Drab, dreary Dublin....

Hello all,

Well, Dublin really wasn't drab and dreary, at least to those of us who have no objection to our castles being, you know, gray. It seems the Irish have a different take on the subject, but that's getting ahead of my story....let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Brandon and I flew to Dublin last Friday to meet up with a few other friends who are studying abroad. We got in late, basically didn't sleep, and got up bright and early the next morning (after a breakfast that did not, sadly, include proper bacon as we had hoped) to explore Dublin. We started off at Trinity College, where we walked through the main gate, saw a line in front of pretty building, and promptly joined the line. In our defense, there was a sign with an arrow saying "Book of Kells" nearby. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the line was not for said book, but for the Irish version of the MCAT's! I mean, I'm sure they're fun and all, but not really how I want to spend my first day in Ireland...

So we awkwardly left the line, followed the sign's directions, and ended up at the exhibit for the Book of Kells. It was pretty cool, I must admit, though the exhibit had lots of useless fluff that just filled space that could have been better filled by more books, but that's just my opinion. The book itself was quite impressive, though the fact that it was in Latin made me sad. I was hoping for Greek. I did manage to fall in love with one of the illuminated pages though that has the XP (pretend those are the Greek letters for chi and ro, not something to do with Windows...), the first two letters of Christ in Greek, taking up a full decorated page. It's really artistic and awesome, and I bought a poster of it so it will hang on my wall at school. Yep. I'm a geek. I'm aware.

Anyway, we left Trinity College and wandered in search of a bank, then wandered through some gardens, then wandered in search of lunch in Temple Bar. We found pasties, which are pastry shells stuffed with assorted meat fillings. Brandon and I were excited because we'd made pasties with Eugene last summer, but I must say, the Irish version is much better. Sorry Eugene. :)

Then the real adventure/nightmare started. Off we went in search of Dublin Castle, hoping against hope that it would be better than Stirling Castle, which had been the worst castle thus far. Naturally, we got a bit lost on our way, which made us end up approaching the castle from the rear rather than the normal visitors' entrance side. We kept checking the map, and we knew exactly which direction we should be going, but it's a fairly flat part of Dublin, and without a hill, the castle couldn't be seen over the other buildings. So we kept walking toward where we thought it was. And then we saw it.

The first part we saw was a blue turret-like structure. As in, sky blue. Then we saw a green crenelated wall. And then some red and yellow walls thrown in for good measure.

Now, you might think this was a joke. That someone had constructed a fake Lego castle to lure unsuspecting tourists the wrong way. But as we got closer, we realized the horrible truth: the Irish had PAINTED THE CASTLE.

After lots of epic picture-taking to document this horror (see the link at the end of this post), we ventured inside to answer the burning question of WHY anyone would do that to a perfectly good gray castle. And the answer, according to the tour guide who managed to maintain a straight face while speaking with us, was that back in the 1980's (of course) that area behind the castle was just so drab, they decided to liven it up a bit with some paint. Irish logic escapes me.

So that was the Amazing Technicolor Castle. For a moment, I thought that Dublin was the worst city ever to exist, but fortunately, it quickly redeemed itself with our next stop: the Chester Beatty Library. Travelers, take note: this is one Dublin stop you MUST NOT MISS. It helps that I'm a religion geek and most of their collection is sacred texts from around the world, but seriously--it's awesome. Go see it.

Two exhibits were really amazing, in my opinion. The first was on Manichaeism, a sect of early Christianity similar to the Gnostics that died out early on. However, the library has a fantastic papyri collection of Manichaean writings, and their exhibit does a great job of giving the history and what we know about the beliefs and traditions of the Mani. Since we're studying the Gnostics in Georgia's class at St. A., Brandon and I rather enjoyed seeing that exhibit. The only problem is that now I want to study it more....

But the second exhibit is the one that I practically had to be dragged out of: sacred books. I wandered in, took a left, and ended up in the Christian section with a 1000 year old Gospel of Matthew in front of me, open to a passage that we'd just been discussing in my class on said gospel. I made my way to the next corner of that exhibit room, which had a similarly old Gospel of Mark, then to the next corner and Luke. By then, I was suitably impressed and ridiculously excited, but it only got better. As I continued around the room, there was a little alcove in the back wall, in which was suspended a tiny fragment of papyrus--it was a manuscript of the Gospel of John, in Greek, from around 200AD. AND I COULD READ IT. It was an absolutely surreal moment for me, seeing that little piece of papyrus that had survived 1800 years and being able to understand the words written on it. It was unbelievable. And it made it very clear to me that I chose the right major and minor. :)

Anyway, the rest of the exhibit was pretty awesome too, though it was hard to drag myself away from that papyrus. There were Greek papyri of Pauline epistles and other early Christian writings, all kinds of Latin Bibles, lots of Torahs, Qur'ans, commentaries, etc. They didn't have much on eastern religions, but they had a few interesting works and some beautiful art. I'll admit, I went back to the Gospels section one more time before leaving the exhibit--I could have stayed forever. I then proceeded to talk myself out of spending several hundred pounds on the various books and collections of articles on Gnosticism in the museum shop...

That's a lot of Dublin for one post. I think the rest may have to wait for another day when I need to procrastinate, and there should be plenty of those this week. Still to come: adventures in neolithic tombs, proof that God has the coolest floors ever, and Brandon returns to his ancestral seaside village...stay tuned!

~L

Pictures:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=191528&id=579896063&l=e624a423af