If it weren’t for Sean, yesterday, touring wise, would have rated a B minus: no Guinness Storehouse tour, a so-so lunch and an OK pub “crawl.” With Sean it was, for me, an A-. Today rates a solid A.
A brief recap: tour of Trinity College, the Book of Kells experience, a great food walk with five stops, then chatting and naps plus, for me, a walk over to Christ Church Cathedral and for us all a nice walk and dinner.
The tour of the campus was led by a fourth-year student majoring in a mix of history and political science. He was articulate, humorous and gave a student’s- eye view plus a good dose of history. He even spoke fluent Spanish with the guests from Spain.
It looks to be a rigorous educational institution. A third or so of students are from away. Tuition runs €3,000 for locals and EU students, €10,000 for others. Around 20,000 students with programs in the liberal arts, business, science and engineering.
King Henry VIII (. . . Married six times before . . . ) knocked down the prior Abby, kicking out the monks. His daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, founded Trinity College on the spot in 1592 as a way to consolidate Protestantism rule on the otherwise Catholic island.
Famous graduates include Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, and Bram Stoker (the Dracula guy). There’s a plaque around the corner from our place commemorating Stoker’s place of residence. Interestingly, there are records of him playing sports and other non-academic activities, but no evidence that he ever took an exam at Trinity. That doesn’t stop them from claiming him as a distinguished alum of course.
A highlight of Trinity is the Long Library, home to Trinity’s collection of first-edition copies of all significant books and documents from the United Kingdom and Ireland. They had to raise the roof in the 19th century to house the 17,000 or so books. Right now, the books are being removed, scanned, treated for preservation and stored. The library will then be renovated. If we’d come later in the year it would have been closed.
The other big deal at Trinity is the Book of Kells. According to the book “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” which I read in preparation for this trip, the Book of Kells is an example of many gospels created in Ireland and used to reconvert Europe to Catholicism.
While the Roman Empire was collapsing, back in the 400s AD, some monks fled from the invading hoards of Germanic tribes and found shelter in Ireland. St. Patrick is said to be one of the early monks to make the move (although the historical evidence is shaky). Nonetheless, Irish converts to Christianity created gospels, richly illustrated and made for ease of transportation, and took the Word back to Europe, along with skills like art and even writing.
The Book of Kells (actually created on Ionia, a Scottish island) is one of the most exquisite examples, created circa 800 AD. Four monks, possibly teenagers, are thought to have done the original writing and artwork. It was moved to Trinity in 1661 to escape the carnage created by Cromwell’s invasion.
Trinity’s geology and science building was constructed over a five year period. It’s intricate stone carvings were done by hand by two brothers. No two animal or floral depictions are the same.
Provost George Salmon died in 1904. He’d said that women would be admitted to Trinity over his dead body. At the exact moment of his death the first female Trinity student passed her final exam. Today women students, 60% of the graduating class pose for a picture with Salmon’s statue in their cap and gown.
We finished around 10:30, just in time to walk back across the river for our 11:30 food tour. We found a hot chocolate shop right next to the Spire, which whetted our appetite for the tour.
This food tour, like the ones we’ve done in Bogota and Singapore, was a mix of food information, historical sightseeing between stops and of course food: five stops in all. We did pastry; Irish coffee; chicken, pork and beef stews with Irish bread and stout for me and cider for the girls; ice cream from Dingle; and cheese. Each was tasty and well presented. Great fun and good eats.
Ketty, our guide, is from France but has lived in Ireland for 21 years. She came here for a few weeks, then a few months, met the guy got married and stayed. She’s trained as a food expert and is a storehouse of Irish history and culture.
Ireland suffered the Great Famine during the latter half of the 19th century. The initial problem was a blight that hit the potato crop. But during that period much of the farmland in Ireland was owned by absentee landlords. The British Whig government did not ban food exports during the Famine so that Ireland exported food while its population starved. The population of Ireland dropped from 8 million in 1847 to 4 million by 1900. Over a million died from starvation and more than a million migrated to North America and Australia.
Irish cuisine today is not just beer and potatoes. Like most places there is influence from elsewhere as the result of globalization. The boom economy of the 1980s and 1990s when tech companies moved to Ireland resulted in many high-end French and European restaurants. The tech bubble of 2008 was good for the restaurant scene because it led to the demise of expensive restaurants and created restaurats that focused on value and quality, not just high prices. Today, from what we’ve seen, pub food is still a staple, just like in England. Fish and chips and shepherd’s pie are go-to menu items. But there are plenty of Asian restaurants and other ethnicities everywhere.
The tour passed through the Temple Bar neighborhood, a concentration of pubs and bars and nightlife. It ended 10 minutes from our apartment and we were back by 3 PM.
Judy and Nancy were ready to stretch out for a rest and I wanted to go for more walking. But they chatted in the living room while I tried to figure out why comments are blocked on jonandjudy.com. I went on hold for “a few minutes” that stretched to almost a half hour. I dozed off listening to the on-hold music. They chatted.
I hung up and called back to Go Daddy support. This time the guy took 60 seconds to say, “Tech support will be working on the ticket within an hour.” So, I then went out and they stretched out.
My walk took me to Christ Church Cathedral, the Church of Ireland (Anglican) center for southern Ireland. The original church was founded by Vikings in 1100 or so, was expanded by the Normans and suffered a major collapse in the 1600s. It was finally repaired to its current state in the 1870s. Henry Roe, a whiskey baron, funded the work, spending several hundred thousand’s worth of Euros.He did it at a time when the Guinness family, the beer brewers and his competitors, were funding equal sums to restore nearby St. Patrick’s cathedral. The two cathedrals have been in competition for more than 1200 years.
The cathedrals crypt holds silver service items and a copy of the Magna Carta. Back in the day the crypt housed three working pubs. No tombs for saints here.
Back home, we decided to return to the Temple Bar region and the Temple Bar, which advertises live Irish music and food all day long. It was less than a mile’s walk, so what could go wrong? We took an interesting walk through new streets with interesting shopping and restaurants to get there. We never did find the exact Temple Bar restaurant I’d seen earlier. And the restaurants like it didn’t fit the bill. The clientele in Temple Bar is 30 to 40 years younger than us and the noise level is 30 to 40 decibels higher than what we could stand. So we walked back home and half way there we found a nice place that hit our demographic. We each had a nice Irish stew, beef and root veggies topped by a pie crust. Perfect.
Now it’s time for bed. The girls are yakking and I’m typing. Tomorrow our driver picks us up for the 2.5 hour trip to the Cork region with a stop to see a castle and whatnot on the way. Rain and temps in the 60s are forecast, but what’s new?
