Dublin - Day 2

Today, we ditched the group entirely and went off on our own.  We wanted to see the older parts of the city.

Our first stop was the Marsh Library.

You had to ring the bell to get in.  Lorna wasn't tall enough to ring the bell.

It opened in 1708, making it the oldest public library in Ireland. It wasn't public in the sense that we think of today.  It was available to the landed gentry who didn't have access to the libraries at Trinity College.  The local Irish were not literate and didn't even speak English (much less Latin or French which most books over the past 300 years were written in).  Eventually, it opened up to other wealthy men, including Bram Stoker - yes, that Bram Stoker).  According to one of the docents, women didn't enter the library until the 20th century.  Now it is open to the public in modern sense, although many of the books are still in Latin, French, and the kind of English where the 's' is written like an 'f.'  While we were visiting, an elderly woman who lived around the corner from the library brought her US American grandson for a visit.  She remarked that this was the first time in her life she ever came to this place.

One of the more interesting aspects of this library are the cages that the librarians would lock students in to when using the rarer books.  This was to prevent theft, of course.  

Over 80% of the books in this library are considered rare, meaning that the Marsh Library has the only known copy.

After the Marsh library, we went next door to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  This is not a Catholic cathedral, in case you are interested.  St. Patrick's is best known for the wonderful choir music that is produced here.

Lorna reflecting on all of the war memorials that line every single wall of the cathedral.

There were two interesting things about this cathedral.  First, we learned that Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver's Travels, was the dean here (I think this is like the head priest - but I'm not sure).  He's also buried right inside the front door.  Second, this is the first cathedral we've been to that had a gift shop inside the church.  A gift shop that was not just selling CDs of the music produced here, but also Irish Whiskey Fudge.  Go figure.

On the recommendation of one of the docents at the Marsh Library, we headed to the Charles Beatty Library.  Originally a private collection, this library houses one of the largest collections Korans in the world.

First, we had lunch at the cafe in the Beatty Library.  It turned out to be a little middle-eastern and a little south asian.

We both had a glass of wine with our lunch.  This turned out to be a fatal mistake.

The exhibit on Eastern religions was absolutely fabulous.  I know very little about the Koran and found the exhibits to be very interesting.  The short of it is, there is way more to this religion and its history than most US Americans are led to believe. I highly encourage anyone in Dublin and interested in world religions to make a stop here.

After this stop, we started to get sleepy.  I mean really sleepy.  We made our way through the gardens of Dublin Castle, located conveniently next to the Beatty Library.

"What do you mean, you're tired.  We're in the middle of a castle, for goodness sakes!"

However, it turned out that Dublin Castle, which is now a government building, was closed to visitors. We did make a pass through the Revenue Museum, mainly because the door was open and I wanted to see if we could sneak in somehow.  Despite the drab sounding name, we learned about the things that the Revenue Department tries to prevent from being smuggled into the country.  This included condoms.  We learned later that condoms were illegal in Ireland until the 1970s.  We also learned that anything and everything had been taxed under British rule.  This included fireplaces, windows, and even dogs.

We tried to make it through the castle museum (which was still open) and it did have a good exhibit about the history of the castle (originally built by the Normans, etc) but we just couldn't do it anymore.

We headed back to our hotel for a nap.  We came out later to do some shopping but learned that even the tourist shops are closed by 7 pm.

So, we went to have Indian for dinner, hung out in the lobby of the hotel (it was the kind of lobby that you could hang out in), and then headed to bed.  The next day was our last and it was going to be a good one.