Day 3: Dublin

The cosmopolitan capital

The main gate at Trinity College, one of the finest universities in the world and the home of the Book of Kells, a 9th-century illuminated Bible. Irish monks meticulously and artistically copied Bibles during the"dark ages" in order to keep literacy alive. Their works and their reputation spread throughout Christian Europe.

Dublin, in some ways, might as well be New York. It's crowded and confusing and cosmopolitan. It's full of famous museums and semi-autonomous neighborhoods. 

The hotel maids, restaurant servers, clerks and various others often come from eastern Europe. They are attracted by better wages than they could earn in their home countries despite the sluggish Irish economy. Luba Irtentvi, a hotel maid from Latvia explains:

Luba's story

Luba Irtentvi came from Latvia to Ireland 

to work as a hotel maid in 2007. Listen to her story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n7Qv8PavWI&feature=youtu.be

There are hardly any skyscrapers, though.

It's dominated by the shops of Grafton Street and the pubs of Temple Bar, the neighborhood south of the River Liffey. with street musicians and salespeople hawking leprechaun toys, there is something of a "Six Flags Over  the Celtic Folk" feel to it. 

Pedestrians and tourists windowshop in the Temple Bar neighborhood.

Locals enjoy a pint at noon at Temple Bar.

But you can't escape the history. The landscape is dotted by monuments to great Irish writers and revolutionaries. And the one tourist attraction EVERYONE sees is the Book of Kells. The book is housed in a special exhibit at Trinity College,  on of europe's premiere universities. The book, an illustrated Bible, was written and illustrated in around the year 800 by local monks who painstakingly hand-copied each verse. Some monks wrote the verses and others illustrated letters as the beginning of the passages in detailed and fanciful colors and pictures. The book isn;t the only work of the Irish monks, but it is the most detailed, best-preserved and the most beautiful. Ireland is sometimes called "the light in the dark ages," as the relatively isolated monks hand-copied books that found their way throughout Europe as wars and plagues ravaged other countries.

The "long room" at Trinity College houses a huge collection of ancient books. The room was the home of the Book of Kells until recently.

An illuminated manuscript reproduction of another 9th-century work
illustrates the art and literature of the Book of Kells.
The Book of Kells is larger and much more ornate,
but visitors are not allowed to take pictures.

From there, our walking tour took us to bookshops along the River Liffey, where the vikings came up to build the city shortly after the monks created the Book of Kells. We wandered the narrow cobblestone streets of Temple Bar, the theater and restaurant district south of the river, to the Grafton Street shopping district to St. Stephen's Green, a very popular and manicured park downtown, across from our hotel.  

A local man feeds the swans at St. Stephens Green near our hotel.

We later met our family friend Catherine Keoghan of Mullingar, a close friend of my brother who met her when she visited my original home town of New Haven, Connecticut. And then I met my colleagues for Armagh. It's getting to be time to get ready for work.