Day 6: Book of Kells and Howth!

Day two in Ireland: much, much better. We started off by seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity College, an illuminated manuscript gospel book in Latin (and yes, I am copying this right from Wikipedia as I type), created by Celtic monks in the 9th century, it is a "masterwork of western calligraphy and represents the pinnacle of insular illumination, and is also regarded as Ireland's finest national treasure." No big deal.

The be honest I didn't know much about it, and I wasn't too interested in seeing it. Thankfully Nathalie was dead set on going, so I went, and I'm so glad I did. The book really is amazing, incredibly intricate. Then we went up and saw the old library, also very impressive. I suggest googling it. There were no pictures allowed, and while usually I shamelessly break that rule, it was dark and my pictures would have sucked anyways, so I didn't get any of the book itself.

Seriously... here especially 

"You saucy little minx, you look awesome today" One thing about Ireland: the people here, despite being cold and wet all the time, are so, so incredibly nice. Apparently so are the signs. 

I did manage to get some photos of enlarged copies of the book and other illuminated manuscripts 

GOATS! Even in medieval times they realized how awesome they were... 

The library upstairs was fantastic. My camera is really bad with dim lighting, so I didn't get any good shots 

We would have missed out on Halloween completely had we not come here. I felt like I was back at home.  

After the Book of Kells we went to Howth. Before we had gone I had googled day trips outside of Dublin and a lot of people recommended it. Cities are nice, but after going from city to city in Europe, they all start to look the same. An old church, a statue of a dead guy, a lot of stores. You see a lot of history and you need to reconstruct it in your mind in order to understand why this building or that building is cool, it takes a lot of effort. I needed some nature. I needed nature bad. With nature you just see what's in front of you. You don't need any context, it's gorgeous because it is. No big battles were won there, kings weren't born there, but it's awesome to look at, and that's all you need.

Needless to say, Howth was fantastic. It's a cute little fishing town a half hour out of Dublin on public transportation. We marveled at the sea for a while, then we went on a hike around, stopping every ten minutes to stare at the water. We were both in a good mood, we both loved it... so amazing!

It was cold...

"Hey if I climb on this thing can you take my picture?" *starts to climb* "Wow, this might actually be a really dumb idea...but I have insurance." 

LOOK at that!

After that gorgeous day we made our way back to the city, walked along the river for a little bit. I remember reading about the River Liffy in IB English when we read Dubliners....Conclusion: Visiting Dublin is much, much better than analyzing a book on Dublin.

They light up Trinity College at night as well

Ca'est moi! 

We went back to the hostel that night where there was a free spaghetti dinner. We met one guy who stays there every week for two days because he goes to college there and lives in Galway. He literally commutes across the country, and yet weekly his commute time is less than half of mine back at home. Crazy.