Overnight plane and Day One in Dublin -- 7/27/17

Our flight from JFK to Dublin left around 10:00 PM, and we arrived in Dublin around 9:30 AM local time.  Fortunately, most of our family members were able to get at least 3 hours of sleep on the plane.  ( I was the not so fortunate one that kept looking around every few minutes to make sure everyone else was asleep.) Upon landing in Dublin, we took a bus from the airport to our hotel, the Dublin Westin.  With it being so early, our rooms weren't ready, so we stowed our bags and hit the town.  (You will notice that we are wearing the same clothes as yesterday in all of our pics.)  We are wearing coats in pictures, as it was quite chilly outside.  None of our crowd was complaining, though, after suffering through a 105 degree swim meet at home last weekend!  Our hotel was right around the corner from Trinity College, which is the oldest college in Ireland, founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I.  As soon as we passed through the gates, we encountered lots of signage advertising activities that the students can join.  Of course, rowing is one of the options, so we made Sidney pose for a picture with the sign.

The main quad of the campus is beautiful, with a large campanile (bell tower) marking the site of the former occupant of the location, a monastery.

We knew that we wanted to visit the Old Library and the Book of Kells exhibit, but discovered upon our arrival that the ticket line was very long.  (Not Crown Jewels long -- see a previous London post -- but too long for us.)  Amazingly, there was no one in the Online Tickets queue, so we quickly purchased online tickets for the following day and bid Trinity College adieu.  

At this point, we were all starving, so we wandered around town for a bit to find a good lunch place. In our wandering, we found what has to be the best name for a jewelry store ever, Gollum's Precious!  Sidney read The Hobbit this summer for a school summer reading assignment, and Dan and I are big JRR Tolkien fans, so we got a kick out of this. 

 We decided on The Oak for lunch, which is in the Temple Bar area.

The food was delicious, and we all were fading fast, so we fortunately received a call that our rooms were ready.  We made our way back to the hotel with a few pics of the area.  Here is a pic of the Temple Bar district.

We also discovered a local funeral home, so we had to take a picture of it.  As you can see, it is quite different from ours at home.

Here is a picture by the Liffey River, which separates Dublin in half.  All of our wanderings were South of the Liffey.  

After some downtime in the hotel (and a nap for Dan and me), we decided that gelato would be a great idea.

Then, we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral, for a choral Evensong service.  It was beautiful!  The entire service was sung a capella.  The choir had such pure voices and beautiful harmonies.  After the service, we were able to take a picture in front of the choir loft.  

In case you were wondering, yes, the cathedral is named after that St. Patrick, the guy celebrated on March 17th each year.  The church stands on the site where St. Patrick reportedly baptized Christian converts in a well in 450 AD.  It is also the site of the graves of Jonathan Swift and his wife, Stella.  I knew him from reading Gulliver's Travels, but I didn't realize he was the dean of St. Patrick's.  

(My computer is only allowing me to add this picture sideways.  Maybe I can fix it later.  My apologies!)

After a delicious dinner at a restaurant near St. Stephen's Green, we walked back up one of the main shopping streets, Grafton Street, to our hotel.  We came across a Disney Store, and we let Jack look around, since we didn't let him go to the one in Times Square in NYC yesterday.  He wanted to take some superhero pictures.  Is there any franchise that Disney doesn't own, now?

Last, but not least, we had the most interesting find of the night.  Lyndon's middle name is Dan's mother's maiden name, Carroll.   It is Irish, as her ancestors immigrated from Ireland to America around 1750.  We hoped we would at least see something with  the name Carroll on it.  Little did we know that the major souvenir chain in Dublin is called Carrolls.  Imagine a Wings or Eagles at the beach, if you frequent beaches in the Southern region of the US.  Of course, we had to take a picture with Lyndon.  

It was a full day, but we were all ready for bed to get our bodies on local time.  Tomorrow -- Dublin Day 2.