On our 8th day in Ireland, we slept in and then walked over to the Lemon Jelly Cafe for brunch. I had French Toast and Greg had an egg, mushroom, and sausage crepe and a beautiful coffee.
Then we walked over to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour.
Everyone raves about the Guinness Storehouse tour and while it was cool, we were disappointed that it wasn’t an actual tour of their factory.
Once we realized that Trinity College’s tours ended at five, we moved pretty quickly through the remainder of our Guinness tour, because seeing The Long Room and the Book of Kells was high up on our list of must-sees. We hopped in a taxi and got there just in time for the last guided tour.
Our tour guide was a student at the college and he had on a cape vest thing that very much reminded me of something from Hogwarts. I’ve seen rumblings online that JK Rowling was inspired by the Long Room Library when writing the scenes for the Hogwarts library, though I don’t know if that is true or not. (But I am sure you’ll agree that it certainly *could* be true when you see the pictures!)
According to our guide, there isn’t a real good system for how the books are filed. The taller books are nearer the bottom and the shorter up top. You can see from the picture that they get smaller and smaller as you look up!
The theme while we were there was speaking and communication disabilities, so they had some of the books open and on display (under glass) that fit into the theme. There were fiction books and non-fiction books. The health-related books were interesting (and maybe a little scary!) The one below is fiction – I thought the old English spelling was interesting!
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take any pictures of the Book of Kells. (Which is actually four books – one for each of the Gospels.) It was really interesting to see these ancient and beautiful manuscripts in person.
After our tour, we walked around Dame Street and the Temple Bar area.
We ended our evening with a dinner of Thai food at Red Torch Ginger. Greg’s been wanting me to try Thai food for a long time. It was delicious.