Our Trip to Ireland - Chapter 9
Greg went downstairs and brought up a couple of Cokes for us. He got really tickled trying to watch cartoons as the characters were usually talking in a different language, i.e. Russian or Polish?? Every place where we stayed had a TV but could only get 5 stations! (We found out that there are a lot of Lithuanians, Latvians, Polish, and Vietnamese who work in the service industry at these hotels. Many of them don’t speak English.) We watched the Irish equivalent of the show, “Jackass” from back home. The Irish version is called, “Brainiacs”. It was funny to watch. Pretty soon we couldn’t stay up any longer and fell asleep.
The next morning we got up and had a delicious breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We boarded our tour bus and stopped to pick up our guide who talked briefly to us about the city and the various sites that we would be seeing that day. The Guinness Factory was closed that day as it was Good Friday. Tony explained that all establishments that sold alcohol would be closed that day as it is a holy day and very well respected by the Irish people. We did get to take a tour of St. Patrick’s Cathedral which was fascinating indeed. We saw so many things in there and learned so much.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral at one time belonged to Irish Catholics. Under British rule this cathedral was taken away from the Catholics and became the Church of Ireland. Today the Cathedral is considered an Episcopalian Church. This all came about because Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, Anne Boleyn! We saw so many fascinating things inside this beautiful old church. Status quo was the rule of the day at one time. You could tell this by looking at the small wooden seats that resembled school desks that were closer towards the entrances as opposed to the nicer pews closer to the altar areas. There was one section that had 2 red velvet chairs. These are reserved for Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland and other dignitaries who come to the Cathedral for State funerals.
The Guinness family has donated a lot of money to the church. The Boyle family had a huge wooden monument inside that depicted Mr. and Mrs. Boyle and their daughters from the 1600 era. Descendants of the Boyle family offered to restore the monument that goes from the floor to the ceiling on one wall, but they stipulated that they would only do this if the entire monument was moved up next to the altar where they felt it rightly belonged! The Dean of the Cathedral refused! I kept thinking about Peter Boyle being there in spirit and saying something like, “Stinkin’ lousy humps”!
Jonathan Swift was buried beneath the floor of the Cathedral as well as his lady friend whom he cherished but would not marry. It seems Mr. Swift had a terrible memory for things and worried that he might pass this trait on to his children, therefore, he refused to marry Esther! Their graves are marked with gold letters in the floor. A death mask impression was taken of his face as well as a clay impression of his skull. These things are on display in a bookcase at the Cathedral for all to see before they go into the sanctuary.
One of the original prayer doors was on display as well. There were many statues of men of importance. There were real knights’ helmets sitting on poles in back of each chair in the choir loft. These were left over from a time when people were knighted at the Cathedral.
We didn’t get to take a tour of Guinness, but we drove by the factory which takes up several blocks in downtown Dublin. The factory is very much alive every other day but was closed in observance of Good Friday. Tony, our driver, told us stories about how wealthy the Guinness family is and their charitable contributions. Mr. Guinness fathered 21 children! None of the children live in Dublin anymore, however. Tony joked by saying, “There’s a baby in every can of Guinness”! He also told us that Guinness was considered a healthy drink for women as it contains iron!
Next we drove through Phoenix Park which is one of the largest public parks in the world! The park is has walls all around it. There are 1,752 acres of land inside. The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, and the United States Ambassador to Ireland, Thomas Foley have residences in Phoenix Park. We got to see the fronts of their houses. These residences are in gated with walls around them, but you can see the house through the gates. The President’s residence has an Irish flag flying out in front while Ambassador Foley’s residence has an American flag flying outside of it. We saw a circle of trees with countless Fallow deer wandering around in the morning hours. These deer have thrived in this park since 1662! There is a bird sanctuary. There Dublin Zoo located inside the park has live animals. There is also a zoo with stuffed animals in it which the locals call the “dead zoo”! When my penfriend, Fridolin, took us through the park later in the day she showed us the statue erected on the site where the altar was set up during Pope John Paul’s visit several years ago. There were also choral groups performing later in the afternoon. The park was alive with activity all day with people laying on blankets and children playing. There were fountains which come on during the summer months for the children to play in. There were beautiful flowers everywhere!
About this time our tour bus went to Trinity College. We had hoped to get inside to see the Book of Kells and all the other neat things we had heard about that are inside of this college, but we couldn’t get in until 12 P.M. on Good Friday. This was the end of our tour, so we either had to ride back to the hotel or walk around on our own.
We were fascinated to learn that students who have earned so many points in high school can go to college for free! Ireland cares very much about it’s young people never being denied an education like the Catholics were so many years ago by the British. Every effort is made to educate Ireland’s young and try to convince them then to stay in Ireland. During the 1800’s immigrants left Ireland in droves due to the famine and religious persecution by the British. Today every effort is being made to correct the damage done so many years ago by the British. The Irish are a very strong, hard working, and proud people today.
Greg and I walked back to the hotel as the time was drawing closer that I would finally get to meet my penfriend, Fridolin, whom I had been corresponding with for several years but never met face to face! Finally she walked into the hotel lobby, and I got to meet her! She looked wonderful. We hugged each other. She is a very nice lady. She lives in Clondalkin which is like a suburb of Dublin. She has a very small house (a ½ double is what we would call her home back here). She has two cats and a dog named Sasha. She had written to me about them for years.
Fridolin walked with us back out the door of the hotel and showed us the stores and sites she is familiar with in Dublin. We went to a little church in the middle of a bunch of little shoppes. We went inside to pray. I finally got to thank God in an official atmosphere for bringing us to Ireland safely! We saw the “tinkers” that Tony had warned us about. He refered to them as his cousins! When I called them gysies he corrected me and said, “Gypsies have honor”! He warned us not to give them any money. A young girl came up to Greg on the street, though, and asked him for money in exchange for a magazine written about homeless people. Fridolin said some of the tinkers like to have something they can sell instead of just begging people for money. This way they feel they have something to give back for the money they are given. Fridolin said that the magazine is a nice one, but when she saw the young girl approach Greg she intervened and told the woman Greg didn’t want the magazine. Fridolin took us to Carroll’s Gift Shoppe where Greg could go in and shop for more reasonably priced souvenirs than any other places we had stopped in before. He was grateful to be able to find some nice gifts for his friends back home.
Fridolin took the scenic route back to her house and showed us Phoenix Park again. There were a lot more people in there by then. Fridolin said that this much activity in the park was unusual for a Good Friday as in years gone by concerts in the park on such a holy day would not have been considered appropriate.
Fridolin drove us in her car to her house in Clondalkin. We sat in her sun room and chatted as she went to work preparing a lovely dinner for us. She served poached salmon, julienne carrots (a very popular way to fix carrots in Ireland), colcannon, white wine, and finished with a raspberry cake dessert topped with vanilla ice cream. It was all so delicious!
I finally got to meet her dog, Sasha! The cats were confined to the bedroom during our visit as Greg and I are allergic to them. I felt bad about that.
I helped Fridolin clear the table then we got back into her car to go back to Dublin. She had purchased tickets for the three of us on the Ghostbus Tour! We boarded a double-decker bus and drove around the streets of Dublin over around Christ Church while the host (a man dressed in a black suit and a black hat). He was a terrific entertainer and historian all in one! When we least expected it he would come up next to someone sitting on the bus and break up his sentence by yelling in their face! At one point he turned out all the lights in the upper deck and told a ghost story about being buried alive. When he got to one point of the story he shot everyone with a squirt gun. We all screamed as we couldn’t see what he was squiriting at us. The bus made two stops, and we got out both times to walk through a graveyard first then through the gates of an old church. Our tour guide told us another true ghost story involving two nuns, a lepper, and a bloody finger! He showed all of us how the body snatchers dug up the dead in the first graveyard and the tool they used. The “graveyard shift” term came from families who stood guard in cemeteries to guard over their relatives against grave robbers and body snatchers. The latter took the corpses to medical schools and were paid for the fresh ones! He took us past a real medical college and told us yet another ghost story about a body snatcher who tried to sneak himself into the morgue in a bag hoping to get out later while his friends were paid for his as well the real dead bodies. Something went terribly wrong and panic ensued resulting in fatal injuries and abuse of a corpse in the end! Boo-oo-oo!
After the Ghostbus Tour came to an end, we walked back to the lot where Fridolin had parked her car. She drove us back to our hotel for our last night in Ireland! We said our good-byes to Fridolin then headed up to our room. Greg and I enjoyed some delicious spirits (his last for awhile as 18 is not the legal drinking age back home) and watched TV. We laughed and laughed at the TV show called, “Brainiacs” which is similar to “Jackass” back home. We also watched “Cold Case” which seems to be popular in Ireland. We fell asleep in anticipation of our big day to come when we would fly on three different airplanes landing first in Boston then Chicago then Dayton!
The next morning we got up and had a delicious breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We boarded our tour bus and stopped to pick up our guide who talked briefly to us about the city and the various sites that we would be seeing that day. The Guinness Factory was closed that day as it was Good Friday. Tony explained that all establishments that sold alcohol would be closed that day as it is a holy day and very well respected by the Irish people. We did get to take a tour of St. Patrick’s Cathedral which was fascinating indeed. We saw so many things in there and learned so much.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral at one time belonged to Irish Catholics. Under British rule this cathedral was taken away from the Catholics and became the Church of Ireland. Today the Cathedral is considered an Episcopalian Church. This all came about because Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, Anne Boleyn! We saw so many fascinating things inside this beautiful old church. Status quo was the rule of the day at one time. You could tell this by looking at the small wooden seats that resembled school desks that were closer towards the entrances as opposed to the nicer pews closer to the altar areas. There was one section that had 2 red velvet chairs. These are reserved for Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland and other dignitaries who come to the Cathedral for State funerals.
The Guinness family has donated a lot of money to the church. The Boyle family had a huge wooden monument inside that depicted Mr. and Mrs. Boyle and their daughters from the 1600 era. Descendants of the Boyle family offered to restore the monument that goes from the floor to the ceiling on one wall, but they stipulated that they would only do this if the entire monument was moved up next to the altar where they felt it rightly belonged! The Dean of the Cathedral refused! I kept thinking about Peter Boyle being there in spirit and saying something like, “Stinkin’ lousy humps”!
Jonathan Swift was buried beneath the floor of the Cathedral as well as his lady friend whom he cherished but would not marry. It seems Mr. Swift had a terrible memory for things and worried that he might pass this trait on to his children, therefore, he refused to marry Esther! Their graves are marked with gold letters in the floor. A death mask impression was taken of his face as well as a clay impression of his skull. These things are on display in a bookcase at the Cathedral for all to see before they go into the sanctuary.
One of the original prayer doors was on display as well. There were many statues of men of importance. There were real knights’ helmets sitting on poles in back of each chair in the choir loft. These were left over from a time when people were knighted at the Cathedral.
We didn’t get to take a tour of Guinness, but we drove by the factory which takes up several blocks in downtown Dublin. The factory is very much alive every other day but was closed in observance of Good Friday. Tony, our driver, told us stories about how wealthy the Guinness family is and their charitable contributions. Mr. Guinness fathered 21 children! None of the children live in Dublin anymore, however. Tony joked by saying, “There’s a baby in every can of Guinness”! He also told us that Guinness was considered a healthy drink for women as it contains iron!
Next we drove through Phoenix Park which is one of the largest public parks in the world! The park is has walls all around it. There are 1,752 acres of land inside. The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, and the United States Ambassador to Ireland, Thomas Foley have residences in Phoenix Park. We got to see the fronts of their houses. These residences are in gated with walls around them, but you can see the house through the gates. The President’s residence has an Irish flag flying out in front while Ambassador Foley’s residence has an American flag flying outside of it. We saw a circle of trees with countless Fallow deer wandering around in the morning hours. These deer have thrived in this park since 1662! There is a bird sanctuary. There Dublin Zoo located inside the park has live animals. There is also a zoo with stuffed animals in it which the locals call the “dead zoo”! When my penfriend, Fridolin, took us through the park later in the day she showed us the statue erected on the site where the altar was set up during Pope John Paul’s visit several years ago. There were also choral groups performing later in the afternoon. The park was alive with activity all day with people laying on blankets and children playing. There were fountains which come on during the summer months for the children to play in. There were beautiful flowers everywhere!
About this time our tour bus went to Trinity College. We had hoped to get inside to see the Book of Kells and all the other neat things we had heard about that are inside of this college, but we couldn’t get in until 12 P.M. on Good Friday. This was the end of our tour, so we either had to ride back to the hotel or walk around on our own.
We were fascinated to learn that students who have earned so many points in high school can go to college for free! Ireland cares very much about it’s young people never being denied an education like the Catholics were so many years ago by the British. Every effort is made to educate Ireland’s young and try to convince them then to stay in Ireland. During the 1800’s immigrants left Ireland in droves due to the famine and religious persecution by the British. Today every effort is being made to correct the damage done so many years ago by the British. The Irish are a very strong, hard working, and proud people today.
Greg and I walked back to the hotel as the time was drawing closer that I would finally get to meet my penfriend, Fridolin, whom I had been corresponding with for several years but never met face to face! Finally she walked into the hotel lobby, and I got to meet her! She looked wonderful. We hugged each other. She is a very nice lady. She lives in Clondalkin which is like a suburb of Dublin. She has a very small house (a ½ double is what we would call her home back here). She has two cats and a dog named Sasha. She had written to me about them for years.
Fridolin walked with us back out the door of the hotel and showed us the stores and sites she is familiar with in Dublin. We went to a little church in the middle of a bunch of little shoppes. We went inside to pray. I finally got to thank God in an official atmosphere for bringing us to Ireland safely! We saw the “tinkers” that Tony had warned us about. He refered to them as his cousins! When I called them gysies he corrected me and said, “Gypsies have honor”! He warned us not to give them any money. A young girl came up to Greg on the street, though, and asked him for money in exchange for a magazine written about homeless people. Fridolin said some of the tinkers like to have something they can sell instead of just begging people for money. This way they feel they have something to give back for the money they are given. Fridolin said that the magazine is a nice one, but when she saw the young girl approach Greg she intervened and told the woman Greg didn’t want the magazine. Fridolin took us to Carroll’s Gift Shoppe where Greg could go in and shop for more reasonably priced souvenirs than any other places we had stopped in before. He was grateful to be able to find some nice gifts for his friends back home.
Fridolin took the scenic route back to her house and showed us Phoenix Park again. There were a lot more people in there by then. Fridolin said that this much activity in the park was unusual for a Good Friday as in years gone by concerts in the park on such a holy day would not have been considered appropriate.
Fridolin drove us in her car to her house in Clondalkin. We sat in her sun room and chatted as she went to work preparing a lovely dinner for us. She served poached salmon, julienne carrots (a very popular way to fix carrots in Ireland), colcannon, white wine, and finished with a raspberry cake dessert topped with vanilla ice cream. It was all so delicious!
I finally got to meet her dog, Sasha! The cats were confined to the bedroom during our visit as Greg and I are allergic to them. I felt bad about that.
I helped Fridolin clear the table then we got back into her car to go back to Dublin. She had purchased tickets for the three of us on the Ghostbus Tour! We boarded a double-decker bus and drove around the streets of Dublin over around Christ Church while the host (a man dressed in a black suit and a black hat). He was a terrific entertainer and historian all in one! When we least expected it he would come up next to someone sitting on the bus and break up his sentence by yelling in their face! At one point he turned out all the lights in the upper deck and told a ghost story about being buried alive. When he got to one point of the story he shot everyone with a squirt gun. We all screamed as we couldn’t see what he was squiriting at us. The bus made two stops, and we got out both times to walk through a graveyard first then through the gates of an old church. Our tour guide told us another true ghost story involving two nuns, a lepper, and a bloody finger! He showed all of us how the body snatchers dug up the dead in the first graveyard and the tool they used. The “graveyard shift” term came from families who stood guard in cemeteries to guard over their relatives against grave robbers and body snatchers. The latter took the corpses to medical schools and were paid for the fresh ones! He took us past a real medical college and told us yet another ghost story about a body snatcher who tried to sneak himself into the morgue in a bag hoping to get out later while his friends were paid for his as well the real dead bodies. Something went terribly wrong and panic ensued resulting in fatal injuries and abuse of a corpse in the end! Boo-oo-oo!
After the Ghostbus Tour came to an end, we walked back to the lot where Fridolin had parked her car. She drove us back to our hotel for our last night in Ireland! We said our good-byes to Fridolin then headed up to our room. Greg and I enjoyed some delicious spirits (his last for awhile as 18 is not the legal drinking age back home) and watched TV. We laughed and laughed at the TV show called, “Brainiacs” which is similar to “Jackass” back home. We also watched “Cold Case” which seems to be popular in Ireland. We fell asleep in anticipation of our big day to come when we would fly on three different airplanes landing first in Boston then Chicago then Dayton!
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