Dublin (Part II), Drogheda, and Newgrange

Dublin was so nice, that I had to do it twice (plus, thanks to a “Flexi-pack” provided by my International Office, I got to do most of it for free this time)!  The first free thing I did after rolling into Dublin after a three-and-a-half-hour (but free!) bus ride was check out the Book of Kells.  It is a gospel created by Irish monks all the way back in the 8^th century, and is an example of an “illuminated manuscript” (aka: an old book with pretty pictures).  It’s currently housed in the “Old Library” at Trinity College, where you’re able to look at different exhibitions that explain how paper was made and how books were bound and how ink was painstakingly excreted from crushing special rocks coated with ingredients to make different colored dyes (hopefully that won’t be my job when I get out of college).  Now, they don’t allow people to photograph the Book (in fear of its soul being stolen or something like that), but I can provide stock pictures courtesy of good old Wikipedia!  Here’s a page of Latin text in the book:

Notice how the monks got bored from time to time and started drawing pictures within the letters (I should start doing that with essays).  And here’s a pretty picture of Jesus in the book:

I’m going to have a beard like that come No-Shave November.  Anyway, the next free thing I did was go on a Viking bus tour of Dublin, where the guide talked like a Viking and told us to give a “Viking yell” to the “unsuspecting Celts” on the sidewalk (which scared quite a number of old ladies).  But the highlight was when they put air tanks on the bus and we drove straight into the River Liffey (obviously we were able to float once we did so).  So that was interesting.  Then, after gulfing down a meal from this nice restaurant (which was mostly free, but I ate more than the gift card they gave me had on it), I decided to check out the largest ferris wheel in Ireland, the Wheel of Dublin, where you get to see a nice view of the entire city:

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Normally, I would have provided a picture of that nice view of the entire city above.  Unfortunately, my camera decided to hang out on my desk back at the University of Limerick while I was gone.  I could have sworn I placed it in my backpack before I left, but it must have escaped somehow.  Anyway, I promise to all my blog readers out there (all three of you) that I’ll keep a tighter hold over my camera in any possible adventures in the future.  But I can still find stock pictures of whatever I’m talking about!  Like here I am while going for a swim in the Liffey…

Yep, that’s me alright (the toxic water in the Liffey must have given me those washboard abs).  Anyway, after spending a night in a nice hostel (one conveniently located right next to the bus station), I got some free breakfast and hoped on a bus to Drogheda (map: http://bit.ly/diM8sU).  Drogheda is actually the largest town in Ireland with a population of 35,000 people, because every settlement larger than Drogheda is considered a city, not a town.  Anyway, loyal readers of my blog may be interested in Drogheda since it is the closest town to where the Battle of the Boyne was fought between the armies of James II and William III in 1691 (which is reenacted every July).  But I was interested in checking out a Neolithic (New Stone Age) ceremonial cite in nearby County Meath known as Newgrange:

You know that last one is a stock photo since I don’t think I could pull off an aerial shot (I’m tall, but not that tall).  Anyway, Newgrange (map: http://bit.ly/aIbo0U) is a manmade hill with a chamber inside where people 5,000 years ago placed the corpses of loved ones and carved pretty spirals into the rock walls.  For centuries Irish people just thought that it was a normal hill, that is until 1699 when a local farmer in wanted to dig out the hill to flatten his land, and discovered the passage with decorated rocks inside.  The most interesting thing about it is how the entrance to the chamber is lined up directly with the positioning of the sun during the winter solstice, illuminating the chamber for seventeen minutes during that one day of the year:

The winter solstice was important to people in Neolithic times because it was an indicator that the days were going to stop getting shorter and shorter, and the conditions for farming would return shortly (oh, those were the days when that took up the majority of your concern).  There is a similar chamber 4 km northwest of Newgrange called Knowth (map: http://bit.ly/9oA4sG), which seems to have been used more as a burial site since more remains were found there.  If you look at the map, you can see smaller burial mounds surrounding it, and the foundation of a fort that the Normans built on the artificial hill in the 12^th century (possibly the future site of my summer vacation home).

So that was Dublin, Drogheda, and Newgrange.  I’m very excited for the next trip since it features one of the cities I’ve always dreamed of visiting: Derry in Northern Ireland.  I’m going to be spending three days in Derry (along with a night in Galway as well), so I should have a whole lot to write about come next week (sometimes I wish I was Charles Dickens and got paid by the word).