The Ham Nomads

23 Jun 2014. <IE> Dublin —

Dublin. Woke up in the Clondalkin Park and Ride after a good night's sleep. Got ourselves moving, then caught the tram in to the city. €2.60 each one way - nothing to break the bank!

Our first port of call was the Dublin Tourist Visitor Centre, to pick up a copy of the book "Dublin Pocket Guide" — we've found this series an invaluable help in all parts of Ireland. The other thing we wanted was the new LEAP card for the LUAS (the Dublin light rail and bus system). Guess what — it's only available at the airport. The Visitor Centre folk are rather pinged off at the Transport Authority for this, as they really want (and need) to be able to issue it in the city centre — after all, not everyone comes in via the Dublin Airport. Anyway, we decided that Dublin is sufficiently small for us to do most of our moving about on foot, especially after all the practice we've been having over the past few weeks!

Brian Boru in Long Room

Book Stacks in Long Room

First port of call (as we were only about a block from it) was Trinity College. We decided to do the whole thing, and take a tour of the campus first — we need to let the students earn a little pocket money on the side! David, who took us round, has just finished his last requirements for his Masters in Journalism (although, as he himself said, he hardly looked old enough to have finished first year undergraduate). But, with his wicked sense of humour, we all had a fun tour! We then went to join the queue for the Book of Kells exhibition. There's a very good exhibition on the writing and the history of the Book of Kells before you get to go into the Treasury to view the book itself. This richly illuminated copy of the Vulgate version of the four gospels, originally written in about the 9th century by the monks of Iona, came to Kells in Ireland when Iona was sacked by the vikings after 806AD. It was moved to Dublin for security in 1653 during the Cromwellian period and came to Trinity College in 1661. The book has recently been broken into four parts (the original binding was long gone), roughly according to each of the four gospels, so now two volumes can be exhibited at one time (allowing two double-page spreads to be viewed at once), while the other two volumes are safely secreted away. The Book of Kells was part of Warren's medieval studies, along with the Lindisfarne Gospels, so he was keen to lay his eyes on the actual volumes. Then we went on into the Long Room of the Old Library to look at it and, in it, a display about Brian Boru.

One other thing about Trinity was the gates. There was celebration last week when they were rehung. Apparently, last year, some idiot in his car repeatedly rammed the gates with his car, to the strains of Billy Ray Cyrus and "Achey Breaky Heart" — which was adding insult to injury. They were rehung last week, and French polished over the past couple of days. They look magnificent!

We then left Trinity and walked round the side, down Nassau Street and into Kildare Street to go the the National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology. On the way, we stopped off for lunch at Costa in Nassau Street. The premises must have antedated Costa by about a century, as it had the feel of a men's club! Really pleasant ambience, not your usual Costa Coffee!! Anyway, round the corner into Kildare and we noticed the National Library of Ireland on the way. Popped in, to find they had a Yeats exhibition, with many of his manuscripts, and also documents of the people he interacted with. We found out that he had had a strong interest in the occult, which may explain the morbidity of many of his poems!

Left the NLI, went round to the Museum, only to find it closed for the day! Oh well, tomorrow is another day! Walked on down the road and through both St Stephens Green and the Iveagh Gardens. As the day was warm and sunny, the gardens were very busy.

St Stephen's Green

St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre

We then walked back up through Grafton Street, a major shopping pedestrian area. Looked into the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre at Grafton Street's southern end — a beautiful steel and glass construction, light and airy, with open galleries — and with some of the top-end shops in there! Then we walked northwards, shopping and exploring. Warren's light walking shoes had just about given up the ghost, so we went in to a shop in a side street, "Great Outdoors", and they had just what Warren needed, so we retired the old shoes there and then!

It was now time to think about getting back to the van. On the way, we dropped into the Post Office and finally found some padded bags to do some posting with!! Then back to the LUAS Abbey Street tram stop (where we had arrived this morning) and took the tram back to the Red Cow stop at the Clondalkin Park and Ride. A cup of coffee, some typing of blog entries, then we adjourned to the Clondalkin shopping centre to have tea in the van, and then coffee in Macca's to allow some internet time. Then back to the Park and Ride for the night. This is working really well for us!!

Distance driven — today, 8 miles ( 13 km ); to date, 3,108 miles ( 5,002 km )