Written By: Amy (in purple) and Val (in red)
After a quick breakfast we
hijacked Kerry and popped in the car to make the drive to Dublin. It was snowing hard when we left, but it wasn’t sticking
and the temperature was slowly rising above 0 degrees. But, we are not daunted by any weather that this island
can produce—especially when we can make Kerry drive. It was not
as smooth a drive as the other night, as there was a LOT more traffic, and the
red lights saw us coming.
We arrived at Kilmainham Gaol
shortly after 10 am. It is a cold and dreary place in good weather, and cold
and snow didn’t make it any more attractive.
We had 15 minutes to look at the
bottom floor of the museum before the tour started. This gaol,
(pronounced jail) was built in the
1700’s and was abandoned in 1926, but a group people, some former inmates,
worked to get it established as a Heritage Site, and restored it. Our fast-talking tour guide, Peter, started the tour and
led us to the Catholic Chapel inside the gaol where he skimmed the history of
the gaol.
He left out how much of the history of Ireland was involved with the
gaol, such as that over the 200 years it was opened, there were 5 failed
uprisings, and the rebels were all imprisoned here. But, having been on the tour many times in the last
couple months, I (Amy) was able to fill them all in on what our tour guide
Peter left out. After the last uprising in 1916, the prisoners were
executed so quickly, without trials, or even lawyers, that the country became
outraged and pushed harder than ever for freedom from British rule. Which lead
to the Irish using guerrilla tactics to force the British to grant them Free
State status leading the way to being the Republic Ireland is today.
We left the gaol and drove to St
Stephen’s Park, where we left the car, and then walked to “The Georgian House”,
which showed how people lived in the 1800’s,, but found it closed for repairs. Which was
very upsetting as we had to walk up hill, in the snow, BOTH WAYS, which is all
to say we got lost on the way to this stinking thing and it would have been
nice to know it was closed. So we found a nice
place for lunch and regrouped.
We decided to forge on to
Trinity College and view the Book of Kells, by taxi. This exhibit starts out
with pictures and demonstrations of how the books were made, the inks
used and styles of writing, and large pictures of the designs for the art work,
or “illumination” used. After going through the self guided tour, you are ushered
into the room where the Book of Kells is housed. The room is
very dark, as light is harmful to the
paper and inks, and the four books being shown today are in a glass covered
case at a height easy to lean on to view the books closely, and with very low
lighting shining on the books. The docents flip the pages of the Book of Kells so every
time I go, I see a new part of this mind-blowing text. Then we
went to the last part of the exhibit, which is a long long room, called the
Long Room, (imagine that) full of very very old books, that had been donated
to the college. For those that
are wondering, this is my favorite place on Earth—if only they would let me get
my hands on all those books!
By this time we were all tired,
and decided to call it a day, and go home, but we got a little lost in the car
and drove around in circles first. I had to
get brave and make a right turn down the narrowest alley I’ve ever seen and it
took me a couple of attempts before I felt good enough to do it (that’s my
story and I’m stickin to it!).
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