A Glimpse of Erin

 Erin is the romantic name poets in the nineteenth-century would  use for Ireland. Erin is also the Welsh name for Ireland. 

DAY ONE
I arrived in Dublin, Ireland with Erin late Thursday evening, after spending 6 1/2 hours traveling. The Abbot Guesthouse turned out to be on a street with just about every other B&B hotel in Dublin.Our first stop in Dublin was the James Joyce Centre. While Erin and I had fun imitating Joyce and reading one of his Children books The Cat and the Devil, the centre was not worth its fee. However, our next stop, which was also my favorite place of the day, was the Irish Writer's Museum, and that was definitely worth every penny. Within this museum I saw first editions of The Faerie Queen, Dracula, Ulysses, and works by Charles Maturin (sadly not Melmoth), Oscar Wilde, Yeats, etc. We also went to the Hugh Lane Museum since it was right next door and completely free. This museum was...interesting. Galleries two through five were closed because they were short staffed, but I was able to see two Monet paintings. After these three museums, Erin and I were museum-ed out, so we decided to test our our map skills and head down to Grafton Street & Temple Bar for some shopping. We went to Bewley's Cafe for dinner, which was an excellent dinner that finally wasn't pub food. I had chicken, spinach penne dish with tomato sauce. I got a brownie sundae for dessert and Erin got a slice of apple pie. I tried some of Erin's pie and let me tell you, British apple pie is nothing like American apple pie.

DAYS TWO & THREE:
Day two was spent wandering around some more and getting lost. The first stop was Trinity College, where we took a tour of the campus. We also went to see the Book of Kells, which is the illuminated copy of the four gospel in Latin, and held in the Old Library at Trinity College. It was written over one thousand years ago, in the early 9th century, by the monks of Iona. The book of Kells is absolutely beautiful and definitely worth seeing. Next to the Writer's Museum, this was probably one of my favorite places we visited in Dublin. For lunch, Erin and I did take-away at a bagel shop and ate in St. Stephen's Green, which is a beautiful park. I could have stayed there all day if it hadn't been so windy and cold. In order to get away from the cold, we headed over to the National Museum of Archaeology. The best exhibit there was the Kingship and Sacrifice exhibit, which held a couple of bog bodies. What are bog bodies exactly??? They are bodies found in the bogs in Ireland. These bodies, because they were in the bog, were so well preserved that one could still see their skin. Archaeologists believe that these bodies were either sacrificed or persecuted for their deaths that were neither peaceful nor pretty. The rest of the evening was spent buying presents and eating dinner.   

View from the Gravity Bar

For our last day in Dublin, we met up with two other girls from the ASE programme, Kate and Liz. We spent the day doing a ton of sightseeing. First we saw Oscar Wilde's statue, went to Dublin Castle, and the Guinness Storehouse. The Dublin Castle was much more of a palace than a castle - it even had its own throne room! We also got to go down to see the excavation site where parts of the old Dublin Castle is (from the Viking era). The Guinness Storehouse was neat. I enjoyed the advertisement exhibit with all the different slogans. At the end of the exhibits, we were able to go up to the Gravity Bar and enjoy a pint of Guinness. Points of interest I was also able to see included:

The Irish President's House

St. Patrick's Cathedral
The O'Connell Monument
Phoenix Park
The President of Ireland's House
The Hotel US owns (and the Gilmore Girls stalked while in Ireland)