Sunday...

Sunday was our first full day in Dublin, and what a great day it was! We started the day in "Temple Bar" which is billed as the cultural center of the city. It is full of shops and pubs and restaurants and just has a very fun, busy feeling. We did some shopping, had lunch and walked around a bit before going to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a handwritten copy of the New Testament that was done in approx. 800AD. It is done in Latin and is VERY ornate and the detail and design is just amazing. To see something so old, that was made by hand that had such an attention to detail and design was just awesome!! After the Book of Kells we went into Trinity College's "long room", which is home to 200,000 of the colleges oldest books. It was amazing. The room itself was beautiful and to be surrounded bu thousands of the oldest copies of literature was just awesome. We sat for a while and just looked at the books and the surroundings. Photography wasn't allowed in the college or the long room so the picture below is one I got off of the Internet. After walking around Trinity College (founded in 1592 and alumni include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker) we went to the "Welcome Home Celebration" for the Ireland Rugby team.

Here is some background on that. Ireland is a HUGE sports country, I have never seen anything like it. I consider myself a sports fan, but these people put me and anyone I have ever known to shame. On Saturday night the Ireland rugby team was playing for the "Grand Slam Championship" of the Six Nations Rugby league. Basically the grand slam means that they not only won the league championship, but they beat every other country doing it. It is a HUGE deal, it had been 61 years since Ireland last won the Grand Slam. They were playing Wales and they ended up winning on a missed last second kick by Wales. This sent the entire country into a huge celebration. It was the main news story on every channel, it received 4 or 5 pages of exclusive coverage in the newspapers, it was the only thing people were talking about and we got to be there and watch it happen. Pretty cool. Anyway, while we were out walking around on Sunday we saw signs pointing to an area of town that said "Welcome Home Celebration" and so we knew that we had to go experience this. There was a crowd of over 20,000 people in the streets with live bands, huge TV monitors re-playing the game and just an amazing atmosphere. It was something I am very glad that we got to experience because we really got to see the passion that these people have, not only for sport, but also for their country.

After the celebration we walked around downtown a bit around sunset before heading back to our hotel.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

(The Long Room at Trinity College, home to 200,000 of their oldest books)

(sunset over the River Liffey that runs through downtown Dublin)

(a picture from the Welcome Home celebration, it doesn't show the crowd size but I love this shot of these boys)

(The Spire in downtown Dublin, it is just a huge spike that they built for the millennium celebration. 390 feet tall)

(Temple Bar in the Temple Bar district in Dublin, very well known pub in Dublin)