Dublin part 1

14 Jan 10, Thursday: We flew on Ryanair for the first time. It was better than I thought it was going to be - one of the smoothest flights I'd ever been on. We landed in Dublin at around 9:30 and got to the hotel around 11.


15 Jan 10, Friday:
We decided to do the hop on hop off tour bus for the three days we were going to be in Dublin. We rode around and decided to go the Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels in Latin and was transcribed in AD 806. It was extremely beautiful with it's intricate calligraphy and embellished with pictures of human figures and animals. We could not take pictures, as we found with a lot of sights in Ireland. But alas the internet had a picture of some of the details seen here:

Here are some pictures of Trinity College

We also saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, the largest church founded in AD 450.

Kilmainham Gaol was a prison for 130 years in Dublin. It housed many of those involved in the fight for Irish independence. Even though the prison was dark and grim, it was one of my favorite stops! We didn't even know what it was but decided to get off and explore.

Afterwards, we ate a late lunch at Ryan's, which is the oldest Victorian pub in Dublin.

16 Jan 10, Saturday:
The first thing we did on Saturday was visit the National Library, which opened in 1890, to see the William Butler Yeats exhibit. This library contains almost every book ever published in Ireland.

It took a while to actually find the Dublin Castle (it was harder to find than you could even imagine). But we finally did and it was cool. We got there right before they took down an awesome exhibit outside of the castle. I took a few pictures because the decorative angels were very pretty and intricate.

Last but not least, we visited the Guinness Storehouse. We saw the ingredients for Guinness and got to see how it is brewed. We also got to taste some Guinness straight from the brewery, and it was really good! But once we got to the top of the storehouse and I tried some, not so good. The view was lovely though and we got to see all of Dublin from the Gravity Bar.