Dublin, Ireland

Here's how the Slide Show works:

  Click on the thumbnail pics that appear in a row above the enlarged pic (the
  first thumbnail). Click on each of the thumbnails and the enlarged version
  will appear below.

  After you've looked at the 4 thumbnails, click on the right arrow 4 times,
  bringing up 4 new thumbnails and then click on each of the thumbnails
and the enlarged version will appear below.

  Then click on the right arrow 4 times, bringing up 4 new thumbnails and click
on each of the thumbnails and the enlarged version will appear below.
  And so on.........

.

Dublin, Ireland, September 8

We arrived in port at 8am and, of course, it was very overcast with a chance of rain. We had an early breakfast as our excursion, Highlights of Dublin, departed at 8:20. This was primarily a bus tour with a couple of major stops and moderate walking, but we thought it would give us an overview of the city. Since we were staying in port overnight we would have an opportunity to revisit anything we wanted to over the next 1 1/2 days

The first stop was at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, one of the earliest illuminated books found. We had to line up for entry, but our guide had us there early so we were the first group in and saw the history of the various manuscripts and how they were hand printed and decorated. The Book of Kells was actually larger than one would have thought for something completely done by hand somewhere around 800 AD, and it is an Irish national treasure. There are four volumes for the four books of the New Testament and they usually display several pages of illustrations and text at a time in glass display cases. They also had pages from the Book of Durrow on display. After viewing this exhibition, we went upstairs to see the Long Room, the original library with over 200,000 of the oldest books collected over the history of Trinity, since the 1590s. It is an amazing place but, of course, you can't get close to anything. They have an assortment of displays in glass cases which are interesting and the oldest harp in Ireland is also on display. The harp is integral to Irish history and is on the Irish flags and emblems.

Our other stop was at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels", was Dean of St. Patrick's and the church contains relics of St. Patrick. While we were in the Cathedral, they called for a minute of silence and asked everyone to stand still and had a short prayer for world peace and one for the safety of travelers across the world. It was quite moving!

The remainder of our 4 hour tour was on the bus, passing through the streets of Dublin and identifying important buildings and locations. At the end, we drove through Phoenix Park, a huge green area on the edge of the city center which also contains the homes of the US Ambassador and the Irish President, an exact replica of the White House.

We headed back to the ship after deciding not to stay in the city to shop and had lunch and a lazy afternoon. One tour a day works well for us. As we were sitting for dinner and having the sommelier get our wine from the cellar, Daryl recognized something about a couple who were leaving. She ran to confirm their name with Camillo, the maitre d', and found them by the elevator. It was Bob Evans, a longtime friend from business, and his wife, Jean. We had not seen them for probably 8-10 years, as Bob retired quite a while before Daryl. We had both mentioned in our exchange of Christmas cards that we cruised, but never the name of our favored cruise line. We vowed to find some time to catch up in the last few days of the cruise.