More Dublin

Saturday, May 18, 2013

1:17 PM Arizona, 9:17 PM England

Last I wrote was on Saturday May 11^th from Dublin.  I am now in Salisbury, England at the YHA where I will stay for two days.

Recapping the last seven days is a bit like trying to remember a particularly good dream after waking up.  The bits and pieces swim through my mind but it is hard to make a whole of the parts.  So rather than day by day I’ll just hit some highlights.  The first highlight was that my bag was delivered to the hostel the day after we arrived.  The hostel where we stayed was called the “The Times” and our rooms were on the top floor, which mean lugging suitcases up three flights of stairs.  The room had 10 beds with metal baskets underneath to store stuff, one bathroom, and was as mix of men and woman.   We would find out that the baskets sounded like a cat fight when pulled open.  We did not use ours but, it seemed everyone else did especially in the middle of the night.  The only bed left when we arrived was the one right in front of the bathroom.   Some genius put the switch for the light outside the bathroom.  In order to use the bathroom one would turn the switch on then go in and shut the door.  Of course the same was true upon exiting.  Our bed was lit up every time someone would enter or exit.  Sleeping became somewhat of a chore, but I managed without too much grumbling.

The common room/kitchen was on the second floor was a multi-windowed long narrow room.  This was the meeting place for all who were in residence there.  Most of the seats were indented from years of butts sitting in them and quite uncomfortable.  I spend one night in this room talking to Conny until 2 am solving the worlds and ours problems.   Several times I had to ask for the radio or T.V. to be turned down due to their being quite loud.   Many of the students staying here were from Italy attending a local academy to learn English.   Two of them make dinner one night for everyone which included a new group of about twenty.  Managed to get a bowl of pasta which went well with the Spanish wine from Leon I have purchased. 

We went for a tour of Trinity College which is the oldest in Ireland.  I claim to fame is the Book of Kill’s which is held in the old library.  The Book of Kells is celebrated for its lavish decoration. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in Latin based on a Vulgate text, written on vellum (prepared calfskin), in a bold and expert version of the script known as "insular majuscule".  The place of origin of the Book of Kells is generally attributed to the scriptorium of the monastery founded around 561 by St Colum Cille on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland. In 806, following a Viking raid on the island which left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. It must have been close to the year 800 that the Book of Kells was written, although there is no way of knowing if the book was produced wholly at Iona or at Kells, or partially at each location.

Earlier I took the tram service which is called LUAS from one end of Dublin to the other and back.  It was a pleasant relaxing ride.   I got off at one of the stops which allowed me to visit the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail) is one of the largest unoccupied gaols in Europe, it was involved in some of the most heroic and tragic events in Ireland's history and its emergence as a modern nation from 1780s to the 1920s.  When it was built in 1796 and was open over the 128 years it served as a prison, its cells held many of the most famous people involved in the campaign for Irish independence. The British imprisoned and executed the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising here including Padraig Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas Clarke.  Children were sometimes arrested for petty theft and held in the prison, the youngest said to be a seven year-old boy.  Many of the adult prisoners were eventually deported to Australia after their stay.  Men, women and children were imprisoned together, up to 5 in each cell, often with only a single candle for light and heat.  Most of their time was spent in the cold and the dark as each candle had to last the prisoner for two weeks.  At Kilmainham women were held in particularly poor conditions considering it was an age that prided itself on a protective attitude for the 'weaker sex'.   As early as his 1809 report the Inspector had observed that male prisoners were supplied with iron bedsteads while females 'lay on straw on the flags in the cells and common halls.' Fifty years later there was little improvement. The women's section, located in the west wing, remained overcrowded. 

After that uplifting experience it was time to some of the pubs to hear Irish music.  The pubs were packed and the music was great however many players felt the need to stop playing Irish music and bring on American tunes.  There was a lot of hand clapping, fiddle playing and load singing even if you did not know the words to the song.  All in all it was a fun night of Pub Crawling” but was home by 10 pm.  Conny and I again engaged in conversation but did not stay up until 2 am again.

The day before we left Mark wanted to go on a bus day tour out into the country.  It was a very nice tour over the Boggs, Guinness estate, wool cloth manufacturing plan from the 1700’s still in operation, and a nice lunch at a small local pub.  John, out tour guide bus drive kept us entertained with song and story throughout the ride.   We were back in Dublin by 5 pm and had dinner at the hostel after making sure we were packed and ready to go.  We would need to be at the bus stop by 6:45 am.