Birthday in Dublin

I celebrated my 57th birthday in Dublin, and it was rainy and cold the entire day (pretty appropriate, eh?).  The B&B we were staying at was outside of the city center, so we took a bus into town.  The first place we went to see was the Charles Beatty Library which is in the Dublin Castle.

Charles Beatty collected rare books for 60 years and this is the result of his labors.  It's unfortunate that we couldn't take pictures inside, as the old illustrated books and documents were incredible.  They even had an exhibit on Rembrandt engravings.  In addition to the books themselves, they had short videos on various things such as how woodblocks, engravings and etchings were done.   One of the things we wanted to do here was see The Book of Kells, which is housed in the Trinity Library.  It's an incredibly illuminated Book of the Gospels that was done in about 800.  But in reading the guide book, it said that you really couldn't see much except the backs of a lot of tourists trying to see the small book behind a layer of bulletproof glass.  So we opted to go to the Beatty Library instead, and I think it was much better than what we would have seen of the Book of Kells.

When we finished viewing the exhibits, we were going to go downstairs and have lunch at the restaurant there at the library, which looked really good.  But when we got there we found it had closed for a private function 5 minutes earlier.  So we headed out and found a pub with good food instead.

Next we went to the National Museum of Archeology and History.  It was filled with interesting exhibits about the people who have lived in Ireland through the ages, from the Romans through the Vikings to the Irish themselves.  It was really interesting for Susan as she's reading a book, Princes of Ireland, which is about Ireland starting back in 430 A.D.  So much of what we saw in the museum (as well as things we've seen since then) refer back to things she's read about in her book.

Susan had wanted to take me to a nice restaurant for my birthday, but after we finished with the museum, it was too early for dinner, and it was still rainy and cold so we decided to head back to the B&B.  But it took us a while to find the right bus stop, and by then it was rush hour, so by the time we got back to where our B&B was, it was after 6:00.  Walking back from the bus stop to the B&B there were several restaurants, so Susan let me choose and we ate at an Italian restaurant, that turned out to be one of the best meals we've have over here!  I like being lucky.

So we're hoping that the weather improves, because cold and rainy is not what we're looking for (I'm blaming it on my birthday).

Ready for the rain!