on it, but he like ketchup much better. I've worked at two movie theaters for about three years total and I've never seen someone do that. I took a picture for proof.
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