What we saw in Dublin

OK - this is the end of the Dublin posts :-) I just thought I'd write a bit about what we saw while we were there.

1. The Book of Kells - a very cool illuminated Bible from many many years ago (i.e. 800 AD!!). It's amazing the time and effort the monks took to write and illustrate the Bible when they had to do it all by hand! No pics of this as we weren't allowed to take any :-). But here's a link with pics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells

2. There are lots of cool doors in Dublin - the architecture is amazing! Most of them were very colorful, but I guess I only took a pic of these black ones :-).

3. The Dublin Zoo - I was reluctant to do this b/c we can see the zoo many places, but it was really fun. Animals actually move around when it's not 90 degrees outside! This goat was rather "cheeky" as the English would say - I told Katie to get up next to him so I could take her pic - and the goat tried to nibble on her hair! So this pic is the 2nd time I was asking her to get close to the goat :-) The other pic is of feeding time at the sea lion pen. They were doing the "dog dinner dance" just like our dogs did at home! This is Rusty's only time of day to be so animated, where he races back and forth between the kitchen and the laundry room until he gets his dinner (or gets yelled at to settle down :-) ). The sea lions were truly doing this too! About 10 minutes before feeding time, they got really animated, swimming all over the water area, then getting up on land to look for the zoo keepers. Then they would jump back in the water and swim some more, then back up to see if it was time :-). It was hilarious.

4. Christ Church Cathedral (or Ca-Tee-dral as they say in Dublin :-) ). This was one of my favorite things we saw - it was beautiful! All around the cathedral there were stained glass windows illustrating Bible stories. It was really cool. This one is of Jacob's Ladder and Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac. They also had an older area below that had been excavated called the Crypt. It dates back to the 11th or 12th century and is the oldest structure in Dublin. It was my favorite part of the church, but you can see Katie's opinion of it by this time in the tour :-). We did get to see a mummified cat and rat who got caught in the organ and couldn't get out. She thought that was cool :-).

5. The Guiness factory. Now, I am not much of a beer drinker, so I didn't think we'd be much interested in visiting here. But it is the most popular attraction in Dublin (kind of sad as a general statement, but it's true), and Jason hadn't gotten to see much around Dublin. So we went there after he finished work on Friday. It was very cool! What mostly made it worth the tour was that they give you a free pint of Guiness in the Gravity Bar - which is an all glass room at the very top of their building looking out over the city of Dublin. It was very cool. And Guiness that fresh from the factory is quite good :-).

OK - lest I start to bore you with ALL the details of our trip... that's good for Dublin!
Becca :-)