Finally we made it to Ireland!!!! I really can hardly believe that I'm actually here. As some of you know, this has always been one of my life goals to come here to Ireland....my dream vacation that I've wanted to take ever since I was about 11 or 12 and did my country report on Ireland.
First I'll start with Edinburgh though. Yesterday we wandered quite a bit, and the town itself is really quite gorgeous. We found a Marks and Spencer *(a department/grocery store) and bought some fabulous ready made sandwiches (I really hate that we don't have quality ready made sandwiches and salads at home....they're cheap and healthy and very tasty!) and crossed the street to a park where we sat overlooking a gorge with the Edinburgh castle atop a hill at one end. So beautiful!
After that we went in to the National Gallery of Scotland, which is wonderful, because all the museums here are free! There was some amazing work from the Romantic period, which I studied in a class just last semester, so it was amazing to see so much of what I studied and wrote about not very long ago. There were some wonderful works by Poussin, and Boucher especially.
As we walked along the Royal Mile, we found a meeting place for an underground "ghost tour". We ended up going on it, and it turned out to be quite fun. The guide was in costume and provided a great history. We walked a bit through the old city, then went down into some of the vaults. They were apparently inhabited by ghosts. It really was quite unsettling right up until the super hokey ending where a cloaked man jumped in front of the entrance to one of the vaults we were in. It was a really lame and somewhat disappointing ending. Before that happened I felt fairly unsettled, but that completely ruined it. Oh well, what can you do? One of the really cool things we saw was a working Wiccan temple in one of the vaults. It was very interesting and super cool to see it all.
So, this morning we wandered a bit more and found Waterstone's....a wonderful bookstore, much like Barnes and Noble. We spent quite a while in there, just browsing, and sitting in the Starbucks cafe. It felt like home!
Dublin is wonderful so far....and definitely very green and wet. I'll write again soon!! Keep in touch!
1 comment:
Honey you need to start hanging out at Maverick back at home for the ready made sandwiches! They're not Marks and Spencers (for sure), but we do have them in the states! I'm so glad that you're having a good time! I love reading about your adventures! Much love - Laurie
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