Sightseeing Dublin, Ireland

Laura and I arrived in Dublin with our trusty Lonely Planet, Discover Ireland guide.  We were jet lagged and sleep deprived after the overnight flight from Toronto. Nonetheless we walked about the O Carrall Street neighbourhood of our Best Western Academy Plus Hotel that first day.  I attended the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland Austism lectures at the Ashling Hotel and then came home to a glorious sleep.
The next day we were veritable troopers walking all over downtown Dublin. It’s truly a walking city.  We got to all the sites that Lonely Planet recommended for a 4 day visit in that one day.  Their ‘tour guides’ had a lot of stopping at pubs and visiting the Guiness and Jamieson Factories.  I admit that in my day if I’d followed their guide on this matter I personally might have taken up residence in Dublin.  I don’t drink anymore but it’s certainly a convivial drinking man’s town.
The fact is, Ireland has a major alcohol problem.  The cost of work safety, health care, and early loss of life due to alcohol as well as it’s contribution to crime is staggering. The great irony is that the church and state only really got interested in addressing their alcohol problem when it was realized that the young were getting into booze so early it was affecting their ability to get good soccer drafts.  Something about stunting one’s growth or ruining one’s ambitions.  There’s no doubt a further contribution of teen age pregnancy , assuming young men are affected in anyway like I was by alcohol.  All the women looked incredibly sexy and their breast got much larger with every pint I consumed.
Without being slowed down by booze we were able to tour Trinity College and the Book of Kells and the Old Library that first day. Then we headed along Dame Avenue to Dublin Castle and City Hall catching a bit of the Temple Bar atmosphere before getting onto Christ Church and the Dublin Wall.  We saw Four Courts as well. We loved St. Stephens Green with the baby swans.  We even made it to the National Museum of Natural History and Archeology.  After that there was still time for Laura and I to visit a Irish Sweater shop where I bought a marvellous blue Irish sweater. Next door to the sweater shop was the Irish Tweed store where I bought an Irish tweed patch vest.  I’d bought Laura a silver and gold celtic bracelet while she’d been buying presents galore all day for her family.  The gift shops at Trinity College, Dublin Collge and the National Museums were the very best places to buy fine Irish gifts. There’s schlock and bric brad everywhere.  We both loaded up with fridge magnets and key chains as well as the post cards.
The next day we were very slowed down. A trip to the chemist got me some ibuprofen. All that exercise had a profoundly negative effect on the feeling in my lower back and feet.  Once I got moving again I was fine. The breakfast at the Best Western Hotel was so attractive as to draw me from bed to shower and down to the waiting eggs and sausage and fruit and coffee.  Once we were moving again the aches left me and we hiked over to the National Gallery where I was just uplifted by the works of the great masters.  We then hiked cross town  to St. Patrick’s Cathedral where we loved the history, architecture, craftsmanship and art. It’s a truly spiritual place of peace and worship.

Then last night we attended Sean O’Casey’s incredible play Shadow of a Gunman at the Abbey Theater, the National Theatre of Ireland which had as a director in it’s day W.B. Yeats.  The play was riveting.  An incredible drama that slowly built then cresce
ndoed to an amazing surprising conclusion.   The acting was truly amazing.  Both Laura and I couldn’t recall another experience like it. And I’m a real theatre goer, one whose seen Maggie Smith and Alec Guiness on stage in London, Lauren Bacall and Jeremy Irons in Manhatten and always having seasons tickets to theatre in Canada. I love Pacific Theatre in Vancouver. But there was nothing like this.
The young Irish Band Script was playing to 80,000 in the park this night so there’d been young people all over town when we’d gone out early in the evening. It was an older crowd at the theatre, at least over 30.  On the streets daily we’re struck by the high density of 25 to 35 year old vibrant Irish young people.
Dinner of cod and chips after the theatre was fabulous.
Yesterday we attended early eucharist in the Lady Chapel at St. Patrick’s Church, attended a meeting at Molesworth Hall, and heard traditional Irish folk music with banjo and guitar at the Old Storehouse in Temple Bar. I ate the most delicious Irish Stew.
We have been enjoying ourselves.  Great weather, sunshine and pleasant spring tempter.  Dublin is certainly a tourist city.  Exciting place to live with all the book stores and music. Everywhere we’ve heard Irish music.  Van Morrison, Donovan, U2 and so many more original artists have come from Ireland.  The Irish tenor is world renown and there’s the Riverdance and all that artistic energy exported to us overseas.  It’s been a joy to be here.  Today we catch a train to Belfast

Book of Kells and Trinity College, Dublin

The Book of Kells was for me the foremost tourist attraction of Dublin. It resides in the Old Library in Trinity College.  After a marvellous Best Western breakfast, Laura and I walked to Trinity College,crossing the Liffey River, to pass from North Dublin into South Dublin.  Enterring the magnificent Trinity College we were surrounded by beautiful young people in gowns with their families.  As a bit of God’s synchronicity foot prints in my life, it was the graduation of Trinity College Medical Students.  It’s hard to believe I was ever so young. Also the innocence and enthusiasm on those young faces was touching to behold. Form a brief moment, I remembered fondly Mom and Dad at my medical school graduation. Maybe  I really once was young.  Maybe I once was as innocent and not nearly so weary as today.
Laura and I loved walking about the grounds, enjoying the old buildings.on this sunny day. We took selfies before the 30 m high Campanile.  Arnold Pomodoro’s sculpture of a Sphere within a Sphere was beautiful before the Berkeley Library.  We’d arrived early enough that the line up for the Books of Kells in the Old Library wasn’t long at all.  The museum was informative explaining the making of the vellum sheets from calf hide and the source of the colouring of the ink. I’ve always loved books and libraries since childhood. The Bible has been a part of my life since early days in Sunday School.  I was moved to learn of that all books, before the printing press, had to be copied by hand. The Celtic monks were the greatest of scribes and artists.  In the museum they had on display palm sized gospels that missionary monks carried with them on their travels through Europe.  Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization best describes those journeys of enlightenment.
The Book of Kells itself was made around 800 AD on the sacred island of Iona.  It was later brought to Kells, County Meath.  The text is based on the Vulgate, the version of the Bible completed by St. Jerome in 384 AD. In the museum I loved the enlarged almost life sized folio page of St. John.  In the illustrated introduction Book of Kells by Bernard Meehan, it states that Pope Gregory the Great is said to have taught that images provided “a living reading of the Lord’s story for those who cannot read”.  Most of the illustration in the Book of Kells is of initial letters.  The Celts as an empire spread in the 3rd and 4th century from the Atlantic to the eastern europe and the Mediterranean collecting artistic styles from all these regions. The Book of Kells embodied the highest imagery of this highly artistic people.  I was truly moved to see the actual book despite the glass and crowd.  I am awed by the devotion and evangelism of these monks.
Later Laura and I would sit in prayer in the Trinity College Chapel.  A Holy Bible was there. opened to a psalm. I read from that Bible realizing how easily I take for granted the gift we have today, The greatest story ever told is so readily available for reading yet I like most take this for granted.
Photography were not allowed in the Book of Kells museum.  Upstairs from the Book of Kells was the Long Room with the most amazing collection of old books, the greatest writing of the age.  Laura felt she’d been there before.It was a library of libraries, a wonderland for book lovers.
Next a stop in the Book of Kells and Trinity College gift store to load up on fridge magnets, post cards and gifts for loved ones back home.  Then after a coffee on campus, Laura and I, armed with our Lonely Planet , Discover Ireland guide book, headed down Dame Street for more sightseeing adventure.

Preparing for Ireland

Ireland has been a place I've wanted to visit for decades. When I lived in London England I hoped to take the trip to Ireland but never had the time or money.  Later I'd love reading my brother's blog and seeing the pictures of the land.

My grandfather comes from Northern Island. We have a hymn book for the choir my grandmother attended when she met him there.  Her family was from Glasgow.  He was Irish born, protestant Irish. That mattered in the North in those days.

In preparation I've read the Lonely Planet for Ireland, 2 text books on Celtic Mythology and Celtic Religion.  "Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race", by  T.W. Rolleston, and the Secret Gospel of Ireland by James Behan and Leo Behan.  With my Master of Divinity along with my Medical Degrees I've taken a keen interest in the spread of Christianity and spirituality in general.

So far in my Christian studies I've visit Israel, Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Cappadoecia and Moscow.  The other major arms of the original Christian spread from the apostles out were by water to Ireland and by land south to Ethiopia.  I've been interested in studying how each arm of the church added to the theology.  I learned in a celtic christianity text that the Celtic Monks added confession and forgiveness to the practice. Baptism had been done once to wash away one's since and if a person sinned again there wasn't a really organized way of dealing with it till the monks brought the ways of monastery to the general population.  

Laura and I loved attending U2 concert here. I've been reading her passages from Yeats in the evening.  

I love the book, "How the Irish Saved Civilization", by Thomas Cahill.  

And of course my mother was keenly enamoured by her Irish roots and we were raised with a respect for all things Irish, except the Catholics.

Now Laura is a product of Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant grandparents so we're both looking forward to worshiping in St. Patrick's Church which has served as the holy Irish cathedral for Catholics and Protestants.  A couple of Canadians will do well to attend.

My course is on Adult Autism at Trinity College. Then is a week of churches, monasteries, museums and landscapes.
I've arranged 4 nights at the Best Western Dublin.  I've used Best Western's 3 star hotels in US, Canada and around the world.  They're fairly standardized with great breakfast. I like the security and cleanliness and free wifi.  I'm not staying all day in the room when I travel so can't say I'm keen on luxury just a good safe rest.  The costs vary but it's been a while since I have wanted to risk less secure accomodation in strange cities than two star hotels. The rating systems seem to work for me.  Of course if I know someone I have an inside track. Alternatively I've found Lonely Planet recommendations excellent.
I've booked a play at the Abbey.  It's about the Troubles, locally written.
I've also booked a Best Western hotel room in Belfast where we're going on the Monday. We're taking the train from Dublin to Belfast where I'm renting a car for the rest of the trip.  I was a bit concerned about riding on the opposite side of the street in Dublin traffic with a stick shift on the wrong side as well. My brother told me the shifting was easy to get used to but backing up had him looking in the wrong direction for traffic with a couple of close calls. I didn't have the courage to rent motorcycles riding on the wrong side of the street. Yet I think if this goes well, it would be fun to motorcycle northern Scotland one day.
I was thankful too,  to talk to poet painter Joyce Goodwin, an Irish native,  about her favourite spiritual places.  
We're going to drive around the north by Silo and down to Galway then back to Dublin , road tripping after a little time spent in my grandfather's northern island village west of Belfast.
I like taking pictures.  I also like the old ruins and monasteries and churches.  I'm not so much on food or entertainment in general when I'm travelling because multi cultural Canada has often got the greatest chefs and entertainers from other countries. What we can't see is the geography, the buildings and the atmosphere. I love to sit outside watching people drinking coffee. Laura likes the same.  We'll just miss Gilbert who will be having fun with Joy  and his furry girlfriend, Haachi.