Today I am writing from Dublin, Ireland, during
my one day break from the traveling. The flights here were long and I barely slept, which made for a tired day today. However, I am learning that I LOVE Dublin (and Ireland in general)!! Almost everyone we've met today has been amazingly nice and a few have gone out o
f their way to help us when we looked a bit lost. The city has a great energy, and it's so much fun to explore, even with our cheap hotel map.
The most exciting thing we did today (heads up: I'm about to get nerdy) was go and poke around Trinity College, which is a university right in the heart of Dublin. It was one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen; lots of old
stone buildings and cobbled walkways. In one of their libraries they have an exhibition of The Book of Kells, which are basically extremely old (like 4th and 5th centuries!) bibles and religious texts. They are all done on vellum, with this amazing detailed work and tons of symbolic imagery. Plus, the college did an awesome job putting the exhibit together so that it was easy to understand the significance of each piece.
What really and truly blew my mind about the whole experience was when we were taken upstairs to the second floor of the library where the exhibition was held. Basically the second floor is what they call the "Long Room"; it's a huge storage place for all the ancient texts they're working with. The students and faculty are involved in a HUGE restoration project and are trying to rescue and preserve all of these medieval books and letters. The amazing thing is that they're working with more than 200,000 texts, all stored in one place! So I gaped and wandered and completely fell in love with this library. The books were so old that some of them didn't even look real on the shelves.
However, it was apparently too much for me to handle and I promptly fell asleep on the tour bus this afternoon. Oh well, I guess I can only handle so much excitement at once.
Tomorrow Nicko and I head for Prague! We love and miss everyone back home!
1 comment:
Yeah! Almost there. Sounds like you enjoyed Dublin. I am glad you were able to check in via blog. I was starting to get worried. I am used to talking to you every few hours so this is a little harder than I thought it would be. I have sent you a few texts. Did you get them? Just curious to see how your international plan works you know...internationally! I think you arrive in Prauge today. I am anxious to hear about your new living quarters. Thanks for the update! We love and miss you. Nothing exciting going on here...Tell Nicko to have a safe trip home. Hope to talk to you soon!
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