Dublin, Ireland

I am now in Dublin as a guest at my husband's Confederation of European Baseball or CEB. We landed on Thursday morning and, as is our custom, we do not sleep but "hit the ground running".

Our hotel is a thirty minute walk into the city centre and it is just what we need to wake up our sleepy bones after the six hour flight. (Faster than normal due to a strong tailwind.) We walk right by Trinity College and decide to walk around the green quads and cobblestone campus and find their library. The main chamber of the Old Library is the Long Room. It contains 200,000 of the Library's oldest books in tall oak bookcases.

The main attraction, however, is decorated The Book of Kells. This is not one but several volumes of lavishly decorated manuscript of the four gospels, in Latin. The Book of Kells was presumably produced in the 9^th century by monks of Iona who labored over the rich calligraphy. Eventually, the manuscript was moved to Trinity College for safekeeping. They did not allow photography of the book, so see their website for further information and to view the artistry and details of the manuscript.Book of Kells
Our next stop was the Temple Bar area and, of course, the one and only Temple Bar. The narrow street is home to many restaurants and night clubs, but the most famous spot was this pub of the same name which was established in 1840. I was surprised that at 1:00 p.m. the bar had live music and many customers enjoying a pint. As you can see from the tap, they offered many fine beers but the overwhelming favorite that day was the black, stout Guinness.

Guinness is the pride and joy of the city of Dublin, so we headed over to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour of the factory. This site includes the original house of Guinness which began brewing here over 200 years ago. We took the tour that explains the brewing of Guinness and the history of Arthur Guinness who in 1759 signed a 9,000 year lease to take over the site.

Even though I have never drank a full beer in my life, I enjoyed the interactive displays where you can smell the ingredients used in the brewing process. At the tasting room, we were given small samples and I learned how to taste on the tip of your tongue, the back of your throat and then swallow and exhale through your nose. I managed one big gulp, and even enjoyed the taste after having viewed the process.

That night it was back to the Temple Bar area to find a pub called Boxty that was recommended to us by a young man who insisted that was where he would go for dinner. My husband had an Irish stew and I had a spicy coddle which is a traditional Dublin dish made with sausages, rashes, potatoes and vegetables.  Mine resembled stew made with chorizo that reminded me of my family's old-time Christmas soup.


With our bellies warm and full, we hiked the 30 minutes back to our hotel. We arrived at 9:00 p.m., having been awake all day and looking forward to a long sleep.