Who?  Yeah, me too.  More about Mr. Beatty in a minute.  Our expectation for our first full day in Dublin was to see Trinity College and its treasures, Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral and the Irish version of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and some other strolling around.  But our day did not go quite as we expected.

We did start at Trinity College and when we were there it was the crazy first day of the new school year (i.e. women’s restroom lines at the student center) as indicated by the “Welcome Freshers” banner.  But why are we here?  Well to see the Book of Kells of course.  You, like me (or perhaps you got a better education than I did), might ask “What is the Book of Kells?”  My first lesson of the day.  The Book of Kells was a very beautiful work of monks before the 9th century consisting of the four Christian gospels written in Latin.  But you can see those anywhere and who knows if they even copied the text correctly.  This work is spectacular as a work of art for the incredible calligraphy and graphics these fellows used to put this document together.  You could just sense the intense level of writers’ cramp that must have gone on to produce this book. 

http://www.tcd.ie/Library/bookofkells/book-of-kells/

So that was an outstanding find.  But before leaving this campus that dates to the late 16th century, we also visited the library, or more specifically the Long Room of the library.  It is over 200 feet long and two stories tall with over 200,000 antique books and other antiquities.  These previously unknown to us discoveries plus a campus tour could have made the day a success on their own.  http://www.tcd.ie/Library/bookofkells/old-library/

But on to Dublin Castle.  Not a big deal because the only part of the original 13th century castle remaining is the Record Tower from 1226.  There is a nice chapel with beautiful organ pipes but that is a mere 197 years old which barely makes the guidebooks for this part of the world.

But a lovely area behind the castle takes us back to Mr. Beatty.  There is his Chester Beatty Library which alone justifies a trip to Dublin.  We spent the entire afternoon visiting this man’s collection.  Collection of what?  To quote the brochure: “Its rich collection of manuscripts, prints, icons, paintings, early printed books and objects d’art from countries across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe dating to 2700 BCE offers visitors a visual feast.  Egyptian papyrus texts, beautifully illuminated copies of the Qur’an, the Bible, medieval and renaissance manuscripts…” and on and on.  For example, he has pages of the oldest found versions of the Christian Bible.  We arrived after lunch and got kicked out at closing time.

Here is the kicker for me.  This man was an American.  Born in New York in 1875, educated as a mining engineer at Columbia, worked the mines in Colorado for five years and became a millionaire there, spent most of his career in England beginning around 1911 and then moved to Dublin in 1950.  He collected these things all of his life and the volume of fascinating items is incredulous.  Ignorant me never heard of him until today.  He gave it all to the Irish people when he died.

Put the Chester Beatty Library on your bucket list.  www.cbl.ie

After spending a quiet Friday in Adare, we headed to the Cliffs of Moher with an intermediate stop at the Bunratty Castle on the way and a late lunch stop in Ennistimon on our return.  It was the nicest weather day of our time in Ireland with predominately blue sky for much of the day and no precipitation.

Bunratty Castle, dating to the early 15th century, was worth the visit as it does not occupy much horizontal space but has a lot going on vertically with many small rooms and the classic very narrow enclosed spiral staircases.  Unfortunately (at least for the way we like to visit sites) it is also attached to the Bunratty Folk Park so it has an admission fee that is about two and a half times the normal fee and, worst of all, no senior rate at age 60 or 62 which all the publicly owned sites do have.

The Cliffs of Moher speaks for itself.  Dating to about the early 3,200,000th century BCE, it is Ireland's most visited natural attraction with a magical vista that is viewed from 700 feet above the ocean.  Of course it is very windy as you can see in the pictures (I promised Konnie that flying hair disclaimer) but the views are spectacular.  We are happy that we took the trip to that part of the country because it is the only area so far where we saw a lot of the geography book Irish landscape that we were expecting to see more often than we have.

Off to Dublin on Sunday for our last stop as we wrap up twenty three days in the British Isles on Thursday.

I have done about 75 posts since I started blogging about my travel fifteen months ago and I have mentioned a lot of restaurants we have found and like.  But this post is dedicated to one in Adare, County Limerick, Ireland.  I grew up in a town of about 2,000 people in Indiana and know that towns that size, with tourism or not, are not typically home to fine dining establishments.

On our first night in Adare we checked out all of the restaurants here and Konnie picked The White Sage Restaurant.  That was a great decision.  Those who read this blog know we do not hesitate to be repeat visitors to restaurants that we like.  White Sage is outstanding and we ate there all three nights we were in Adare.  With Tony Schwarz directing the food operation and Bobbie Schwarz running the front of the house at this intimate spot, the food and service don’t get any better than this place.  The menu changes depending what is available by season so it doesn’t make sense to write about what we had to eat there.  Everything was outstanding.  It is not Irish but more Continental in theme.

If you find yourself in this part of the world you will do yourself a favor by eating here.  Outstanding food and reasonably priced given the quality.

www.whitesagerestaurant.com

On Thursday morning we left our wonderful digs at Mount Juliet in one of Ireland’s Thomastowns (there are at least two we have been to already) and headed to Adare in the County Limerick.  Our stops during the day included Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir, Cahir Castle in Cahir in the county of Tipperary, lunch at The Lazy Bean Cafe there (I love those Irish cajun chicken sandwiches!), the Rock of Cashel in Cashel, the Hore Abbey just down the hill from The Rock and then on to Adare.

All of the small towns in this part of the country have been quite lovely.  Adare, with a mere 2,000 residents, is considered by some to be Ireland’s prettiest village.  Our guidebook says “Cynics call it the prettiest “English” village since its manicured perfection is at odds with normal notions of national beauty.”  But since we love English villages, we are happy here.

I have spent part of five summers in the past decade assisting archaeologists in Belize excavate Mayan ruins so I obviously like old/ancient things.  Konnie does also but working in Belize with scorpions, spiders, snakes, no electricity in the cabana and no hot water is not where she wants to hang out looking at old stuff.  So Europe seems to be a great common ground for us.  But, given much of this trip has consisted of pictures of beautiful old stone buildings, I am cutting back on posting pictures of what looks like the same places over and over to those who weren’t there.  So from here on it will be three pictures max of any one old stone building or ruin site.

We found a great restaurant in this little village last night called White Sage (www.whitesagerestaurant.com).  If you are ever here, try it.  We will hit it again on Saturday night.

Until Sunday morning, we will be hanging out in County Limerick.

We started our travel day with a stop at an Irish Cistercian abbey that is just a couple of kilometers from our hotel (Mount Juliet near Thomastown which is, by the way, very nice).  Melrose Abbey in Melrose, Scotland which I wrote about earlier was also a Cistercian abbey.  Those boys buildings turned into very nice ruins that easily enable you to envision the magnificent medieval structures that sat on those sites and I have enjoyed practicing photography at both.  More abbey ruins pictures than anyone really desires to see but they are posted here anyway.

After that stop it was on to Wexford (yawn) where we expected to visit the Johnstown Castle which it turns out is closed to the public.  I got confused after looking at a number of potential stops.  So we took off for Waterford with expectations about what to do there.  Another yawner.  The city’s  13th century Reginald Tower is interesting and they give a very good historical presentation about the history of this Viking originated city.  Beyond that we did not have much luck in finding things available to view.  We planned to dine there but most of the restaurants we checked out were outrageously expensive with entrees alone running over $40 when converted to dollars.  We finally did find what turned out to be a nice and more reasonably priced Italian restaurant called Emilianos on High Street where we had a very nice meal.

Planning for a more productive day tomorrow.

On Monday we had one of our all-time miserable airline experiences with Aer Lingus.  For a 40 minute flight from Edinburgh to Dublin we were charged in excess of $600 to enable our four bags to make the journey (that does not include us) with over $360 of that being a surprise at check in.  We are facing the same fees to make the 50 minute flight to London next week.  Our total fare Edinburgh – Dublin – London will be more than round trip coach fare between Denver and London.

But now we are here after that contribution to the struggling Irish economy and had a pleasant day on Tuesday (this post is late because we had no internet service when we returned on Tuesday evening) with all of the day away from the beautiful Mount Juliet Hotel in Thomastown, Kilkenny County, Ireland being spent in the city of Kilkenny.

Kilkenny is a very active community of about 26,000 with many shops.  The highlights of our day were the Kilkenny Castle which was originally constructed in the late twelfth century and was occupied until 1935, mostly by the Butler family who lived in it for nearly 600 years.

At the opposite end of town we visited St. Canice’s Cathedral including a challenging climb to the top of its adjoining 100 foot round tower which was constructed in 849 as a place to escape the attacking Vikings.  The Cathedral was built in the 13th century and is surprisingly beautiful inside including extensive stained glass windows.  I attempted to capture some of the interesting interior in a couple of the pictures.

We had a great dinner in Kilkenny at Royal Spice Indian Restaurant.  Irish food is very unappealing and I am doing my best to avoid it’s incredibly high animal fat content.

On Saturday we took our fuel payload and headed to the Borders district in Southern Scotland where the landscape is gorgeous and populated with castles and abbeys.  All of the abbeys are in a state of ruin due to damage and destruction that occurred during either the multi-century wars with England or from the wrath of Henry VIII in the mid-16th century.

We headed first to Melrose Abbey with the objective of seeing the four Border Abbeys during the day.  Melrose Abbey is located in the lovely village of Melrose which is where Sir Walter Scott made his home for the final twenty years of his life.  The stone used in the construction of the abbey was beautiful and the stonework nothing short of amazing.  And even though the structure is in a ruined state, it is easy to envision what was going on there at that time and how majestic the full structures were, especially with the pinkish stone.  Construction of Melrose began in 1136 for Cistercian monks, was repeatedly ransacked by the English and then met its demise in 1545 when Henry VIII destroyed the abbeys because the Scots failed to ratify a marriage treaty between his son and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots.  Tough politics have been around a long time.

After a lovely lunch at the intimate ten table dining room of the Townhouse Hotel in Melrose, we drove to take a glimpse of Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott's home which was unfortunately closed, and then on to Dryburgh Abbey.  Dryburgh, though considerably smaller than Melrose, is equally beautiful with its pinkish stone and intricate stonework but much more isolated with no nearby town.

Since it was suddenly after 4 pm, our goal of seeing the four abbeys in this area would obviously not be achieved.  So we headed back towards Edinburgh in hopes of getting a glimpse of Rosslyn Chapel before it closed.  We successfully beat the last admission cutoff by eight minutes and were rewarded for the effort.  This stonework in this 15th century chapel makes the abbey masons look like slackers.  Unfortunately no pictures allowed inside.  Go to www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/.

A planned lazy day in Edinburgh Sunday including dinner with some Maya Research Program colleagues and off to Ireland on Monday.  Oh yes, regarding that tank of fuel that demanded a $310 deposit.  We used a quarter tank which took only $60 worth of fuel to replace what we used.

We’ve rented a car for Friday and Saturday so we can get out to the countryside to see more castles and ruins.  First about the car rental.  Like everything here, they are expensive.  But if you saw one of my pictures on yesterday’s post you noted that fuel is a little over $8 a gallon.  To make sure that you bring the car back with a full tank they charge a deposit for the fuel.  In this case it was the equivalent of about $310.  That ought to cover it I hope.

So it was off to Stirling with our gasoline payload to see the castle there.  It was the worst weather of our approximately 40 days in the United Kingdom over the past twelve and a half months with rain, cold and fog which limited photo opportunities.  This castle apparently dominated Scottish history for centuries as its origins date to 1124 with construction of the current structure beginning in the 15th century.

On the way back to Edinburgh we swung past the Forth Bridges.  These two bridges span one mile over the River Forth.  The rail bridge was the first major steel-built bridge in the world when it opened in 1890.  The auto suspension bridge was the largest suspension bridge outside of the United States (ah, those were the days) when it opened in 1964.

Heading south on Saturday.

Konnie loves to garden which is a challenge in the semi-arid desert conditions of Colorado. So we enjoy our visits to the gardens in England and now Scotland where they seem to be able to grow anything. At the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, which has been at its current location since 1820, they do rhododendron (virtually impossible to grow in Colorado) research and have some 700 varieties. That most likely dictates a return trip here in the spring of some year to witness what must be a spectacular floral display.

So a simple Thursday here and just a few shots for a general idea of our day. Believe me, I could bore you to tears by sharing the scores of flower photos taken.

We will be checking out the countryside on Friday.

Wednesday’s principal destination was Edinburgh Castle which stands upon the core of an extinct 350 million year old volcano placing it some 250 feet above the city. This is easily a full day experience with much about the mind dizzying royal history that becomes even less comprehensible with the Scottish connections included. The castle area has many highlights such as St. Margaret’s Chapel (the oldest building in Edinburgh), the Great Hall with its early sixteenth century hammer beam roof, the Stone of Destiny (used to inaugurate monarchs of Scotland and England for over 1,000 years) and the military museums. But it is the views that try to steal the show.

Along the way we visited the Sir Walter Scott Monument, Princes Street Gardens, the Royal Mile, St. Giles Cathedral and the exhibit around the city called Jungle City. I would love to purchase one of the animals.

Edinburgh is even lovelier with less wind, very walkable and friendly. We lunched at a Kurdish restaurant near the castle and then it was tapas for dinner at Cafe Andaluz on George St. Another recommended dining stop if you get here.