Good morning Huskies! It’s day two in Ireland, and boy is it jam-packed! This morning we woke up early to visit Trinity College in Dublin. Along with being a beautiful and historic campus, it is home to two tourist attractions as well, the Book of Kells and the Long Room. The Book of Kells is a copy of the four Gospels from the Bible that was written by Irish monks in 800 AD and the Long Room is a library. 

In order to see these exhibits, we had to wait in line. Thankfully we got there early and didn’t have to wait long, but by the time we got out, some people were waiting in line for hours. (I would really hate to be going to school where it takes hours just to get into the library!) 

We were filtered past an informational room to the Book of Kells display room. Because of the delicate nature of the texts, no one was allowed to take pictures, but it was absolutely breathtaking. The amount of skill required to create such beautiful calligraphy and pictures, and for them to remain thousands of years later, is extremely impressive. We then moved into the Long Room, which is filled to the max with hundred year old books. The library itself would have been worth standing in line for hours for. It was also very properly named – the Long Room was over 200 feet long. Each aisle of books had a bust of someone important to education placed in front of it. There were the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Socrates, Newton, Shakespeare and even an Irish judge. It also housed the harp that the nation’s logo was based on. More recognizably though, it is also Guinness logo. (Here’s some fun trivia: Guinness actually copyrighted the logo before the nation hoped to use it as a national symbol, so the country had to flip the image in order to use it.) 

We then went on to another Dublin sight, the Dublin Castle. Along with being a museum, the castle is still used when dignitaries visit Ireland. I really enjoyed my time in the castle because it’s a castle and who wouldn’t?! And also because art was on display in all of the rooms, ranging from children’s portraits to images of Irish countryside to even Van Gogh’s self portrait. 

Today was a crazy busy day, but I am grateful for the chance to visit another country and for some time away from work to enjoy it!