Ireland Day 5- book of kells & st. pats

Day 5 took our whole group to tour the Trinity College Library in Dublin.

First we walked through sample of The Book of Kells.

It is super colorful and fancy handwritten copies and illustrations of the bible from 800 A.D. !

Here's  an example, although in real life it the gold is shiny and the colors and so bright. 

It is amazing and beautiful! The illustrations were referred to as "illuminations" as the pictures were intended to light the way or guide the reader to a deeper understanding of the text.

photo source

Next we walked through the library, but no photos were allowed in there (or The Book of Kells) so I took this picture of a postcard in the gift shop afterwards. We walked right down along the bottom floor. There were two floors of the oldest books I have ever seen. They had samples along the way to look at and many were town population/census books or journals. You never know who will read your journal after you have gone- millions of people maybe? Very interesting. I would love to just pull out a book or two to see what was inside! They still have people who can get them down for you for research and such. It was really, really cool to see.

Trinity College campus

Adam with our group.

Just a cool hotel. 

Next up was St. Patrick's cathedral. Graceful in it's old age no?

Interesting old flags.

I loved the little seat cushions that came with every seat, and thought that would be nice at our church since we always get the hard chairs...

Flags that went through war.

St. Patrick (387-461 A.D.) who preached of God and performed miracles in Ireland for over 40 years.

the guys- Adam, Bryan and Nate

After walking around the streets for a little bit searching for lunch- Adam decided to ask a "hipster" where a great place to eat was. They pointed us in the direction of a noodle house called Wagamama's. It did not disappoint and we keep thinking one needs to open here!

We went to a few museums- and learned about lots of Irish history.

old door handle 

Afterwards we walked in the Irish sunshine (!) along the streets to shop and see the city.

I took this in a stairwell window while Adam looked in yet another guitar shop. 

It reminded me of Mary Poppins rooftops.

Ireland's wall of fame- one of the only places Adam found anything about U2.

We looked in the Temple Bar section of town- it still maintains it's medieval narrow cobblestone streets and has some cool shops. This section of town is where Handel's Messiah was first performed on April 13, 1742! 

This Temple Bar pub has been there for over 160 years.

This section of town was getting rather crowded since England was playing Ireland in football that night- in fact Bryan and Jen went to the game! It was weird seeing all the trash from drinks on the street. The funny thing is we saw the same thing happen in Prague a few years ago when they were playing Scotland there.

Some parts of the street were SO crowded- everyone waiting for the game to start downing pints. We even saw a fight break out. I'm glad I had my man to lead me through this crowd.

We crossed back and forth over the Liffey River on our walk through town- gorgeous.

We made our way to this giant pole we could see- and later asked one of the tour guides about it. She wasn't very impressed with it- almost embarrassed? I guess he organized some labor unions in Ireland.

It was a pretty interesting pole...

And you can't tell but it was FREEZING that afternoon. It had been so nice all day so we made a quick stop to drop our bags and coats at the hotel. I thought we would be out for a few more minutes- but that turned into hours. Good thing Butler's hot chocolate and chocolate stores were everywhere. Yum! We even brought some of the mix and chocolates home!

Ahh- the Liffey!

medieval church in the middle of Dublin

Irish Mickey in the Disney store.

We ate dinner with Nate and Rajothi that night and got to hear all about Nate's mission in India. It sounded so crazy! I didn't even know they had an LDS mission there. 

Then of course it was more face time with the boys- little cuties!