3/25/10—Blog 2—9:12 PM Ireland Time (4:12 PM your time)

Hello Everyone Interested in the DHS travels to Ireland:

After our Irish breakfast, we boarded the coach buses and went to downtown Dublin. Climbing onto yellow “busboats” with “Viking Splash Tours” lettered across the outside, our group donned plastic viking hats, complete with horns. We wore the hats proudly and took numerous photos. Each driver quickly “trained” their busboat passengers in the Viking cheer—a deep, intimidating grunt (almost a GRRRRRRRRR) that was to be delivered to unsuspecting passerbys on the street. Since the busboats were open roof and no side windows, it was easy to get the attention of all! The students loved it. The Viking driver knew the city well and pointed out many historic aspects sharing details intermixed with Irish humor…which is I think, a bit like our “Daily Giggle” during homeroom announcements…sometimes funny, sometimes an eye roller, but worth the effort. On the road part, we also learned about the literary artists who hailed from Dublin—Swift, Wilde, Shaw and Yeats to name a few. While on the water, we put on orange pull over life vests and saw where U2 recorded all but 2 of their albums.

Chaperoned groups could then decide to use their time while at the Trinity College campus area to go exploring. We saw a green grass square where many students and adults relaxed, reading, eating or talking. Some went to see the Book of Kells and the old time library founded by charter of Queen Elizabeth in 1592. The library is one of the world’s greatest research libraries, holding the largest collection of manuscripts and printed books in Ireland. It was amazing…truly ancient books, walls and walls and shelves and shelves of them in an architectural masterpiece of a building. The “long room” which is the main chamber of the library; is 65 meters in length, and houses around 200,000 of the library’s oldest books. The barrel-vaulted wood ceiling atop the books and the marble busts on each side of the room was magnificent.

The lunch options and shopping were fun too. Many shopped along Grafton streets where cars were not allowed—this was fortunate because we are finding the streets narrow and the drivers a bit aggressive. Cyclists on the streets think they own the roads too and literally dodge and weave between traffic, even between buses. They were crazy. No one that we saw wore a helmet, Viking or otherwise.

Another cool thing on the shopping pedestrian strip was the ‘sideshows’ of people—some guitarists played, a 4 piece band set up and performed, a person crafted a sculpture out of clay and sand, three men pretended to be sculptures. They did not flinch as people gazed at their exterior that was either black or a crackled gold, looking like a believable replica of a formal statue of someone famous displayed in the square. Eventually most noticed that these statue people were real and when they did, they took photos or tried to get them to talk or respond.

Back to the hotel, organized rooms, got luggage from a holding room and an hour later, we were eating again…dinner was bread, soup, chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, and   some vegan students requested an alternative and were brought a good looking pasta dish. The kids then went back to their rooms to SLEEP because even with all the fun, they are walking zombies. Tomorrow, they will be back for more and have a performance scheduled for the evening.