Without Lifting A Finger

Dublin - St Patrick's Cathedral Jonathon Swift Dedication Wall Plaque , a photo by Le Monde1 on Flickr. Thought so.

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin , a photo by Jim Linwood on Flickr. Was certainly here. Can almost see a plaque commemorating Swift in the entry.

I had planned to walk or drive here also (the Jesuit plot is a bit out of the city). Didn't get the chance. Apparently G. M. Hopkins lies in an unmarked grave; his name is inscribed at the bottom of this large granite crucifix.   Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things –    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;    Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;       And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange;    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                   ...

Dublin - The Five Lamps. , a photo by D3man1 on Flickr. Another Dublin landmark I remember. Wouldn't have known it was special unless my wife's brother (a Dublin denizen) had pointed it out. Not totally sure of the significance (you can look it up), but he pointed it out as we came back into the city after spending the day at New Grange, Knowth, and Howth.

Dublin - Potato Famine , a photo by mmmkeyboards on Flickr. I didn't see these until we took a cab back to the ferry. The cab driver told me what it was: the potato famine memorial. It was very close to the Beckett Bridge. Then he started pointing to all the new construction (much of which has been halted because of the poor economy).

Photograph by H. Steinberg

We stayed in a hotel with a fake swimming pool and no lift (I remembered the endless staircases from before). We were very close to Trinity College and so quite close to a few thins worth seeing. There were a million coffee shops to choose from (I tried three) and we were close to Grafton Street (shopping and good street entertainment). A few of the photos I lost I found on Photobucket. The Spire:  The Samuel Beckett Bridge: Brass Joyce plaques (quoting Ulysses) scattered along the sidewalks:  

When I was in Dublin twenty years ago I didn't see The Books of Kells (can't remember if I got there too early, or if the exhibit was temporarily closed): this time I nabbed it.  Not sure what the tickets cost (we got some free tickets from a friend), but you see The Book of Kells along with a few other illuminated manuscripts, and you get a nice tour of The Long Room (my girls thought "Hogwarts"). We didn't spend too much time looking at everything displayed in The Long Room (we had to get to the port and return to Holyhead) but I do remember two things very well: a replica of Cornelius Magrath's skeleton (he suffered from gigantism) and Jonathan Swift's death mask. Perhaps the most famous page of The Book of Kells is the Chi Rho: The Long Room:   Death Mask of Jonathan Swift: 

After a fantastic lunch (I had soup and Irish soda bread) we looked for and found this old abbey. The abbey shares some gorgeous hills with the local cows (watch out for the pies as you climb the hill). I took some great photos (now in digital heaven); the views and weather were breathtaking; we climbed and looked (I was first to see the dragon plaque) for close to an hour. From Photobucket: 

Howth of course is not one of the tumuli of ancient Ireland. It's a penisular suburb of Dublin and an impressive seaside resort (we thought "somewhere between Sopot and Morro Bay"). We ended a day here: took a walk along the seawall; shooed the gulls while we ate our fish and chips. Two shots from Photobucket:  

Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange are just three of the more prominent ancient tumuli located in Ireland (these funeral monuments were erected ca. 3000 BC by a still-little-known-about people). Currently, if I heard right, Dowth is not accessible to the public. Buying two tickets, we were able to see both Knowth and Newgrange. These are not my photos (again: my photos were taken somewhere between Brussels and Amsterdam): I selected them from Photobucket. Two from Newgrange: Two from Knowth:   The macehead* from Knowth: *[Note: The macehead was discovered in the tomb at Knowth. We were unable to view this because it's in a Dublin museum and, well, we just ran out of time.]