Ireland, Part 1 - Dublin and Belfast
Aug. 23rd, 2023 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI was home from Montreal for all of two days - just enough time to unpack, do laundry, and pack - before heading off to to Ireland.
Why Ireland? Well, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) annual conference was back to being in person this year and was in London. So I decided to leverage off that to go to a couple of places I hadn’t been to before. I planned a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland) and the Isle of Man before the conference, as well as a couple of things to do in England after the conference. I used Alaska Air miles for a flight on Aer Lingus to Dublin, where I planned to stay 4 days. I also booked a tour to southwestern Ireland. This entry will cover just the first part - Dublin and my day trip to Belfast.
My flight on Aer Lingus was overnight. Their service was just adequate, but it’s not all that long a flight. Immigration was quick and I got the Dublin Express bus from the airport to the city center. I left my bag at the hotel and set out to explore some. My general approach to dealing with the time zone difference when traveling is to keep myself moving the first day and try to go to bed earlyish. So, after raising my blood caffeine level to an acceptable figure, I spent several hours walking around the Georgian core of Dublin, i.e. the area north of the Liffey. That includes the General Post Office, which was the site of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, which, while unsuccessful, was a key event on the path towards Irish independence. If you look closely, you can still see bullet holes in the building.
Further north, there’s the Ambassador Theatre, the Rotunda and St. George’s Church.
But the single best thing I saw in my meandering that day was this sign in a used book store. (Where I also found a book I needed to read for my book club, though I ended up being too tired to stay up to go to book club via zoom.)
The Irish Famine Memorial is right along the river and would be hard to miss. Like many similar tragedies, this was an event that had as much to do with mismanagement of resources as with the potato crop failure itself.
After a reasonably good night’s sleep, I was ready to tackle the sites south of the river. The highest priority was seeing The Book of Kells at the Old Library at Trinity College. You can get there without a long wait by buying a combined ticket with the tour of Trinity College itself.
The most interesting part of that (in my opinion) had to do with Bram Stoker who: a) managed to head both college debating societies at the same time and b) stole Oscar Wilde’s girlfriend.
You can’t take pictures of the Book of Kells itself, though you can take pictures in the area leading up to it. That includes lots of info about scribal techniques and materials.
Also, the scribes complained about their work a lot. As for the book, it’s kept in a darkish room, in a climate-controlled glass case. You get to see two open pages, changed every 6 weeks. And, for the benefit of people who were as ignorant as I was, Kells ia a place, originally a royal residence and later a monastery. The Book is, essentially, a Bible in Latin, and was probably written on the island of Iona, in Scotland, and moved to protect it from a Viking raid. The calligraphy is exquisite.
You then get to go upstairs to the Old Library. This is currently in the early stages of a renovation, so most of the books have been taken off the shelves to be catalogued and fitted with RFID tags. It’s still architecturally impressive.
It also contains several national treasures, e.g. the original copy of the declaration of the Irish republic.
There are also busts of famous people around the hall. The first four women commemorated there are Mary Wollstonecraft, Augusta Gregory (a folklorist), Rosalind Franklin, and Ada Lovelace.
My other big sightseeing venture (the next, i.e. third, day) was over to Dublin Castle. It was crowded enough that I opted not to pay to go inside the castle itself, so have a photo from the courtyard.
I did, however, go into the Chester Beatty Library, which is a free museum of manuscripts. As you may have figured out if you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, this is very much my sort of thing. There’s a wide assortment of manuscripts, including both eastern and western religious ones. Here, for example, is a Torah scroll.
One of the more interesting exhibits was a temporary one of fragments of Biblical papyri.
I also walked over to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Because they charge 9 euros admission (which you could circumvent by going during a religious service, of course, but my schedule didn’t work for that), you get a picture of the outside only.
I went to two entertainment events in Dublin. The first was An Evening of Irish Folklore and Fairies, which was an enjoyable storytelling show held at a pub. I knew a few of the stories already, but that’s hardly surprising. The other was the 25th Anniversary show of Riverdance, which I thought was a bit longer than it needed to be. But that was probably because I I was still somewhat jet lagged.
I should also note that other than the bookstore visit I mentioned earlier, the only actual shopping I did was a trip to a yarn store, where I bought a couple of skeins of hand-dyed yarn. Remember: yarn bought in other countries is not stash. It’s souvenir.
Finally, I did a day trip to Belfast. There are any number of organized tours one could take, but it looked easy enough to do on my own. I would have preferred the train, but it’s a bit more expensive and (more significantly) less frequent, so I took a bus instead. Which, if you buy your ticket on-line, is actually cheaper than the express bus from the airport had been. The border with Northern Ireland is not particularly well marked, by the way. You do quickly know you’re in a different country as soon as you get the essence of life (namely, coffee) since the Republic of Ireland uses euros and Northern Ireland uses the pound. However, they have their own pound coinage, which isn’t accepted in the rest of the UK.
I figured that the easiest thing to do with my limited time was to take a hop-on hop-off bus tour. (By the way, why does one “hop” on and off these bus tours? I rarely hop in normal life.) It was a short walk from the bus station to the starting point (next to Belfast City Hall.
The most popular tourist attraction in Belfast is the Titanic Museum. The Titanic was built by Harland & Wolff and the museum is adjacent to what had been the offices where it was designed, which are now inside the Titanic Hotel. The museum building is in the shape of a star, representing White Star Lines.
Had I planned better, I’d have realized that tickets would be heavily booked up on a Saturday and bought one in advance. Instead, all that was available was the tour of the outside (which includes the Harland and Wolff offices, as well as the slipway). That was actually very informative and I didn’t really feel like I missed out much. One fun bit of trivia - Harland and Wolff was later acquired by Aristotle Onassis.
Incidentally, there’s a monument to the Titanic on the grounds of Belfast City Hall, which includes a plaque listing the names of everyone who died in the tragedy.
I got back on the bus and continued around the tour route. I’d have liked to stop at Queens University and visit the Ulster Museum and the Botanical Gardens, but it was raining fairly heavily and I didn’t think I had enough time to do it justice. The tour did go around Falls Road and Shankill Road and allow one to see the various political murals (and the walls that still divide Unionist, i.e. Protestant, and Republican, i.e. Catholic, parts of Belfast). For example, here’s the Bobby Sands Mural:
And here is a Unionist anti-IRA mural:
Anyway, it was a fairly quick overview of Belfast, but I thought it was worth the quick trip. It would, however, be better to spend another day or two in Northern Ireland and see sites like the Giant’s Causeway. Some other time.
I took the bus back to Dublin and repacked my luggage to set off on a four day tour to southwestern Ireland the next day. I’ll write about that in a separate post.
Why Ireland? Well, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) annual conference was back to being in person this year and was in London. So I decided to leverage off that to go to a couple of places I hadn’t been to before. I planned a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland) and the Isle of Man before the conference, as well as a couple of things to do in England after the conference. I used Alaska Air miles for a flight on Aer Lingus to Dublin, where I planned to stay 4 days. I also booked a tour to southwestern Ireland. This entry will cover just the first part - Dublin and my day trip to Belfast.
My flight on Aer Lingus was overnight. Their service was just adequate, but it’s not all that long a flight. Immigration was quick and I got the Dublin Express bus from the airport to the city center. I left my bag at the hotel and set out to explore some. My general approach to dealing with the time zone difference when traveling is to keep myself moving the first day and try to go to bed earlyish. So, after raising my blood caffeine level to an acceptable figure, I spent several hours walking around the Georgian core of Dublin, i.e. the area north of the Liffey. That includes the General Post Office, which was the site of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, which, while unsuccessful, was a key event on the path towards Irish independence. If you look closely, you can still see bullet holes in the building.
Further north, there’s the Ambassador Theatre, the Rotunda and St. George’s Church.
But the single best thing I saw in my meandering that day was this sign in a used book store. (Where I also found a book I needed to read for my book club, though I ended up being too tired to stay up to go to book club via zoom.)
The Irish Famine Memorial is right along the river and would be hard to miss. Like many similar tragedies, this was an event that had as much to do with mismanagement of resources as with the potato crop failure itself.
After a reasonably good night’s sleep, I was ready to tackle the sites south of the river. The highest priority was seeing The Book of Kells at the Old Library at Trinity College. You can get there without a long wait by buying a combined ticket with the tour of Trinity College itself.
The most interesting part of that (in my opinion) had to do with Bram Stoker who: a) managed to head both college debating societies at the same time and b) stole Oscar Wilde’s girlfriend.
You can’t take pictures of the Book of Kells itself, though you can take pictures in the area leading up to it. That includes lots of info about scribal techniques and materials.
Also, the scribes complained about their work a lot. As for the book, it’s kept in a darkish room, in a climate-controlled glass case. You get to see two open pages, changed every 6 weeks. And, for the benefit of people who were as ignorant as I was, Kells ia a place, originally a royal residence and later a monastery. The Book is, essentially, a Bible in Latin, and was probably written on the island of Iona, in Scotland, and moved to protect it from a Viking raid. The calligraphy is exquisite.
You then get to go upstairs to the Old Library. This is currently in the early stages of a renovation, so most of the books have been taken off the shelves to be catalogued and fitted with RFID tags. It’s still architecturally impressive.
It also contains several national treasures, e.g. the original copy of the declaration of the Irish republic.
There are also busts of famous people around the hall. The first four women commemorated there are Mary Wollstonecraft, Augusta Gregory (a folklorist), Rosalind Franklin, and Ada Lovelace.
My other big sightseeing venture (the next, i.e. third, day) was over to Dublin Castle. It was crowded enough that I opted not to pay to go inside the castle itself, so have a photo from the courtyard.
I did, however, go into the Chester Beatty Library, which is a free museum of manuscripts. As you may have figured out if you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, this is very much my sort of thing. There’s a wide assortment of manuscripts, including both eastern and western religious ones. Here, for example, is a Torah scroll.
One of the more interesting exhibits was a temporary one of fragments of Biblical papyri.
I also walked over to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Because they charge 9 euros admission (which you could circumvent by going during a religious service, of course, but my schedule didn’t work for that), you get a picture of the outside only.
I went to two entertainment events in Dublin. The first was An Evening of Irish Folklore and Fairies, which was an enjoyable storytelling show held at a pub. I knew a few of the stories already, but that’s hardly surprising. The other was the 25th Anniversary show of Riverdance, which I thought was a bit longer than it needed to be. But that was probably because I I was still somewhat jet lagged.
I should also note that other than the bookstore visit I mentioned earlier, the only actual shopping I did was a trip to a yarn store, where I bought a couple of skeins of hand-dyed yarn. Remember: yarn bought in other countries is not stash. It’s souvenir.
Finally, I did a day trip to Belfast. There are any number of organized tours one could take, but it looked easy enough to do on my own. I would have preferred the train, but it’s a bit more expensive and (more significantly) less frequent, so I took a bus instead. Which, if you buy your ticket on-line, is actually cheaper than the express bus from the airport had been. The border with Northern Ireland is not particularly well marked, by the way. You do quickly know you’re in a different country as soon as you get the essence of life (namely, coffee) since the Republic of Ireland uses euros and Northern Ireland uses the pound. However, they have their own pound coinage, which isn’t accepted in the rest of the UK.
I figured that the easiest thing to do with my limited time was to take a hop-on hop-off bus tour. (By the way, why does one “hop” on and off these bus tours? I rarely hop in normal life.) It was a short walk from the bus station to the starting point (next to Belfast City Hall.
The most popular tourist attraction in Belfast is the Titanic Museum. The Titanic was built by Harland & Wolff and the museum is adjacent to what had been the offices where it was designed, which are now inside the Titanic Hotel. The museum building is in the shape of a star, representing White Star Lines.
Had I planned better, I’d have realized that tickets would be heavily booked up on a Saturday and bought one in advance. Instead, all that was available was the tour of the outside (which includes the Harland and Wolff offices, as well as the slipway). That was actually very informative and I didn’t really feel like I missed out much. One fun bit of trivia - Harland and Wolff was later acquired by Aristotle Onassis.
Incidentally, there’s a monument to the Titanic on the grounds of Belfast City Hall, which includes a plaque listing the names of everyone who died in the tragedy.
I got back on the bus and continued around the tour route. I’d have liked to stop at Queens University and visit the Ulster Museum and the Botanical Gardens, but it was raining fairly heavily and I didn’t think I had enough time to do it justice. The tour did go around Falls Road and Shankill Road and allow one to see the various political murals (and the walls that still divide Unionist, i.e. Protestant, and Republican, i.e. Catholic, parts of Belfast). For example, here’s the Bobby Sands Mural:
And here is a Unionist anti-IRA mural:
Anyway, it was a fairly quick overview of Belfast, but I thought it was worth the quick trip. It would, however, be better to spend another day or two in Northern Ireland and see sites like the Giant’s Causeway. Some other time.
I took the bus back to Dublin and repacked my luggage to set off on a four day tour to southwestern Ireland the next day. I’ll write about that in a separate post.
