Smoke gets in your eyes (Dublin to Belfast)

And the song references continue. Every one in Ireland smokes. OK, well not everyone, but heaps of peeps. Bad news, health-wise. There are more people on the footpath smoking than there are in the pubs drinking.

Trinity College attempt #2
Another perfect Dublin morning! We have been so fortunate. We packed our bags and loaded the car and walked up to Trinity College to see the book of Kells and the Long Room. How lucky were we to arrive at the same time as about 50 French school students. How good is that as an excursion? We take our kids to the zoo or the art gallery and they get to go to Dublin. Awesome.

Anyway, it made the experience more interesting because we had to negotiate the exhibition based on where the bulk of students was not. Absolutely fascinating. Seeing the original hand written versions of the Gospels from about 800AD was inspiring. Sorry, no photos. The process of creating those was amazing. It is so easy to take for granted what we have today, but to understand the difficulty involved in making the pages to be written on, even before the quill has been dipped in the ink ... it takes dedication to a whole new level. Now consider the length of the Gospels and the fact that every word had to be painstakingly transcribed - without liquid paper or a delete button. In some cases it was a life's work.  Not to mention the process of binding a manuscript - makes whinging about contacting the kids' school books each February look pathetic in the extreme...

They also had on display a number of hand written bibles from the north of Africa - Ethiopia. Being a part of the western church it is easy to forget that there were other areas that had Christianity brought to them so long ago as well. It was easy to see the Egyptian influence in some of the art works, too.

After the school excursion moved on, we decided to head for the Long Room. Again, sorry, no photography permitted. It was like stepping back in time. Amazingly high arched timber ceiling and row upon row and shelf upon shelf of seriously antiquated books. It was like a scene from Harry Potter.

We purchased our first gifts for home at the Library Gift Shop.

Bru na Boinne
I think that's Irish for the the Boyne  Palace (no don't write in, I don't care that much). Newgrange is one of the Neolithic burial sites that have been discovered across western Europe. There are other sites in Brittany which we intend to find later in the month.

Amazing understanding of the sun and it's movements and some fairly tidy engineering combined for the construction of a massive burial chamber dating back around 5,000 years. It was interesting to see how it had shifted through the years to morph into a Norman castle at one point. Fortunately someone recognised it's worth and commenced excavation.

Belfast
Dickens coined the expression 'a tale of two cities' in the title of one of his novels and that certainly describes Belfast and Dublin. Maybe it's a Beatles/Stones thing, or Holden/Ford or whatever the Gen Y equivalent is, but they are so different. Dublin feels more countrified and is enjoying the slow pace, whereas Belfast feels industrial and rushed. It is difficult to define why, but we both felt it and we spent some time discussing it over a few drinks after our Black Cab political tour of the city. I didn't take any photos, it just didn't seem right.

The place we are staying is roomy and beautiful, the people are friendly, but there is just something ... We arrived later than we thought but still with enough time to do the taxi tour. The war is over, they say, but after 14 years of cease-fire, the truce is still an uneasy one. So it appears that none of it will be forgotten any time soon. We stopped to look at some of the murals in Shankill Road that, depending on your perspective, celebrated some of the heroes of Northern Ireland or held them as examples of what not to do. I'm not convinced of the latter. In an interesting counterpoint, the younger generation are putting their own mark on the murals. Scrawled in marker pen under on the bottom of one of the murals is, "Brandon is gay". The universal insult and complete disregard for the history of the area.

Rafferty's Rules
Clearly Rafferty was an Irishman and was responsible for creating the road rules. In Dublin it's the push bikes. They ride on the road when it suits or the footpath if suits better, some alternate between the two. We've seen them pull out in front of cars, taxis and buses ... and get away with it.

In Belfast, it's the black cabs. They drive up onto the footpath, turn into oncoming traffic with a wave to the other driver and generally disregard road rules. Crossing from Ireland to the Northern Ireland there is a small sign that notified drivers of the change from kph to the old language of mph and then there was not a posted speed limit for eons. Luckily Jayne and I are old enough to remember the conversions from mph to kph, but how would Gen Y fare? Especially with TomTom going off every km to tell me there is a speed camera. I still haven't seen one, but I guess that's the point eh? Hope I've been gestimating the speed limit closely enough.