The Old Library and more of Dublin

Saturday 14th September

We had one last booking at 11:30 to see ‘The Book of Kells’ – well if we’re honest, we weren’t really interested in this book, but you have to go past this exhibition to see the ‘Old Library’ which was our point of interest.

The Book of Kells is written circa 800AD on vellum pages, historically a type of material made from prepared animal skin (for vellum it was usually calfskin) and used for many of the finer high-quality medieval manuscripts. It was done by three anonymous scribes, who are identified in the present day only as Hand A, Hand B, and Hand C. More on this topic here if you are interested.

Unfortunately when we got to the library we discovered that virtually all the books had been removed for cleaning as they were going to restore the library. Being made of wooden panels it is potentially a high fire risk, so the work will also photocopy every book for future posterity. The hall was full of people but I did manage to grab a few shots:-

Yes, the hall does have a huge globe in it and a very old harp (symbol of Ireland) which was covered in engraved leather.

Leaving the exhibition, we still had time on the Hop-on, Hop-off bus, so we toured more of the city. Eventually getting off near the ‘Christ Church Cathedral’

Back behind Temple Bar near the Bank of Ireland was the Molly Malone Statue which tourists have started to rub her breasts for luck. So we had to be patient to get a photo with no-one molesting her.

After this we headed back to Temple Bar for the ‘Old Mill Restaurant’ for a meal. The atmosphere was far more sedate as their was no live band, but the food was plentiful and brilliant – highly recommended (if you’re very hungry). I didn’t have a Guinness as we saved this for another visit to the St John Gogarty afterwards and another very entertaining evening.

No, Vanessa wasn’t drinking half of Guinness – it was an alcohol free cream coffee. I didn’t mess around – straight for the good stuff.

We still had most of tomorrow left as we didn’t need to leave for the airport until 3pm, but to be honest, we had covered everything we planned. So on Sunday, we revisited a few locations again – including the Auld Dubliner for one last drink.

We caught the ‘Airbus’ to the airport, costing 10 Euro each and thereby completing our trip. As we mentioned before, in hindsight if we did the same trip again, we would have done 3 nights in Belfast and 2 in Dublin. But overall a very good week.