Gorgeous Georgians (12/03/08)

Yesterday, after stopping for (really tasty) chicken shish and flatbread at a Turkish counter restaurant near Trinity (where, incidentally, we were the only women not wearing head covering and the only non Turkish speaking customers), Jo and I went over to the travel info center to get bus tickets to Kilkenny for Saturday.

And while we were there we picked up some more brochures about things to do in Dublin. I was excited to discover a museum called 29 Fitzwilliam, which was described in a history brochure as "an exhibition of home life in Dublin 1790-1820." I perked right up at the prospect of not only walking around the Georgian district in Dublin, which I'd planned to do when I went to the National Gallery today, but also seeing something of everyday life in that era at a museum apparently devoted to that very thing. Poor Jo has yawned through enough Jane Austen film adaptations for me to know that she wouldn't mind missing 29 Fitzwilliam, so off I went on my own this morning. Little did I know what an absolutely marvelous time I was about to have!

I walked down to Trinity and then across on Nassau St, along to Clare St to Merrion Square, where there is a lovely little park. I cut through the park and came upon a war memorial that has an eternal flame surrounded by bronzes of four soldiers, all encased in a pyramid of stone and glass. I have to find out more about that one. I really was looking for the Oscar Wilde statue that was installed in the late 1990s, and at a corner of the path I found him. He reclines a big boulder, all ennui and erudition, looking out at two small statues, each atop a four-sided marble base engraved graffiti-style with his witticisms. The two smaller bronze statues are nudes, neither identified, but one of a pregnant-looking woman, kneeling, and the other of a man's torso, with buttocks facing Oscar, as I'm sure pleases him.

Walking through the park, I could take in all the Georgian row homes facing Merrion Square. There appears to be a renaissance of sorts happening in the district, with many of the buildings restored for mostly offices and some homes. I learned it was not uncommon in the 19th century to have a law practice or some other business at street level and a residence above. (I want my office in one of them, please. With a bright blue door, please. And a shiny brass knocker, please.)

The colorfully painted front doors with their brass hardware that are emblematic of Dublin line these streets. The story goes that when the perpetually in-mourning Queen Victoria was to visit Dublin, her advance team gave orders that all the doors be painted black as a sign of respect. Middle class Dubliners who were none too keen on the Brits responded by painting their doors the brightest colors they could find. The doors have stayed colorful ever since.

My next destination was 29 Fitzwilliam St Lower, but I walked past it and saw the numbers getting smaller. So I backtracked and spotted it across the street. I stood with a group of about a dozen boys, maybe 9 or 10 years old, and their teacher, waiting to cross. It became apparent as we waited that the boys and I were bound for the same address. I walked a little ahead of them and down the stairs off the street, to the museum entrance, where a white-haired gentleman in a tweed sportcoat asked if I were with the school group. I said I was not but that I wouldn't mind having the tour with them. He directed me into a small seating area with a screen on one wall and a map of Georgian Dublin on another and asked me to wait there. The boys all took off their coats and hung them on hooks by the entrance and then tumbled into their seats in front of me. Their teacher, a cheerful, middle-aged woman who was lovely with them, kept the conversation on topic and their behavior in check as we all waited for the film to begin. The boys wore grey flannel trousers and blue shirts under grey sweaters and came from St. Christopher's School, if my eavesdropping is reliable.

So we all watched an interesting little film about 29 Fitzwilliam St, which was first owned by a wine merchant named Beatty in 1794 and occupied by himself and his wife and their seven children. The Merrion Square area was being developed as a residential district away from the crowded conditions closer to the Liffey, with mansions for the rich and narrower four-story homes for middle class families like the Beattys. Mr. Beatty, who was perhaps 20 yrs older than his wife, died shortly after moving in, and at least one of the children also died young, but Mrs. Beatty remained in the house until 1806, when she moved out of Dublin. Her husband had not left a will, and so she became dependent on her father-in-law, who died while she was in the house, as well. She left the city for a house owned by her father-in-law near Wexford, where she lived until her 80s. A couple of centuries later, the house eventually came into the possession of the National Museum of Ireland by way of the Electricity Supply Board, the latter organization being the financial supporters of the project to turn it into the museum it is has been since about 1990. The house has been completely restored with furniture and other artifacts from the Beatty family as well as reprentative pieces from the era 1790 to 1820.

So let me tell you about the tour. It was beyond excellent. That's because as the school boys were being lined up to start the tour, the white-haired gentleman gestured for me to wait behind. He instructed me to leave my coat on a hook by the door and to lock up my bag and my camera in a little closet. I grabbed a handful of Kleenex and put a couple of Ricola in my pocket (I'm a public nuisance when I have a cold), and then the gentleman beckoned to me from across the room and introduced me to a woman named Laura. Turns out, the staff had decided to send the boys on through with their teacher and give me my very own docent. I was just twitherpated.

Laura was impeccably groomed, maybe late 60s, bright and outgoing, an expert on the house who said she's been doing tours for 17 years. She and I were on a first-name basis before we even started the tour, and I'd agreed with her optimistic assessment of Barack Obama (and scathing criticism of W) before we were out of the first room of the tour, the scullery. She was full of information but seemed a bit edgy. By the time we were on the third floor, I learned that her youngest son, en route to Australia from Dublin after losing his job here, was being detained in Bangkok due to the recent trouble there, and that contact with him had been sporadic at best. So I'm thinking that the universe put us in the same place at the same time for a reason today, as often happens. I'm a good listener who is fascinated by Georgian life, and she's a good talker who needed the distraction of work and a chance to vent. Truth be told, I think I came out ahead, because I got the tour of a lifetime.

We talked about every single thing in the house, from bottom to top. Ready for some Fun Georgian Facts?

A "hastener" was a tin-lined kitchen shelf, closed on one side and open to the fire on the other, in which the reflective heat kept food warm and hastened the rising of the yeast bread dough.

To keep the rats away from the food, it was stored on a shelf suspended from the middle of the ceiling because while rats will crawl, they won't jump. In the Beatty household, a high window from the housekeeper's bedroom into the pantry allowed her to have a clear view of the rat shelf so that she could catch the day servants if they tried to steal food to take home to their famlies.

Water was a precious commodity in c. 1800 Dublin, so an occasional sitz bath or a scrubdown with powder was what the middle classes considered good hygiene.

A prospective governness would use a needlework sampler as her resume. Her best case scenario was to become a companion to the lady of the house who might arrange a match for her so that when the children no longer needed her, she'd have a marriage to enter into, thus ensuring her economic survival.

Young girls played with dollhouses as a way of learning to manage a household so that their husbands could rely on them. Their middle class or upper class mothers often knew little about the actual running of the household, so the servants and governess might play dollhouse with the girls to teach them.

So many Dubliners at that time had "weak chests" from bronchial infections (go figure) that beds were designed to allow people to sleep sitting up.

A brass rail attached to the wall inside the front door served as a place to hang capes and wraps, as well as to give gentlemen homeowners returning home drunk from the club something to grip so that the servants wouldn't see them keel over.

Break-ins were such a problem in Dublin at the time that front doors had massive iron chain bolts on them. It was considered unsafe to walk outside except in broad daylight because of muggings in which anything of value--like silver shoe buckles--might be stolen. Carriages and chaises used to carry residents around town were often set upon by thieves.

The main floor of the house was most sumptuously decorated, and the curtains were left open so that passersby would be able to look in. The decor got simpler the higher you'd go, until the children's and governness's rooms on the top floor (like the housekeeper's room in the basement) were quite stark and utilitarian.

The scullery maid in the Beatty household earned sixpence a week. She lived in squalor in the medieval district of town and walked to and from work at sun-up and after sundown. She, like most servants, was Catholic, while the Beattys were Protestant. In Dublin at the time, the "haves" were Protestant and the "have-nots" were Catholic.

A system of bell pulls connected each room upstairs to the basement and the servants. Although the bell board was marked with the name of the room associated with the bell, each bell gave off a different tone that allowed the illiterate servants to know where their attention was needed.

Wedgewood china in the late 18th century was not blue and white, as it is today, but tan and black. And Wedgewood produced a pottery hedgehog as a coveted promotional item that ladies would grow their irises in.

The lady of this house had a number of small, porcelain pill boxes, including one that held her "patches," or beauty marks to be worn on social occasions. She also wore eyeglasses, and she had ivory glove stretchers for her new kidskin gloves.

OK, I'll stop now. This is the kind of stuff that gets my heartrate up. Imagine visiting a museum dedicated to something that really floats your boat, and having your very own docent take you through and share tiny little details as well as describe the big picture, and let you get up close and see everything in the place, and not once say, "Don't touch." I kept waiting for her to say, that's enough now, go home. But instead she's say, "Do you have more time? Let me tell you about..."

After a few hours, we made our way back to the basement kitchen where we'd started and said our goodbyes in the (inevitable) cafe and gift shop area. I was looking at books and things before I left, and after a while Laura came out to where I was and recommended some cookbooks. We shook hands and wished each other Happy Christmas again, and she said, "Sleinte," which I've probably misspelled, but is Irish (Gaelic) for goodbye. I hope she hears from her son tonight.

No photos allowed at 29 Fitzwilliam, but I found a website you can check out if you are interested: http://www.esb.ie/main/about_esb/numbertwentynine/about_us/default.htm

So that was just marvelous. I was still buzzing when I walked along Merrion Square and found W.B. Yeats' residence (when he was an elected official after the rebellion), and then I stopped at a basement gallery to look at art I can't afford, and then I was going to go to the National Gallery, but the white-haired gentleman at 29 Fitzwilliam told me it might be closed because a set of stairs had collapsed under a group of teachers not long ago, and, well, there might have been a fatality but he wasn't sure, and in any event, the museums often close down for a few weeks at this time of year. It's hard to know how much of what these Irish gentlemen say is true. I think Jo and I, with our tendency to fabricate that which we do not actually know, fit in quite well here.

After Merrion Square, I stopped at the Kilkenny Shop on Nassau to get a nifty tote bag I'd seen there. Then it was on to Trinity's shop where the last visit was cut short by the closing time announcement. Picked up a few gifties there. And then up Dame St with a detour on George St to get milk and tea for the flat at Dunne's, and then up the hill to meet Jo after school. We went Indian for a late lunch in a restaurant that couldn't have been more than 50 degrees (F) inside but had good naan, and then came home to try to get warm. She's napping. I'm blogging. Life is good.

Have I mentioned that I like Dublin?

St Pat's,a New Flat and the VAT (12/03/08)

The bells at Christ Church Cathedral just rang 6, and across Prince Edward St I sit sipping Theraflu and adding to the small pile of used Kleenex resting on yesterday's edition of the Herald Tribune. The Irish convert wind and peat to energy. If they could find a way to convert what's coming out of my nose into energy, they'd eliminate their reliance on foreign oil altogether. Of course, in order to maintain a steady supply of the resource, they'd have to put me up indefinitely in old buildings without central heating. It's not just castles and cathedrals that fit that description in Dublin, although I wouldn't be opposed to living in either.

Meanwhile, I'm in the flat on Prince Edward St, where we moved all our gear midday yesterday, Tuesday, when Jo's colleague left for home. It's a pleasant little second story flat in a five or so story building, with a kitchen, a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom, each coming off the entry hall. There's a small fireplace (presumably for heat) in the sitting room, and the windows off the sitting room and bedroom have wrought iron balconies overlooking the side street.

If you look down and to the left, you can see Leo Burdock's awning. I know this because last night at about 10:30 we heard a commotion of sirens and opened the window of the sitting room to see three fire trucks, lights a-flashing, in the street below, with a dozen or so firefighters milling about and looking all around, including up at us. No one told us to evacuate, so we watched from the balcony until they all got into their rigs and drove away. Who knows what that was all about?

We're in a Cathedral zone here, with Christ Church across the street and St Patrick's around the corner and down the road. Yesterday I got into St Patrick's for a few hours. I think the film crew I saw there last week (that kept the Cathedral closed to the public) may have been filming the choir for a Christmas special. I could be making that up (Jo and I fill in the blanks when we don't have all the facts; it makes for more interesting narrative in general and keeps us amused.), but the cathedral is known for its choir. In fact (and I'm not making this up), it was at St Patrick's that Handel's first Irish performance of his Messiah took place in 1742, using a combined choir from Christ Church and St Patrick's. It must have been magnificent in the huge vaulted space.

Both cathedrals are Church of Ireland, not Roman Catholic. St Patrick's was built adjacent to the reputed site of a well where St Patrick baptized Christian converts. Some sort of church has been there since the 5th century, with the current cathedral dating back to the 14th century. The tall spires came a few hundred years later. It's an impressive piece of ecclesiastical real estate.

A couple of cheerful Anglican priests (deacons?) sold me a ticket to tour the place, and I passed through a standard issue Irish souvenir gift shop area set up by the baptistry. There were businessy looking people having a meeting up by the choir. I think St Patrick's is a money-making operation in addition to a place of worship. It is also a museum, full of plaques and brasses and and statues and artifacts and, well, just a lot of stuff, all difficult to sort out on the first (and second) walk through. A disconcerting lack of aesthetic consideration. My Virgo self wanted to start rearranging chairs and tidying up relic cases and redirecting the lighting to shadowy corners. (Larry, you'd have a field day.)

Jonathan Swift was a dean at St Patrick's from 1713-1745, and his role is prominently noted in the cathedral, with informational banners, a couple of his death masks, a mold of his skull used for a phrenology reading (after his death, I'm assuming), early editions of his work, and other artifacts.

The cathedral has some beautiful stained glass windows--tall, thin ones, in gorgeous jewel colors, depicting lots of history that I'm not up on.

There are memorials to the war dead of just about every war, including some especially sad ones--like the list of former Dublin boy scouts killed in the first world war, and the marble plaque marking the battle death of the 20 yr old son of someone important enough to warrant that wall space. I may be naive, but it seems to me that instead of putting all that money into memorials after the fact, Christian churches and the people who support them financially need to be putting their efforts into opposing war in the first place. I find no glory in that kind of death, and I find lavish war memorials in churches to be deeply disturbing.

But there was plenty of other stuff to see. Like two big grave slabs from Celtic times, carved with early Christian symbols. Wonderful old brasses in interesting fonts. And a set of church keys dating back to who knows when, all different sizes and degrees of ornateness. And early sheet music for the choir. Oh, and each wooden seat used by the congregation has a different (and old) needlepointed cushion attached to the back of it. There are hundreds of them!

Not surprisingly, there were a few different statues of St Patrick, including a very old Santa-esque one that looked as if it had been exposed to the elements for a long time. It had a little plaque next to it saying the head had been replaced. I wonder what happened to the first head? (The Vikings kept order by putting the heads of their enemies on pikes around the castle wall and tossing them over to rot when it was time for a new batch. Maybe the Vikings took that St Patrick's head? Again, I could be making that up. Actually, I am.)

What do you call the sculptures showing the deceased person in repose? I can't think of the word. But there was one, in marble, of a viscountess or some such ranking person, that was lovely. Her hand came out of a ruffled sleeve and was quite beautiful.

Over the choir hang banners and what look like helmets (hatchments?) of the Order of St Patrick, which I've learned is a chivalric sort of organization that George III established toward the end of the 18th century, for Irish men of distinction. Not so much anymore, but it was considered a high honor at one time. (I wonder, did they run bingo like the Knights of Columbus?)

In a very dark corner of the North Transept is a wooden door with a rectangular hole in it, not looking at all like the famous artifact it is. I like the story: that in 1492, the Earl of Ormond and the Earl of Kildare were having a tiff that kept them from reaching any sort of compromise. Ormond was hiding out in the Chapter House. Kildare cut a hole in the door and reached his hand through it, thus ending the feud. The boys made up and there was peace once again (for a while at least, this being Ireland). So the door is in St. Patrick's today. Again, there is a lot of stuff in this cathedral.

FYI, even when you buy stuff in a church gift shop, they charge the VAT, a tax that adds almost 20% to the cost of whatever you buy. There's a way to get it back for goods you purchase while in Ireland, but the process seems far more complicated than the average tourist can manage without legal counsel. I'm going to have to sort that out before we leave.

Outside, I found a gate unlatched and wandered around a graveyard and along to what I think was a library, or maybe the choir school. In any case, there was good stuff to photograph before leaving the grounds.

The guys in the cassocks said it was OK to take photos, so I'll add some here, later. Now I hear Jo up and about, getting ready for today's bus adventure out to the schools. Time to get this Wednesday going myself. Achoo.

Why It's Called Dublin (12/01/08)

It's not quite 9 a.m. here on Tuesday, and Jo has left for another bus ride out to the 'burbs, where she is supervising student teachers. I'm waiting for my Theraflu to kick in and drinking Beweley's tea in the hotel room. We still have internet access, so I'll take advantage of that before heading out and about today.

Dublin Castle is right down the road from where we are staying. It looks more like a Palladian-style palace than an older castle, but as I've learned here, what a building looks like from the street is often very different from what's actually there. I'd poked around the outside on my own last week and decided to take the tour so I could get inside to the restricted areas. So I handed over some euros and waited in a yellow and white anteroom where the morning sun came through the window onto a marble statue of Sappho and some late 18th c portraits. Our guide, Daniel, showed up and herded the group up the stairs to the main floor.

Daniel was a seasoned docent, even if he's not yet 30. I always like to hear the "housekeeping" rules a tour guide spells out at the beginning, because it gives an idea of where previous tour groups went wrong. Daniel, who moved like a young James Cagney and was dressed like a Dublin mod, emphasized strongly the need for group unity due to the government use of parts of the building. I'm guessing there have been a few security breaches on his watch, and he wanted no more. He also was clear from the start about allowing very little space in his monologue for questions, no doubt understanding the negative impact of those on a tour's timing.

The main building today was built in the 18th c and used as the viceroy's residence when he came from London as the queen's representative. But it started out as a Viking stronghold and later became the location of a castle built over a period of 10 years or so in the early 1200s by King John, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquataine. So while what you see from the ground level is mostly the later Palladian-style State Apartments, there's more history lurking underground and around corners.

The residence itself has had its ups and downs, particularly when the Irish objected more dramatically to British rule. At the time of the 1916 rebellion in Dublin, part of the residence was being used as a hospital, and elsewhere on the grounds was a gaol. A plaque dedicates one room to James Connelly, who was brought to the hospital there to have the gunshot wound to his ankle treated so that he'd later be able to stand to face the firing squad for his rebellion activities. As it turned out, the quality of care was a bit low, and by the time execution day came, the Brits had to tie him in a chair at Kilmainham Gaol, up the road. "Twas thought to make the British look even more callous, at the time," said Daniel, who referred to Connelly as a martyred hero.

The main building, known as the State Apartments, is beautifully restored today and used mainly for state occasions, such as presidential inaugurations every 7 years, meetings of heads of state for the EU, diplomatic receptions, that sort of thing. There are Waterford crystal chandeliers and beautiful Irish woolen carpets. Each room is painted a deep, rich color. The hall called St. Patrick's is painted deep blue lined with heraldic flags, and that's where the president is sworn in. There used to be an Order of St. Patrick that held investitures there, but since the Republic of Ireland was established, the Brit-originating Order of St. Patrick has lost its cachet of honor.

The throne room has a massive gold throne upholstered in red velvet. Daniel explained that King George weighed about 350 pounds and required sturdy seating. But by the time the pleasantly plump but quite short Queen Victoria came along, she objected to the indignity of having to be hoisted up onto the throne. So she had it sent out for 6 inches to be taken off the legs, and she had a little matching footstool made.

Queen Victoria, when she visited Dublin, claimed the King's bed chamber for her own and had Prince Albert stationed in the Queen's bed chamber. Why didn't that fun fact from Daniel surprise me?

A mirror in one room, a gift from France, got lost in the shuffle for a century or so after one crass viceroy thought it would make a swell headboard for his bed. He knocked out the glass and used it as a headboard until it got pitched during some political fracas. It ended up sold at a second hand shop for 5 pounds until someone appraised it and figured out what it really was. It's back in the castle now, as a mirror. (It would have been a little over the top as a headboard, anyway, even in the Graceland school of interior design. There's no accounting for taste.)

In the drawing room, where 18th century young ladies waited to be claimed by gentlemen for dances (or spent the whole evening outside the party), there were lovely painted wooden screens for the girls to stand behind so that their wax-based makeup didn't melt from the fireplace heat. More fun facts.

The tour left the residence and walked across a cobblestone courtyard to an unassuming office building. Inside, we went down stairs to a damp, dank area where the foundation of the Norman castle could be seen, along with the moat that surrounded the castle. (Photo is dark and murky, not unlike the remains of the moat itself.)

The first foundation was laid by Vikings who weren't good stonemasons. They came up with a mortar made of oxblood, straw and ground shell and bone that made a putty that hardened. Ingenious, really.

Daniel told the story of Dublin's name. In Viking days, there was a small lake adjacent to the castle that they used mainly for sewage and called "Dubh Linn" (with the Dubh pronounced Dove). Dubh Linn became Dublin. Lovely, eh?

There's a little church built in 1814 and decorated outside with carved heads of folks like Jonathan Swift, Brian Boru and miscellaneous saints and martyrs. It's butted up against a Norman tower, which is attached to the 18th century building, which is adjacent to a later office building, which is over the original moat...

And of course, this being Ireland, the hard core history tour ends with arrows directing each group to the exit via a lovely cafe and gift shop.

After Dublin Castle I walked a bit and stopped for soup and tea (Oh no. Am I becoming one of those older ladies who does that? Dear Lord.). And then I cut through the old Temple Bar district and out to Wellington Quay, and the down the Liffey to see the Custom House. I crossed over the river at Butt Bridge and walked around the huge building and past the Dublin Brigade Memorial before picking up Abbey St Lower and joining all the pedestrian traffic along there. I love to walk with the residents of a place and see where they go. On Monday afternoon I headed north, stopped at a few little shops and took some photos of interesting things, then crossed back over the Liffey at the Grattan Bridge and headed back to the hotel to meet Jo.

There's a cool bench made to look like a Viking Ship down at the end of Winetavern St. The fore and aft parts of the boat come out of the ground and the benches are in between. Nifty installation on a busy street. Urban art rocks.

I was going to make a few more stops in the afternoon, but I was feeling punky. I met Jo and we went out to find a late lunch. The Moroccan place I'd scouted out turned out not to be open until later, so we cut across Temple Bar district and went back to the Larder. She had a BLT (with Irish bacon, of course; hold the mayo) and I had a warm tuna salad--poached tuna over greens with strips of raw veggies, slices of apples, and a handful of pistachios, in an oregano dressing. We shared a warm mixed berry crumble and a pot of tea. Yum yum. And then we went back to the hotel where I took some Theraflu and a nap.

Jo went out in the evening to meet her colleague and the students for a little event, while I stayed behind and entertained my bronchitis. When Jo came back we considered the available food options, which were limited at that hour (no pizza delivery in Dublin), and she popped around the corner to Burdock's for fish and chips. Burdock's has a wall of fame listing Bono, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Springsteen and a bunch of other celebs among their customers, and there is usually a line out the door for take-away fish and chips. We shared a huge order of fresh cod and chips. Not exactly a light bedtime snack, but oh well. When in Dublin...

And that was Monday. I've been here a week already! I think I could stay a long, long time. I like Dublin. Time to head out and see what Tuesday has to offer.

Book of Kells (11/30/08)

Back in the early 1980s, I saw the Book of Kells exhibit on tour when it came to the Philadelphia Art Museum, thanks to dearest Larry, who got us tickets. Since then, I have remained fascinated by monks and monasteries and illuminated manuscripts and the preservation of scholarly texts against impossible odds. So I knew that when I came to Dublin I would have to visit the Book of Kells again, just because.

Jo and I took a walk down Dame St to Trinity College when we got back from our weekend adventure. We'd been to Clonmacnoise in the morning and returned to Dublin by mid afternoon. Our plan was to get info about tours so that we could coordinate our schedules to see Trinity and the Book of Kells together later in the week. (She's working here, remember. I'm the one on blissful holiday.) But when we reached the entry point for Kells, we saw that there was no queue, and the ticket guy said we had plenty of time before closing, so we decided to go right in. The timing could not have been more perfect.

We could take our time with the exhibit, reading everything up close, before going into the dimly lit chamber where the Book of Kells and the Book of Armagh are displayed. We were able to spend lots of time looking at the manuscripts, with no line looming behind us. It was like having a private viewing. Loved it.

As always, I was amazed by the patient work of the monks who prepared the illuminated manuscripts. It was quite a production, from preparing the vellum from calfskin, to gathering and preparing the plant and insect pigments for the inks, to copying the latin text with sharp quills, to illuminating the text with marvelous--really marvelous--drawings and decorative lettering. And then binding it all up into books. The Book of Kells, comprised of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was created well over 1,000 years ago and preserved despite all threats since then.

This being Ireland, of course, the history of the Book of Kells contains at least one chapter in which Big Bad Oliver Cromwell, that mid-17th century rat bastard and hardcore enemy of Ireland himself, was the reason for the Book to be carried into Dublin for hiding. About a hundred years later, the Bishop of Meath gave the book to Trinity College for keeps.

So seeing it up close and for longer than usual was a little thrill, coming as it did at the end of a day in which we'd also visited Clonmacnoise. I think Jo was monked out. She's a good sport, but it's no secret that I am far more fond of things monastic than Jo is. At least the Trinity library complex was warm. Dublin's cold and damp do not sit well with her. (Her Philadelphia Eagles earmuffs do make quite the fashion statement here.)

After Kells we walked up the stairs to the longroom of the library, where the oldest books in the Trinity collection are stored. The stacks got filled so that by the mid 19th century, architects literally raised the roof and built what is essentially a vaulted second story onto the existing room. To see 200,000 or so books, all quite old and quite valuable, all in one place, is amazing. The room is lined with marble busts that create a sort of pleasing symmetry. There's also a harp that by legend was carried by hero Brian Boru into battle, although that fact is iffy. (In any event, I learned later that he died in that battle, so the harp, had it really been with him, was not exactly his good luck charm.) That was cool to see.

Larry would have liked the special exhibit of botany books on display from the collection. Seed catalogs from the Netherlands, c. 17th century; illustrated flower-growing manuals from long ago; textbooks on propagating seeds. All very interesting. One book had beautiful drawings of tulips that you would have drooled over, Lar. (Hence keeping the books under glass in display cases.)

Paul would have found penmanship resonance in some of the pocket books written in a miniscule hand. :)

My favorite thing in the long room was a book on canon law, written around 1400 (by hand, of course) by Giovanni Calderini. It was a hefty text. On the very last page, the very last line, in Latin, was Explicit hoc totum propina da michi potum. Translation? This is all finished; give me a drink. He'd underlined it in red. I laughed out loud. Giovanni had a good sense of humor. I imagine that if you're spending most of your life copying out manuscripts, you gotta know where to find the chuckles.

We traded euros for some excellent Trinity College swag before the store closed down for the day. Good gifties. I may need to go back.

After, we walked up Grafton toward home, and my ear caught the song being sung by a busker playing his guitar AND a drum contraption he'd rigged up on his back. It was one of my favorite Billy Bragg (old London busker himself) songs, A New England. He followed that with a Van Morrison song. I had to toss some coins into his case for that treat, even if the tempo was a little manic to keep the various instruments playing at the same time.

And the holiday lights across Grafton are just magical.

We stopped for hot drinks at a little French cafe where the snoot factor was, how you say, a tad high for the product being delivered. But they were alternating the first David Grey CD with c. late '70s Bowie, an interesting combination; and there were fresh red carnations on the table, so I got over the fact that the service was as bad as the coffee. We won't bother with that place again.

Sunday was a fine, fine day. I wish I had some chant on my iPod.

What I Like About Dublin (So Far)

So I've got a little bronchitis happening today, and after spending most of the day out and about, I decided to sit tight and stay warm this evening while Jo is off doing an SRU activity with her colleague and the kids. I'm quite the nuisance with my hacking and nose-blowing and Kathleen Turner voice. We've got internet access at the moment, so I'll do some blogging.


Weird thing about blogging: I'm not sure who, if anyone, is reading what I write. I just click and send the words into cyberspace. But it is such fun to write about all our adventures that I keep doing it. (Ellen, you were right--I dig this blogging thing!)


So this morning I did the tour of Dublin Castle--more on that later. And then I stopped for tea at this little place on Dame St that I've been to a few times already. The coffee is abysmal and the tea is just adequate, but I keep going back because I like to walk through the narrow double doors and into the long, narrow shop--it can't be 10' across in the front, and not much more than 15' in back. I like the place. In fact, I like a lot about Dublin. So while I drank tea, I started my list:

Things I Really Like About Dublin

Narrow double shop doors with brass handles, and not being sure whether to push or pull to get in or out.

Creaky wooden floors everywhere you go.

Pureed vegetable soups served steaming hot with dense, grainy brown bread.

All the bridges across the River Liffey, each with a name and a history.

The inevitable presence of some kind of Viking or Norman foundation beneath or behind so many buildings.

The garlands of lights ending in chandelier-style fixtures across Grafton Street, at twilight.

How excited Dubliners seem to be about Barack Obama.

The cheeky humor (humour) of tour guides.

Seeing the decorated Christmas tree in the window of the apartment opposite the hotel room we're in at the moment; actually, all the signs that December is upon us.

Impossibly skinny-legged boys and girls in tight jeans and big boots, with floppy hair and snug wool coats.

Walking down Dame St past all the people waiting for buses in the evening.

Strongly brewed Beweley's tea with milk. Also, the tiny silver teaspoons that come with the tea.

The way guys catching a smoke in doorways invariably respond to my request for directions with, "Right, love, here's what you want to do..."

Mothers pushing their babies in strollers everywhere, fearlessly, and how the babies seem quite content.

All the languages being spoken, everywhere I go.

The concept of stopping in mid-morning and mid-afternoon for tea and a some wonderful carbohydrate snack.

The cobblestone streets in some districts; all the alleyways and medieval street patterns.

How no matter how gruesome the history being presented at a particular site (church, prison, wherever), there's always a lovely little cafe serving tea and something nice at the end of the tour.

How Dubliners can put you in your place with one wry comment and let you know that they'll not be taking you nor anyone else too seriously.

That's a start...

Sunday at Clonmacnoise (11/30/08)

There was frost on the fields, the berms of the road, and the north face of roofs we passed as we left Galway on Sunday morning. In the rural communities toward the center of the country, horses and cows gave off visible fogs of breath. By the time we reached Clonmacnoise, at the river Shannon, we stepped off the coach into a crystal clear blue-sky winter morning, quiet except for the kids' low conversation and the mooing of cows up the hill from where we waited for John to signal us into the site.

Truth be told, I am a travel geek who would choose monasteries, churches, museums and tours of historical sites over just about anything else. With Clonmacnoise, I hit the motherlode.

Imagine being St. Ciaran, who founded Clonmacnoise in the mid 6th century. He was interested in learning, and the route to an education was through the church. So as a young man he set off for the western islands and entered the monastic life, got himself educated, and then returned to central Ireland. He picked a spot not far from the river Shannon, accessible mainly along an esker, the gravel ridges that push up through the boggy lands and have formed, over time, the basis for most roads in the region. He created a place for learning and prayer that was not easily attacked by enemies. Smart monk.

Ciaran himself succumbed to one of the plagues before he reached 35. But Clonmacnoise survived all kind of raids and attacks by the usual suspects in Irish history--the tribal groups, the Vikings, the Normans (such disrespectful hooligans, all of them). Over the centuries, new chapels and schools were built at the site, the nobility of Europe sent their sons to be educated there, and a tradition of creating art as prayer was established. It became a pilgrimage destination and a place where kings and bishops and other Very Important Men visited while alive and were buried when they died. One famous grave today is that of King Rory, who died at the end of the 12th century. Of course, this being Ireland, the Brits swooped down in the mid 1500s and ruined the site. But it managed to survive burning towers and looted coffers and the usual slings and arrows, even into the Victorian age, when the graveyard was a popular picnic ground. (The Victorians were a strange lot.)

So anyway, we visited Clonmacnoise (without a picnic basket) on Sunday. It was another of those sublime experiences I am having in Ireland. I got to see the carved stone crosses--the original ones, moved indoors for preservation, as well as the copies outside. I saw the cathedral where King Rory (last name O'Connor, or am I making that up?) is buried and where the pope before the current one visited in, I think, the '80s. I climbed in and around the various stone chapels and outbuildings still standing, but without their wooden roofs. I read marvelous old and not-so-old tombstones in the frosty-grass graveyard overlooking the Shannon. It was just wonderful.

Jo and I tested the whispering door, designed so that priests could hear confessions of plague-ridden pilgrims outside the church rather than let them in where they'd infect everyone. Very cool architectural design element: One person whispers into the corner of the door frame and the sound is carried very clearly to the opposite side of the door frame. Even if I didn't have the plague, if I was a pilgrim who'd traveled long and far to get to Clonmacnoise, I'd opt for the whispering door feature at confession time.

One cool item in the museum display: a lucite box containing all the bones found during excavation that were used by the monks to practice their carving skills before they took to stone. Their carving on the crosses tells stories and is instructional as well as inspirational, so they'd want to get it right. Imagine carving bone and then stone as your life's work. I suppose that if you got to do it at Clonmacnoise, you'd welcome the opportunity.

Of course, mostly men inhabited Clonmacnoise. The nuns who showed up eventually had their chapel about a half-mile from the main cathedral and smaller church buildings. I'd like to know what kind of scut work they were assigned to do for the boys up the road.

But be that as it may, the monastic site is something to behold. We had the good fortune to be touring it alone on Sunday morning, without the distraction of touristy hoardes. The stillness in the cold air on the last day of November brought the mystical nature of the place into focus. I just loved Clonmacnoise. I'm including some pics so you can see why.

To the Cliffs and Back (Saturday, 11/29/08)

Lahinch is known as a surfing town and a golfer's town, but it was on the beach and not the links that the SRU group gathered on Saturday morning. Climbing out to the big rocks that look out over the rolling waves, Jo and her colleague sat among all the students and held the SRU banner for the group photo. We camp followers joined them for photos next. John and his girlfriend Lydia, along for this weekend adventure, had everyone's cameras dangling from their wrists and did their best to get a group photo onto each camera.

Lydia is someone with a quick smile and a soft voice that blends Irish English with native Slavic accents. She has lived in Ireland for six years but was born in Communist-controlled Latvia and lived in the Soviet Union into her adolescence. She says that she never knew anything other than the Communist culture until then, and when she began to realize that had options, she focused on getting out and making a better life for herself. One gets the sense that she has worked very hard to reach that goal, that she is like the thousands of immigrants to Ireland we see in Dublin, working hard at the lower-paying jobs and getting themselves established in a new country. Their immigrant story is similar to that of anyone leaving one country with the hope of finding something better in another. It's part of my own family history. I am in awe of such courage.

From Lahinch we were aimed out to the Cliffs of Moher by way of Liscannor. The focus of the early morning touring was rocks.

Out on the Dingle Peninsula, as in most regions of Ireland, rocks rule. If a farmer wanted to work the land at all, he'd first have to clear his field of all the rocks. This could take a lifetime, and then his legacy to his children would be a cleared field for them to farm. Sheila explained that it was long believed that the women carried the big rocks to the men, who then built the walls that divided one farm from the next. This view fits with the traditional Irish view of women as inferior to men and so best suited to a life of servitude. I'm guessing that the establishment of Christianity stripped women of the power they enjoyed in ancient Celtic life and relegated them to lesser roles that the male-dominated Catholic Church was only too happy to help them maintain. Old habits die hard, but Ireland does have a woman as president today. But I digress. Sheila said that it may have been more likely that the men, who were physically stronger, lugged the rocks off the fields and that the women directed the construction of walls and dwellings. Makes sense to me.

Toward the Liscannor region, in County Clare, the rock walls change. Where in other parts of Ireland they are made of craggy round rocks, in Liscannor it is flat, relatively smooth rocks that are used for construction. We learned that the stone rose in mountains from the sea a kajillion years ago and contained the fossils of wormlike creatures that give Liscannor stone its distinctive appearance. It was mined in the 19th and early 20th centuries by expert stonecutters who would lift off each shale-like layer and split it laterally to make transportable slates. The stones were loaded on boats called "hookers" and exported out of the region and around the world. Liscannor slate is of varying shades of grey, and with rounded ridges where the worms used to live. It's very nice indeed.

We learned some of this from watching a video about Liscannor in a place called the Rock Shop, where an opportunity to spend euros followed. I picked up a cool-looking fossil and thought I might get it for my 10 yr old niece Emma, but then I imagined her telling me that the fossil was not, in fact from the west of Ireland but from someplace in the South Pacific, because Emma would know such things.

Next it was to the Cliffs of Moher, those 600' high rocky cliffs that face the Atlantic Ocean and turn up in most travelogues about Ireland. Used to be, tourists could climb up, bucking the strong winds and lie on their bellies to look over the the edge. I myself fully intended to do so. But in the past couple of years, somebody made the decision to build in some safety features to protect tourists from their own foolishness. Seems that particularly lightweight tourists, including an unfortunate Japanese traveler, were more susceptible to the wind and went over the edge, literally. Yikes. I have considerably more ballast, but having felt the winds on what others said was a relatively calm day, I can appreciate the walls and walkways they have installed. We climbed all along the cliffs and saw them from different angles. Standing there, looking out at the cliffs and the sea beyond, I had that strangely comforting sense of being one very small piece of a very big mechanism, of being one nanosecond in a timeline stretching before and beyond into infinity. And then it was time for potato leek soup in the visitor center. It is important to maintain perspective, after all.

The road toward Galway had us pass through the Burren, a vast region covered with limestone and little else... or so Oliver Cromwell thought. The Big Bad Meanie Cromwell, collectively loathed by the Irish, would exile his enemies to the Burren to perish. He is quoted as referring to the Burren as a "savage" place with "neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury." But people have made a life there, as evidenced by 5,000 year old manmade structures and more recent real estate across the Burren plateau. I remember a documentary about all the flora and fauna that thrive amid the rocks, but it is cold November now and not much appeared to be growing. Still, there were signs of green. The landscape is lunar, quite dramatic.

We drove through Lisdoonverna, where they have an annual matchmaking festival for the region's farmers, who are widely believed to be inept at entering into marriage, arranged or otherwise. I'm thinking that you'd have to put together a pretty good relocation package to lure a prospective spouse out to the farm in this region. The views are striking, but between the sheep shearing and cow milking and rock arranging, and the rain and sleet, and the mud... yeah, this ain't Green Acres.

So by mid-afternoon we made it to Galway, city of the tribes, where folks speak Irish (Gaelic) and the old part of the city is laid out on the medieval street pattern. We checked into yet another nice hotel, the Forster something or other, and stowed our gear in the room. Jo and I went walking around Galway, making it about as far as Eyre Square before the rain started. (JFK spoke there in 1963.) We ducked into an indoor shopping mall, all decorated for Christmas and full of Irish mall rat kids, and came out the other side onto a cobblestone street that is part of the hub of the city. You can go up one street and down an alley, then back around another street, and another alley, and you're still in the central part of town. There are colorful signs coming off two and three story buildings, all with ground floor businesses.

We were in time for the Saturday street vendors, selling everything from scarves to fish to jewelry to wicca supplies. From a leather worker whose booth was full of Very Nice Stuff, Jo got a beautiful belt embossed with a Gaelic pattern. I found a sweet pair of handmade copper and silver earrings that will be someone's gifty in a few weeks.

The streets were very crowded. There was harp busker, a woman playing the traditional Irish harp, on one corner. Jo spotted Santa in the crowd near her. I could hear Irish being spoken all around, and by young people, which I thought was cool. We window shopped and went in and out of some of the stores. Down one lane, Jo looked into a graveyard outside a church tucked behind two perpendicular rows of other buildings, and her eagle eye spotted that the long-deceased man shared her birthday, January 11th.

We were hungry, so we found McDonough's, a seafood place John had recommended, and ordered chowder for each of us and a kabob of fish with chips to share. While Jo waited for the food, I grabbed us seats at an indoor picnic table where two young woman were tucking in to huge pieces of fried cod (I asked) and a mound of chips. They were chatting with two older women who took the benches across for them. One of the girls was talking about how broke she is and the dilemma she faces as Christmas approaches: "So I says to m'family, you's can have a crap prezzie now or mebbe sometin' better after." The older women assured her that her family could wait. We ate our very tasty chowder and wished we'd ordered the cod like the girls had. The woman next to me heard our American accented English and wished me a nice visit in Galway.

Galway is known for its pubs and "trad," or traditional music, at night, so I was all geared up to go back out after a little rest. But Jo has been hacking, and the bug I've been valiantly fighting for a month now decided to establish itself in my chest during the day, and I was feeling punky. So with much angst about missing Galway's night life, we decided to stay out of the cold and damp and get some rest. Sometimes it just sucks being mature.

So we stayed in and I started the Z-pack I'd gotten from my doc "just in case" (because bronchitis is, for me, one of the ultimate buzz kills). We watched bad Irish TV until we found the movie Some Mothers --the one with Hellen Mirren playing the mother of one of the men who was part of the hunger strike that killed Bobby Sands in Belfast in 1981. I'd seen the film before and was glad to watch it again. It's a good one.

So what did we learn on Saturday? That worms moving across the ocean floor today may end up on someone's foyer floor in a million years. That a hooker along the Irish west coast carries stone and not STDs. That the Burren gives new meaning to the idea of desolation. That farmers in the west of Ireland need wives. That they speak Irish in Galway. And that sun and rain mix in Ireland so that when you look up to the grey sky for a sign of what is to come, as we did along Eyre Square in the afternoon, you're likely to see a rainbow to remind you that something better is coming, and what's here in the moment is quite all right, as well.