Books, Bars.........and Engaged!

After getting a lot of sleep and feeling refreshed, we woke up early, had breakfast at the hotel and started our day. We had a tour planned for that morning, but took advantage of the quiet streets and sights, including walking through Temple Bar so we could get pictures without all of the people and chaos. We got a picture of THE Temple Bar; the whole area is smaller than I expected. This is the main bar district of Dublin. There is a joke that as the night gets going, the prices keep rising. We made a point to walk through the area but didn’t really feel the need to stop for an overpriced drink. Especially at 8am. 😊

From here, we walked to Trinity College for our tour. Emma, a student at the college, was our tour guide. We met near the bell tower of the College and started our tour. On the tower there are four statues of women representing the four higher faculties of the College – math, theology, law and medicine.

Bell Tower

Near the bell tower is the statue of George Salmon, a famous provost who said women would be admitted to Trinity over his dead body. The joke’s on him because shortly after death, the first women were admitted. Cheers!

Can you see the monkey?

Across the square is a brick building that has dorms in it. Allegedly, there is a murder that took place in one of the rooms – so everyone likes to pretend there are fun ghost stories to share.

From the square we went to the geology building. We were able to gain inside access to the building,
which is a benefit you get of the paid tour – versus doing your own free walking version. The architects of this building were known to always carve squirrels into their works. They also were famous for carving a monkey into a building when they weren’t paid on time……from the work we saw, sounds like someone missed a check!

Inside the building, there are 13 different types of stone native to Ireland that are used and can be seen. We didn’t take the time to identify all 13, but it was neat to see so many used in such a small space. In some of the stone you can see the shark’s teeth as a fossil.

Dark spots are the shark teeth

Also inside, a giant deer that has been extinct for 11,000 years. These bones are of a female deer which is rare. Often when bones of a female deer were discovered, they were thought to be a horse so just simply thrown away. This one was preserved.

Female Deer

The intricacy of the design is amazing. Holes in the wall were made to help with air flow but rumors started that it would also help with disease and protect you. People would often stick their hands in for that protection.

The Hole for air flow and 'protection'

After this building, we made our way around the rest of campus. We didn’t get into the business building, but we stopped to admire it because is very eco-friendly and carbon neutral. Here, Emma shared with us that the entire campus is working toward this goal of being carbon neutral. While we were stopped here, Emma shared with us that Erwin Schrodinger gave his famous speech for the firs time about ‘the cat’ on this campus. Why is this important? It probably isn’t to most of you. Except Bryan and I are both big fans of The Big Bang Theory TV show and it’s mentioned during the show. So when Emma brought it up, Bryan and I both looked at each other and started laughing – confusing the rest of our tour group.

After this, we had our timed entry into the Old Library,Long Room and Book of Kells…..the real reason I wanted to come on this tour. Books! Before entering the Long Room, you have a small museum that you can walk through that gives the history of the Library, the Book of Kells and other related pieces. I know we should, but that’s not really our cup of tea, so we buzzed through that area and went straight to the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a manuscript of the four gospels of the new testament – the real origins unknown but it is on display in the Library, with no photography allowed. The museum will rotate the pages from time to time so you can see different text or illustrations.

Once you see the Book of Kells, you are ushered into the main chamber of the Old Library, called the Long Room, this room is probably most synonymous with Trinity College and what you will see photos of when googling even the campus. It is 65 meters long. The library is in the process of being remodeled, so some of the books were starting to be removed but it was neat to see the process of the books being removed. Rather than the books being sorted by author or title, they are sorted by size, with the largest being on the bottom and smallest on top.

In the Long Room, there are marble busts throughout the room, all of men. In 2020, it was announced that the Library would commission four new busts (the first time new ones were commissioned in over 100 years) of women. The women are Rosalind Franklin, folklorist, dramatist and theatre-founder Lady Augusta Gregory, mathematician Ada Lovelace and writer and pioneering women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.

I had intended to call this day our ‘book and old bar day’ because of the itinerary. We were starting at the Old Library and making our way to some markets. I had read online about a series of Temple Bar markets –one for food, the other for books and the other for designers….so we made a plan to visit them. First, we stopped at the food market, which was a series of food trucks and farmers market style tents, here we got a quick snack and then kept on our way. What was interesting about these markets is they were not all in the same place, rather within a few blocks of each other and you had to go find them. Following the food market, we went to the book market and What. A. Bust. It was just two 10x10 pop up tents with some old books, cards, etc. I thought maybe since it was the day before Easter, that was the small supply – someone else will have to visit for me and let me know!

Old Bar #1 - Brazen Head

After the book portion of the day, we started the old bar tours. There is a bit of a competition between two bars in Ireland – one in Dublin, called the Brazen Head, and the other in Athlone, called Sean’s Bar. Both claim to be the oldest bar in Ireland….Sean’s Bar claims to be the oldest bar in the world…..and both are considered must see if you can do it. Geographically, it worked out well for us to walk from the Temple Bar markets to Brazen Head where we stopped for a beer. Following that, we were able to keep walking west and make our way to the train station – we had a 1:30pm train out of Dublin to the small town of Athlone – about a 90 minute train ride.

Early in our trip planning, I asked Bryan to google some things that he wanted to do in Ireland that I probably hadn’t come across yet. In his search, he found a list of old bars and Sean’s Bar in Athlone was one of them – allegedly oldest bar in the world. When we realized it was so close to Dublin, and you could get there by train, we thought we had to make it work….and as luck would have it, we had some time on this afternoon. When we arrived in Athlone, we took about a 15 minute walk through the town and found the bar – bright blue! Once you turn the corner, it’s hard to miss.

Old Bar #2 - Sean's Bar!

Allegedly wall from the OG Sean's Bar

We were there fairly early in the day, so it was easy to find us a spot at the bar and hang out. It was here that we made friends with the bartender, Clare, discovered some new beers we liked, and tried their own whiskey! Oh yeah, and we got engaged!! 😊

Here’s how it went down……we had been sitting at the bar for a couple of hours, drinking some beers, just hanging out. Bryan made a comment that the bar reminded him of where we met – Pub on Pearl – in Denver. I told him, yeah kind of, because Pub is it’s on dive-y bar. While we were having this conversation, a wedding party walked in to have a few drinks in between the ceremony and reception and they were off to the side of the bar, near where we were sitting. Bryan excuses himself to the bathroom and when he comes back, he starts chatting away with the wedding party. I just start laughing to myself saying he made friends and ditched me because they’re probably cooler. Turns out, he was chatting them up and told them that he had a ring in his pocket, and he was planning to propose! One of the guys asks ‘do you want me to video tape’, Bryan says ‘yeah, actually, I was hoping you would.’…..and there we have it. I saw the guy videotaping out of the corner of my eye, but I really wasn’t sure what was happening – I started laughing and crying I was so surprised! To this day, everyone asks if I knew he was going to propose – and while I had the tiniest suspicion, I truly had no clue it was going to go down the way it happened….true emotion in the video!

After that, our new friend Clare, the bartender, came up and gave Bryan a hard time ‘you were holding out on me!’ The rest of the guests in the bar congratulated us, bought us drinks, and helped us celebrate. When we were getting ready to head back to the train, Clare said she was getting off work and her boyfriend was coming to pick her up….she said – you guys deserve a ride! So, thank you to Clare and Andrew for helping us celebrate and the ride back to the train station! We spent the entire train ride back to Dublin calling family and friends to share the good news. As an extra token to commemorate the day, we bought a bottle of the whiskey they distill themselves at Sean’s Bar and will only open it on special occasions!

By the time we got back to Dublin, emotions were so high that we decided to wrap things up by having a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant….it had been a long and exciting day!! It's safe to say, our vote in the oldest bar matchup will be Sean's Bar - and we will always have a reason to go back!

Our bartender friend, Clare!