European Vacation Day Four

Day Four, June 7th.
The next morning we had a continental breakfast and then headed out for a guided tour of Dublin with Kate.

She was born in Ireland and moved to the states where she spent most of her life before returning and has lived in Dublin for the past 16 years.

We also stopped by St. Patrick's Cathedral with it's flying buttresses, Georgian squares with the entertaining stories about the different colored doors and Phoenix Park where the original White House stands.

After the tour we trekked to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells known to be the most illuminated manuscript of the gospels and Ireland's most treasured item.

When we left Trinity College the group split up to track down lunch. We ended up at Bewley's Grafton Street Cafe. Needles and I both got the fish and chips and we got honest to goodness real ice tea. Needles requested a yarn shop adventure so we went looking for This is Knit. Needles picked up a couple of skein of yarn dyed by a local artist and we continued our search for the Museums. Our first stop was at the National Museum of Ireland Natural History.

The museum was filled with taxidermied animals large and small. National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. We were most interested in seeing the bog bodies and I was excited to view their collection of Egyptian artifacts which included three mummies and their burial adornments and masks.

After that our group split up for some free time to shop and grab some snack before meeting back at the bus. Needles and I stopped at a local place and picked up some macrons. After that we made our way to the hotel and ended up meeting with our group to grab a late diner. We walked to a place called Blazing Grill. I had the Upper Class Burger and Needles had the Salmon. The food was very good and by the time we made it back to the hotel it was after midnight. Unfortunately there is a bar next to the hotel and the music was very loud until about 3 am when it just became drunk people from the bar yelling at each other in the parking lot.