27 Before 27: Ireland

After departing Scotland we had just one day at sea before arriving in Dublin, Ireland. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you may be thinking “wasn’t she just in Ireland?” The answer to this question is yes. Not knowing that I was going to be working on the summer voyage which includes a stop in Dublin, I booked a week-long vacation around Ireland with my sister and two friends. This trip occurred following the spring voyage and it was wonderful.

When I arrived in Dublin with Semester at Sea, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see or do since I had just been in town and done most of the “touristy” sites. So here are two “off the beaten path” sites I visited during my recent visit to the Emerald Isle:

-Book of Kells: The Book of Kells, a 9th century illuminated manuscript, is a special exhibit at Trinity College. The Book of Kells is featured alongside the Books of Durrow and Armagh and all are beautiful. The illustrations are very ornate and amazingly detailed.

The Books are set in a museum that explains their significance and you get to see them at the end of the exhibit. Following the Books exhibit, you enter the Long Room which is Trinity’s old library. I have to say, I enjoyed the Long Room more than the Books! The exhibit was very crowded and dark and therefore hard to navigate. The Long Room was just as crowded but brighter and full of ancient books and artifacts. The ambiance was wonderful and I could have stayed there all day! I also saw an employee cleaning some of the books which was pretty neat. He was using a small vacuum to clean each book one by one but said he could not open the books unless his supervisor approved because they were so old and delicate.

Long Room at Trinity College.

Cleaning the books in the Long Room.

Long Room, Trinity College.

-Chester Beatty Library: Chester Beatty was a New Yorker who made his fortune in Colorado mining and then retired and died in Dublin. Mr. Beatty was a collector of manuscripts and ancient books so after his death, his collection was turned into a Museum. This museum is right up my alley – ornately decorated pictures and books from mostly Asia and the Middle East. Everything was beautiful and the museum was wonderfully done. They had a whole floor dedicated to manuscripts for different religions that I especially enjoyed. They had manuscript fragments of books of the Bible from 200 A.D., which completely blew my mind. How could these pieces of paper have survived for so long and then how did Chester Beatty find them?! A-Mazing.

No pictures are allowed inside the Chester Beatty Library so you'll have to check it out for yourself!

Following my week in London, I made my way to Dublin, Ireland, to begin a one-week vacation around the emerald isle. I met my sister Cady and two friends Kacey and Caitlin in Dublin and we began our Contiki tour. Contiki is a tour operator with vacations tailored to 18 to 35 year olds. A few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea of going on vacation on an organized tour but it was very nice to get on the bus every morning and have the day already planned out. Not worrying about where we were going to stay the following night, meals, etc. = a more relaxed vacation!

We had a quick orientation and dinner in Dublin and then it was off to Northern Ireland the following morning. We spent the day learning about The Troubles, conflict that recently occurred in Ireland. We could still feel the tension in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry and it was a very informative, history-based day. We also had the opportunity to visit the Titanic Museum in Belfast, as Belfast was where the Titanic was built, and the Giant’s Causeway.

Cady and I at the Giant's Causeway.

Giant's Causeway.

Day three of the tour took us to Galway, a cutesy town located along the western coast of Ireland. We spent the day exploring Galway and also visited the Aran Islands the following day. The Islands are a short ferry ride from Galway and a total of 800 people live on the three Islands. We visited the island called Inishmore, which is rural and somewhat remote but very beautiful. Cady, Kacey, Caitlin and I, plus a friend named Erin who we met on our tour, took a pony cart ride around the Island and explored Dun Aengus, a ruined fort located on a cliff which reaches heights of 330 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.

Lady, our trusty transportation around the Aran Islands.

Cady and I at the Aran Islands.

Following a few days in Galway, we next traveled to Cork with stops at the Cliffs of Moher and the Blarney Castle. The only disappointment of the trip was the weather on this day; it was so rainy and foggy that we could not see the Cliffs of Moher! The fog was so thick, you could barely see your hand in front of your face! So, I guess this means we’ll have to go back to Ireland and try to see these illusive cliffs!

Me at the Blarney Castle.

After 4 successful kisses on the Blarney Store, we arrived in Cork. Cork is a more industrial city and has a very different feel than the other cities we visited in Ireland. We all decided we quite liked it. The next day we made our way to Kilkenny via Cobh. Cobh was the last port-of-call for the Titanic before she started across the Atlantic and they have a nice museum highlighting this event as well as the mass migration of Irish folks which occured in the 1800’s and 1900’s. Approximately 80 million people around the world have Irish ancestry, due in large part to mass migration that happened because of events like the potato famine.

Our final day of the tour took us back to Dublin where we learned how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness and explored Trinity College. After a delicious Italian dinner (very Irish, right?!) we packed up our new Irish souvenirs and made our way to the airport for the long flight home. Overall, Cady, Caitlin, Kacey and I had a great trip around Ireland. We saw and did SO many things on this tour; I can confidently say that we conquered Ireland!