In yesterdays post, I forgot to mention a very nice thank you surprise I received. Just as I was getting up from a nap yesterday afternoon, there was a knock at the door and when I opened it I found a floral delivery with a very nice thank you note attached for helping someone who booked the cruise this summer and I had helped her get on some tours and info for their trip. Then today, I got another nice surprise—someone else gave me a box of chocolates—the same one’s I had looked at in Salisbury and regretted not buying after we left. I also got a few thank you’s at the M&G—gifts from Canada and a flower pin someone had made. We are cruising with some very sweet people!
Because of tides, we have unusual hours in port today. We arrived in Dublin at 3:30 am and just last week our departure time was moved up an hour to 2:30 pm.
Because of our short time in port I had arranged a Vintage double decker bus for 50 people to go to Trinity College for a student led tour then entering the Trinity College Library to see the Book of Kells and other rare books. We depart the port at 8 am and met our driver Mike and Jeff who will be our wonderful guide for the day. We loop around the east side of town with Jeff giving a wonderful and humorous commentary as we travel along. We arrive at Trinity College to meet our guide for the college tour and much to my surprise we have a Philosophy Professor, Joseph O’Gorman who is in charge of the student led tours. He gave us a wonderful overview and history of the campus before we enter the library just as it opens to view the Book of Kells. They are the 4 gospels, hand written in Latin over 1000 years ago on calf skins by monks and illustrated magnificently. It was awesome seeing them and how beautifully preserved they are. We then head upstairs to the Long Hall which houses over 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, a 15th century harp, and several bust sculptures, again just magnificent.
Jeff then directs us back to our bus and we are off to Killmainham Goal (jail) with a drop off at Guinness Storehouse on the way for anyone wanting to see it instead of the jail. We arrive at the jail to meet with Eleanor who will be our guide at the jail. She leads us around this historic jail and we learn a bit about Irish history and the sadness they endured gaining their independence from Britain. We then head back to Guinness to pick up people who got off there and then back to Grafton Street area to meet up with others who stayed in that area for the short time we have.
When a window tax was imposed in the city, many businesses avoided it by bricking up the windows.
The shortened port time cut into our shopping time here and we end up with 30 minutes to pick up a few things. Dublin definitely deserves a few days to explore but we got a good overview and Jeff was just wonderful telling us about the city as we drove around between places.
We do the Chef’s table tonight and just returned. It was wonderful and I will post about it tomorrow as I am miserable full right now and ready for bed.
The flowers are gorgeous and how very nice of the people you've met to be so generous. That was a classy thing to do but now you're going to have more people that will want to follow you too wherever you go.
ReplyDeleteI love reading the blog and traveling along with you. I've been to Dublin several times and haven't been to any of the places you went to, so this was a new experience for me. I've passed Trinity and Guiness but never stopped.
Continue having a great time. Say hi to all my friends that are with you and I guess you might as well add Tim to the hello. LOL.