Le Avventure Di Sophia Graf

My thrilling adventures in Europe!

Monday, September 3, 2007

Ireland

Our last trip before leaving was a short, three day trip to Dublin to meet up with my uncle and his fiancée, who is Irish. We just made it to our gate after we stood in line for McDonalds for breakfast, the longest line I have ever seen at one. At our gate, we met my Uncle Jim, who had taken an overnight flight from Texas and had been at the airport for two hours already. An hour later, we arrived in Dublin and were met by Helen, my aunt-to-be. She and one of her friends drove us to our apartment, where we settled in. A little while later we met back with Uncle Jim and Helen and found lunch at Café Sophia on the way to the Guinness Factory. The factory was basically a museum about making beer. There was also an advertising section where, for reasons unknown to me, there was a totally random, old harp. It wasn’t even the harp that the logo is based on, because that one is at Trinity College, also in Dublin. Anyways, it was another harp to add to my collection of pictures, so I took a picture with it. Part of the reason we had come was because included in the ticket was a free pint of Guinness, or in my case a free soda. We had a fabulous dinner at Helen’s sister’s house, with hamburgers and lots of other good food. We went home late that night in two separate taxis.
On Sunday, we went to a church called St. Kevin’s which was just around the corner from us. It was really sad because it was a big, beautiful church and the basically the only people who were there were old ladies. After church we took a train to a city called Drogheda to meet Helen’s aunt, who is a nun. We had tea at the convent and then she took us around the town. We saw the head of St. Oliver Plunkett and my mom bought a book about it and is now reading it to us. St. Oliver Plunkett was a martyr who was drawn and quartered and his head remains preserved. It was really brown and creepy, but there were teeth, hair, and skin so he kind of looked real. After we saw the head, we went up a hill to see if we could get into the castle. It was a motte and bailey castle, one of the early types of castles and the first of that kind I had seen all summer. It was a very typical motte and baily, with a single, circular tower (the motte) on top of a man-made hill (the bailey) surrounded by a stone fence. We went up to see if we could get in, but since it was 6:00 they were closing everything up. We decided it was time to go, so Helen’s aunt took us to a bus that would take us to Dublin. As a goodbye present she bought us all ice creams and even got me a Turkish Delight candy bar when I pointed it out to my mom. The bus took about forty-five minutes and when we got to O’Connel Street, the main street in Dublin, we had fish and chips at a restaurant that was really fancy for being just a fish and chips. We took the city bus home, then put the three younger children to bed while I got to stay up and have dessert and watch TV with my parents.
On our last day in Ireland we met my Uncle Jim and Helen for breakfast at a nice café called Bewley’s. I got a yummy pear Danish with custard in it and a berry smoothie. After breakfast we walked down the road to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Brian Boru harp. The Book of Kells is a really old set of the Gospels that monks somewhere illustrated really flambouyantly. I didn’t really get to see it because the crowd was really thick, but I did get to see the Brian Boru harp, which was originally thought to have been Brian Boru’s harp, an old king of Ireland, but wasn’t actually made until five hundred years later. Even so, it is the oldest Irish harp and is the basis for both the Guinness and the Irish government logo. From Trinity College we got a taxi to pick our suitcases up at the apartment and then take us to the airport. Our flight home was uneventful, and that was the end of our travels.
The End.

Yessssssssssss!! No more journaling! He He! I am forever released from the evil clutches of this horrible beast! No more writing for three more days!! But then school starts. BLAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

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