Though excited to see friends and family, I'm significantly less excited about leaving Ireland.
Yesterday we spent the day checking off the rest of the tourist destinations that we wanted to see in Dublin.
In the morning we went to the Trinity College library and saw the Book of Kells. Both it and the library we're amazing. I wanted to stay and enroll right then and there!
From there we pressed on to the Museum of archeology a free and fantastic museum. They had a treasure room with the cross of conf which once held a piece of the original one true cross. And, what excited me the most, big bodies!! These were bodies that we're buried in the bogs in medieval times and have been mummified and amazingly preserved. Granted, I love mummies but these we're really neat. My friend didn't love them as much as I did.
The museum also had a great Viking exhibit which inspired this:
After a brief but lovely picnic lunch in St Stephens Green (purloined from the hotel breakfast buffet) we went next to the Chester Beatty library housed on the grounds of Dublin Castle.
This is an amazing personal collection that was donated to Ireland after his death of an incredible amount of illuminated texts from all over the world. Definitely worth wading through the school groups that we're there that day.
Last stop of the day was Christ Church. It was a stunning church, as expected.
But I was more interested in the crypt - sensing a theme here? This one had quite an amusing tea shop in the crypt taking any remaining creepiness out of it and providing a great juxtaposition, to me at least.
They did however have a mummy, much to my surprise! Two actually. A cat and mouse found mummified in the same organ pipe, appearing trapped in a never ending game of cat and mouse.
Exhausted after a wonderful but long day, we went to have a Guinness at Eamon Rea's Lounge right near our hotel. A pub we had been sent to from San Francisco because it is owned by the brother-in-law of my coworker. It must have been fate because we caught him just as he was leaving! He stayed as had a Guiness with is and shared some stories, a perfect way to end our last day in Ireland!
We are now on the bus back to the airport and back to reality.
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