Exploring Dublin

This was a fantastic weekend! Instead of traveling to Galway as planned, Beth, Lauren and I thought we needed some R&R after all of our traveling, unpacking and class-taking. Saturday morning we let ourselves sleep in, and then decided to conquer Dublin City- without an agenda.

We hopped on the bus, drove into Dublin City, and walked and walked. I had heard of a good place for lunch, so we wandered around searching for "The Queen of Tarts." On our way there, we realized that we were in the middle of a massive festival! Not only were we lucky enough to be in the city on the first day of their fresh market, but we were in the middle of Tradfest! Tradfest is Dublin's musical festival, where they fill the streets with wonderful Irish music, actors dressed in crazy costumes, and wonderful food stands strewn about the streets.

These two ducks were running around the streets entertaining the locals.

One of them even let me pet his beak... I know, "WHAT THE DUCK?!"

We decided to get our energy from lunch, and THEN search through the festivities,

so when we viewed the red doors of The Queen of Tarts... we knew we had arrived.

Once entering into the charming cafe/restaurant, Heaven had come to Earth. I'll let you figure out why on your own...

Tarts and quiche and scones, oh my!

After munching and crunching on a delicious lunch of frittata, salad, and homemade focaccia, we were ready to trek the festival. We started by browsing around the market for a couple of minutes (Beth and Lauren watched in embarrassment as I attacked the vendors by taking their pictures, fascinated by the 5 pound cookies and shepherd's pies)... we made our way over to a stage flooded by packs of people. The ground began to shake. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was IRISH STEP DANCERS! In perfect unison, a troupe of dancers began knocking their feet on a wooden stage, filling the air with celebration and... well... a lot of knocking. We cheered in awe, and made our way further through the market.

Later that evening we decided to try out a super cool looking restaurant that doubled as a nightclub... they even had a DJ built into the bar! I ordered my first cocktail ever legally... it was a strawberry/lime/rum concoction that was much stronger than anticipated. No worries fam, I sipped it slowly...

slurrrrrrrp...

After dinner, we headed over to the nearby "Palace Nightclub"... a crazy neon lights flashing, music pounding, fog machine spurting nightclub. This was insanely awesome. I'll let the photo speak for itself...

Taking it down a Notch

Today... we decided to take things slow. In need of some cultural stimulation, we made our way to Trinity College so we could get an up-close and personal look at the Book of Kells. This prized Irish possession is a manuscript with Latin text from the 4 Gospels. It's not only beautiful... but extremelyyyyy old. From the year 800?! And I thought my used copy of "Waiting for Godot" was old...

Trinity College... this school hordes the majesty of the Book of Kells.

After I finished my quick museum tour of the book (I don't have a lot of patience for museums... and unfortunately, I'm fairly certain this book doesn't have a cliff-notes to sum up its context) I walked up some stairs and was stunned by a glorious library known as "The Long Room." Words cannot describe the awesome-ness of this place.

Behold...

The Long Room is the central chamber of the Old Library, built in 1732... in 1806 it was re-constructed so more books could fit from ceiling to floor. Raissssse the roof.

Well, that's all for now. And that's A LOT of all. Enjoy the updates :)