Clonmacnoise & Dublin Revisited

Happy Labor Day, all! Here's the promised account of our last couple days in Ireland.

Friday we drove from Adare back to Dublin, stopping at one last monastic site along the way. Lonely Planet Ireland declares Clonmacnoise to be "the best monastic ruins in Ireland bar none," and the ruins were pretty good. But neither of us thought it beat out Glendalough.

This monastery was founded by St. Kieran in 548 AD and turned into quite a booming town thanks to its location at an important crossroads (a river and a road). It has the ruins of numerous churches that mostly date between 900 and 1300 and some nice high crosses.


Cathedral and Cross of the Scriptures, both c.900 AD.


Ruins of a little church with round tower (c.1160 AD) and the River Shannon in the background.

The main highlights of Clonmacnoise were the pretty setting on the River Shannon and the high crosses, which are preserved in the on-site museum. They were very old and full of great sculptures of biblical scenes as well as the abbot and king who had commissioned them.


The South Cross (c.800 AD); the Cross of the Scriptures (c.900 AD); what looks to me like Jesus knitting but is actually the Last Judgment.


The Crucifixion and what appears to be a cat with a bagpipe!

Also on display in the museum were some early Christian (8th-12th century) grave slabs, which had interesting Celtic designs and inscriptions:



In Dublin we stayed in a nice modern hotel called "Number 31." We found it via a recommendation in our guidebook, a cell phone call from the road as we approached the city, and plugging the address into the sat nav. I sure like modern technology! The hotel had lots of groovy 60s-meets-modern style, the comfiest bed ever, and a glorious shower with one of those huge "rain" shower heads:




Breakfast had more choices than usual, like eggs benedict, and overall it was a fun change from the little B&Bs we stayed in for most of the trip. The downside is that our room was inexplicably hot and incredibly noisy, both from traffic and loud drunk people wandering the streets all night.

Friday night we had dinner at a happening little restaurant called "Gruel," which was loud and crowded but delicious and cheap - worth it!

They have a small menu written on a chalkboard, consisting of traditional Irish food with a modern twist.

I had roasted chicken with potatoes and chorizo and David had bangers and mash with red onions, then we shared a brownie for dessert. Yum!

Saturday was a nice, relaxing day of enjoying Dublin with no itinerary. We started off with a wander around our hotel's neighborhood, which is known for its colorful Georgian doors...



...then we stopped for a coffee break at the main Irish coffee shop chain called Insomnia. I ordered an "Indian Chai Tea" and was delighted to see the barista produce a carton of Oregon Chai! I haven't had that delicious nectar of the gods since I was back in Oregon, so it was a serious treat. Incidentally, David was universally impressed with the coffee in Ireland (even without Bailey's) - said it was second only to France. Impressive!

After that David decided the thing he would most like to do is go back to the comfy bed for an afternoon nap, and the thing I most wanted to do was go look at ancient religious manuscripts, so we happily went our separate ways for a few hours. David had a good and well-deserved rest and I had a great time visiting the Chester Beatty Library, which we hadn't gotten around to last weekend.



The Chester Beatty is located in Dublin Castle and is the collection of an American mining magnate who moved to Ireland for his retirement, then left his treasures to the country when he died. The collection consists primarily of religious manuscripts from all traditions, including beautifully decorated Korans, Buddhist texts from Japan and elsewhere, Hindu and Jain texts, and more.


Above: Epistles of St. Pachomius (350 AD) and a commentary on Tatian (c.500 AD); early medieval manuscript of St. Augustine's City of God.


9th-10th-century Buddhist sacred text from a cave in China

But the best part (for me) were some of the earliest New Testament manuscripts anywhere. I had read about these for school and for ReligionFacts, and it was just the coolest thing to see them in person. They are in Greek and written on papyrus, and the oldest dates from c.150-200 AD! It's a tiny fragment from the Gospel of John, which is pressed between two panes of glass and nicely lit.

There were also full pages from all the Gospels and the book of Acts, which date from c.250 AD. These were an important discovery because they showed that these books were grouped together earlier than previously thought. At right is a portion of the Gospel of Mark.

I attempted to read them, but all I could make out were the words "and" and "to". As a somewhat feeble excuse, ancient Greek was written entirely in capitals and with no spaces or punctuation - so reading directly from a manuscript is a different ball game from what I was taught.

Photos weren't permitted in the exhibition but as you can see I took a couple anyway. But even better is a book I got in the gift shop: a large paperback with glossy pages showing color photos of the entire collection accompanied by detailed descriptions. It is beautiful and something I am so pleased to have, as I don't think you can just buy it from Amazon. I intend to scan some of its pages in soon!


Gardens at Dublin Castle, just outside Chester Beatty Library


Colorful buildings at Dublin Castle

After this exhilarating experience of nerdiness, I still had time to pet a napping cat in the gardens of Dublin Castle, tour and photograph a medieval parish church, stop by Starbucks to get an Ireland mug for my collection (it has James Joyce on it), and buy a couple T-shirts from the United Colours of Benetton (in 8 minutes flat) before meeting David near the park at 3:00. Good times!

We then wandered back through Temple Bar and across the River Liffey to check out the shopping areas and markets, where we had a delicious lunch of hot bagel sandwiches. Another great American connection in Ireland!



There are two more churches on this side of the river: the Catholic cathedral of Dublin (the other two are Protestant) and an old parish church with 800-year-old mummies on display in the crypt. But we were just too tired to walk to either one.

Instead, we finished off the evening with another movie - the romantic comedy "No Reservations" with Catherine Zeta-Jones. It was just OK, but once again was a great way to relax and put our feet up after lots of walking.

Our nightly routine throughout the trip was to watch an episode or two of House every in bed on the laptop, which David had downloaded beforehand. It was awesome. We only recently discovered this show, which stars Hugh Laurie, a British actor who manages to do a fantastic American accent while also limping and being very funny. Impressive! Sadly we ran out of episodes on the last night, but thankfully there was an old CSI we hadn't seen on TV. I don't know where we'd be in all these foreign lands without our regular doses of American television.

After another good breakfast and great shower, we left Dublin Sunday morning for our 11:10 ferry appointment. It all went very smoothly, even though the water was much choppier than last time and it was difficult to walk a straight line on board the ferry.


In line at the Dublin port (called Dun Laoghaire, pronounced "dun leary")

Back on our home island, we still entertained thoughts of staying a night in Wales and we had another long look at the cute town of Betws-y-coed, but the weather was terrible and we just felt like getting home. So we fought the sleepiness off with regular stops and David manfully drove the four or so hours straight home.

David took today off from work (it is Labor Day, after all) and we've had a nice day of unpacking, grocery shopping and sorting through pictures. They are remodeling the flat above us so it's not as quiet as expected, but they start work at a reasonable hour so it's still a huge improvement over the Dublin drunks. I will post more photos of our earlier stops soon!