Dublin Day 2

I'll start off by talking about last night (it's 7 pm on Friday now). After I checked my email/updated my blog at an internet cafe, I went to Starbucks (so cliche, but so familiar...) and read a book I'd brought with me for like an hour and that was really nice. Then I went back to my hostel to read and wait for Emily, and she arrived at about 9:30 I think. We went out to get her some food, then after she'd eaten that we went to bed. I slept well, and we got up a little after 8. After showers and free breakfast at the hostel, we headed to Trinity College. We went in to the Long Library to see the Book of Kells, which was cool, but the Long Library itself was awesome.

Waiting to go into the Long Library to see the Book of Kells:

A terrible picture of the very beautiful Long Library:

Next we went to a neat little street market, which we went back to later in the day.

Street Market:

After that we went to Dublin Castle for a tour, but the inside of the castle was closed for a government function. We did go in to the chapel and that was cool, but it was too bad that we couldn't go inside.

Next we went to Christchurch Cathedral, where we did an audio tour. It's a cool church, but I thought St. Patrick's was cooler. We met Frances, a girl we know from Edinburgh, at Christchurch, then went to lunch together (we had planned to meet up for lunch). We went to a pizza place called Hell, where we met her sister, who goes to school in Dublin. The pizza was great and it was an interesting place...

Frances and her sister went home after that (they live outside of Dublin), and Emily and I went into a cool covered market, where we saw some tasty looking cupcakes, which reminded me that my tour guide yesterday said that the market we went to this morning had amazing brownies, so we went back to that market. And yes, the brownies were incredible.

Next we went to the Chester Beatty Library. What a cool place! There's a huge collection of Asian art, but the coolest thing was the religious stuff on the second floor. They have the oldest existing copies of some parts of the Bible there, like from 180 AD or so. Really cool.

The Chester Beatty Library:

From there we went to St. Stephen's Green, which is a really nice park. It was really pretty and it was a beautiful day so it was nice to walk through there.

St. Stephen's Green

Then we went to Merrion Square. It's a square of Georgian (I think) townhouses where a lot of famous people lived (Oscar Wilde, Jack Yeats, others). There's a park in the middle which was nice too.

Statue of Oscar Wilde:

Merrion Square is right next to the National Museum (where I went yesterday) and the National Gallery, so we went into the National Gallery for a while. It was a really nice gallery, lots of famous paintings. After the museum we went to evensong at Christchurch Cathedral. It was cool, but I liked the one at St. Patrick's better. We might go to St. Patricks for evensong on Monday if we get back from our tour in time. We walked along the river after the service, taking pictures of the many bridges and enjoying the athmosphere. There are a lot of cool pedestrian streets around here with street performers and vendors and stuff, so it's fun to walk around.

Four Courts:

One of many bridges over the Liffey:

We grabbed dinner and now we're in an internet cafe. I think we're going to go back to our hostel for a bit after this then go out to a pub for some live music and drinks. Tomorrow we're taking a tour to the Cliffs of Moher, and other awesome looking places along the way (here's a link to the itinerary if you're interested http://www.dublintourcompany.com/dtc/tourinfo.jsp?id=1). Hopefully the weather is like it was today. Unfortunately the time changes tonight (goes forward an hour) and hour tour leaves at 7, so we're going to be waking up early...