Dublin, Ireland

Lovely Trinity College, Dublin. I am staying in one of the dorm rooms here. Pretty small room…reminded me of my dorm room at Southern Oregon College. It is inexpensive but comfortable and right in the middle of town.
Courtyard entering the college. They aren’t mowing the whole area so as to leave flowers for the bees. I found this to be the case in Edinburgh also. Very cool!
One of the more beautiful places at the college is the “Long Room” which houses over 200,000 books. All but a few rows of books have been removed in order to be cleaned as part of a major conservation project. What an amazing task. The library will be empty for 10 years while they clean the books and update the fire prevention methods. Our campus guide said that after the fire at Notre Dame, it made many places that are housing rare books and art pay attention to upgrading their safety methods. The rotating globe – Gaia – is an illuminate artwork by Luke Jerram. At 120 dpi it is a detailed NASA imagery of the Earth surface floating in three dimensions as it might be from space.
Yummy fish and chips and French Martini cocktail which was so good. And, of course, peas!!
After dinner I came across the guy playing the guitar, harmonica and foot petals and creating wonderful Irish music.
No trip to Dublin would be complete without a tour of the huge Guinness facilities.
The Temple Bar area with all of its restaurants and bars is always festive. Quite a few tourists here but the main streets are blocked to cars so it makes it easier to get around.

I can’t say that I have set the world on fire with sightseeing lately. I was here in Ireland a couple of years ago with some friends…Wes and Nadine. Wes had scoped out the whole route and sights and drove! It can be a bit hard to really get out in the wilderness without a car. I did take the train over to Galway (on the West side). In the space of the two hours the trip took I started getting very sick and spent the entire 4 days there in bed! Ugh. The good part of this was that I had a nice room at a small hotel and had a big TV so I could watch the Olympics. My room at Trinity College in Dublin does not have such luxuries. The Paris Olympics that I saw were wonderful. I had also planned to spend 3-4 days in Belfast but there have been some riots and unrest up there and so I did not go. Here are some more street scenes in Dublin. I have my little routine of going for coffee in the morning and catching up on the news.

Great pub – Kennedy’s – just outside of one of the Trinity College exists. Nice atmosphere and they have some nice cocktails. So far I have had sliders both times I have gone. I always think I want a hamburger but then change my mind.
Had my 77th birthday (man that number is hard to believe) here in Dublin and had this very tasty and very strong Irish coffee. Good thing my room wasn’t too far away.
Some street scenes. I’ve been lucky with the weather here. Not super warm – about 69-71 – but no rain.
Main entry to Trinity. Clearly I don’t get too far away from here!!
Another building at the College

On the 20th, I will leave to go to Manchester, England where I start a 3 day tour of Wales which I have never been to. I am letting someone else do the planning!! Then I think I will head over to York, England. It has been a very long time since I was here. Then maybe to Oxford and then London.