This morning was a rough start with a 6am wake up call, but the field trip to Dublin was completely worth it! We went directly to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The museum leading up to the book was amazing, filled with ancient pocket bibles and information how the Book of Kells was written on vellum with quill pens using iron gall ink. When we finally got to the book, it was opened to John 6 and Luke 23. We went up the stairs to “The Long Room” ancient library that was filled with beautiful books and busts of famous intellects. It was a beautiful sight to see that many old, preserved books.
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Spanish Arch in Galway
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We went to the National Gallery of Ireland next to see the many sketches and paintings. There was a beautiful section of Jack B. Yeats work and an Expedition “From Galway to Leenane” of sketches by William Evans of Eton. The work was wonderful and unique; it was so neat to see sketches of places that we had been in Galway.
We had free reign for lunch and decided to walk all the way to The Queen of Tarts that Kelsey has been begging to go to for a week. It was the most darling brunch place (they don’t serve lunch until 1). The omelets were wonderful and there were rave reviews from the “red sauce” that is served with the omelets. The best thing in the whole world was the Bailey’s Chocolate Chip Cheesecake that I had. We unfortunately did not get any tarts at the tart place, but the dessert was incredibly worth it! We met back up with the group just in time to go to the Ireland National Museum.
The tour that our Art professor gave us was phenomenal and we saw everything from bones and corpses to ancient boats and jewelry. There were so many gold pieces from the Bronze Age and was so neat to know and have learned about the stuff we were looking at. The room with the pieces most recognized, included the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, and a craved stone head that looked like Voldemort. The field trip was actually quite fun and we were able to spend the rest of our free time walking around and shopping in Dublin. There was the gay pride parade in Dublin so naturally everyone was on the street and dressed up crazy… it was an interesting sight. We bussed it back to Galway and took a nap before going out for our first weekend in Ireland. We decided to go out to the Hole in the Wall again; it was so much fun because they had a DJ and we got to request songs and dance around! Later that night we went back to our usual, The Kings Head, where they had a band called the Lunar Playground. The music sounded good, but the lead woman singer was not always on key. But let me tell you, the most fun part about the bars on the weekends is all of the bachelorette parties. Supposedly, bachelorette parties from around Europe come to Ireland and dress up in crazy matching costumes and pub hop… Sounds like fun to me? Are all my girls in?
