Disorientation Day
Monday, 3/5
After sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, we managed to stumble out into a much lighter rain and headed into the City Centre. We didn’t get lost, but it was the first full day in an unfamiliar country, and both Housemate and I were feeling very fish-out-of-water. We wandered into a bagel & juice place on Leinster Street—one of a surprising number of bagel places in Dublin, I soon noticed. Ireland has never heard of low carb; bagels are, apparently, considered a health food. (Personally, I think it’s just a good excuse to eat more of the amazing smoked salmon. It’s better than New York lox, and I do not say that lightly!) This is an attitude I can get behind, particularly after a tasty tomato-and-brie-on-sesame-seed bagel when I most needed it. Still unsure of our general whereabouts, we wandered into Trinity College and found ourselves exactly where we needed to be if we wanted to see the Book of Kells.
Coincidentally enough, the Book of Kells was the one thing that everyone I knew who’d been to Dublin said was a must-see. Right, then. We visited the book, or more properly, books. (The Book of Kells has two roommates, the Books of Durrow and Armagh.) So, in order to see the Book(s), one buys tickets at the Trinity College Gift Shop (packed to its ancient rafters with more tourist kitsch than you could possibly shake a stick at—and yes, Mom, that is where I bought your present and Dad’s) and enters a dimly-lit exhibit area with full-color enlargements of illustrations from all three books; one other, less-renown books; a sprinkling of artifacts; informative placards about inks, parchment-making, the various scribes who worked on the Book, how to spot an error in the handwritten text; an overview of the hagiography; a video loop about book-binding, and another video loop that wasn’t running the day we were there.
The Books reside in a room of their own, in a special glass case presided over by two security guards who look as though they’ve had their fill of tourists, and bugger all, it’s only noon. There are two things about the Book(s) that I hadn’t expected, although one of them shouldn’t really have surprised me. Because the books are ancient, they’re fragile, which means that bright lighting is right out…and consequently (though not surprisingly) you get a much better look at the contents if you buy the special, commemorative €39.95 book with full-colour plates that is conveniently available in the gift shop. The other thing I hadn’t expected is that the Book of Kells has been unbound (the original binding has apparently been lost for longer than my home country has existed) and rebound into at least four separate books; two are displayed in the glass case, and one was in the Long Room upstairs. This is where the college’s oldest books are kept, and when you’ve been collecting since Elizabeth I’s reign, that signifies.
The Long Room was described to me by a coworker as looking just like Hogwarts’s library. Personally, I thought it was better lit and less hazardous, but no less fascinating. In the nineteenth century, they raised the flat, Georgian plaster ceiling and turned it into a gorgeous barrel ceiling (and added windows) in order to accommodate more books, as they’d run out of room. (I can imagine my dad eyeing the living room ceiling speculatively even as I type.) It’s a dreadful comparison to make, but if you imagine the Jedi library from Star Wars, you’ll get a feel for the size and configuration of the space. It’s much better decorated, though. It’s a quintessential scholarly library, complete with carefully-spaced marble busts of scholars and writers both ancient and modern; a collection of letters, photos, and documents that includes one of the few surviving prints of the 1916 proclamation of independence from Britain; and yet more artifacts, such as an early typewriter and Ireland’s oldest intact harp, which dates to the fifteenth century, but is apparently so often incorrectly attributed to the time of Brian Boru that a corrective placard is affixed to the display case.
Thus edified, we then devoted ourselves to the primary duty of tourists everywhere—shopping. We headed over to Walton’s music, where Housemate got himself signed up for a two-hour bodhran lesson the next day. We also wandered through Powerscourt House, which used to be one of the poshest and most prestigious residences in Dublin, and is now home to fortysome shops and restaurants. They’re posh shops and restaurants, at least. I did a lot of looking, but the only buying was at a nearby supermarket. Dublin is an expensive city, so we got some things for breakfast the next morning, rather than go to a restaurant.
That evening, we went over to O’Neil’s—which is right around the corner from Walton’s—for supper and traditional music. Supper ended up being a delicious piece of lightly breaded and fried plaice with carrots, cabbage & leeks, and four different kinds of potatoes, including colcannon—whatever that is—and more Harp. (That evening, when we got back, I looked up colcannon in the potato-shaped, magnetized cookbook I’d gotten for Dad. Like many other Irish dishes, it’s cooked vegetables mixed into mashed potatoes. The names vary depending on which vegetables, but it’s all of a piece and I can’t remember which is which.) O’Neil’s had been recommended to us by one of the students behind the counter at the Trinity College gift shop for their “carvery” (which I interpreted as cafeteria-style food service where they’ll carve the beef, ham, or turkey for your sandwich in front of you). The food was good, and I was really looking forward to the music, which turned out to be a three-and-a-half person band called No Time for Tea. (The fiddle player is pregnant.) We had seats not ten feet from the band, and what I could hear was great. Unfortunately, it was also quite limited by a dozen or more rowdy American college students sitting next to us. At the risk of sounding old and crotchety, not one of them had either an “inside voice” or any manners pertinent to attending public performances. If there isn’t a special place in hell for snotty, self-important undergrads who talk over live music in someone else’s country, I’m going to make one when I get there. I think it’ll be perfect right next to the special place for those who use flash photography during live theater.
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March 19th, 2007 at 4:33 am
When I was on that Baltic cruise last summer, they had a company of actors who would present different musical theatre revues on various nights. This is a difficult thing to do, because not only do the actors have to sing and dance, but they have to dance on a stage that is often moving due to the rolling of the water. One night, there was a man who WOULD NOT STOP taking flash photos. He took what I think were close to 75-100 of them, one every minute or less, it seemed, and the ship staff did basically nothing so as not to offend their wealthy patron.
Well, not only did it ruin the show for me (and goodness knows who else) but just think what would have happened if a dancer had been injured due to the constant barrage of flash - talk about a potential lawsuit, and surely the ship would need to have paid for medical bills. The disregard for safety was appalling, and I couldn’t believe this man who thought that the entire theatre needed to sit through his personal flash gallery. (He was the only one doing this).
My parents practically had to restrain me from going over and strangling him. I was LIVID.