Exploring Dublin - Part II

After Christ Church Cathedral we walked to the nearby Dublin Castle, which began as a defensive fortification in the 1200s and is now a government complex used for official State events. Very little of the original castle still remains (just one of the medieval towers), with the majority of the current complex “only” dating back to the 18th century.

We took the official tour, which was nice as the guide talked a lot about the history of Ireland and Dublin. The tour also included a visit to the base of the medieval tower, which is below the current ground level.

For our next stop we headed to Kilmainham Gaol, which is the prison where the rebels from the 1916 Easter Rising were executed. One of our cab drivers had recommended it because the guided tour provides a nice history of the Irish fight for independence from the British.

Due to our tight schedule, we decided to take a cab as the jail is a bit outside the city center. And after the driver dropped us off, we followed his instructions to the entrance. We noticed something was a bit strange, though, as the jail looked more like a construction site than a tourist attraction.

As it turns out, the cab driver had dropped us off at the real jail – I guess he thought we were picking up a buddy from the drunk tank. Fortunately, the policeman who broke the news was able to direct us to the historical jail, which was only a couple of blocks away.

We got in line for the tour but were almost immediately told that the next available one did not begin for an hour. As such, we decided to cut our losses and move on to the next stop on the itinerary: Trinity College.

After walking around the Trinity campus for a bit, we went inside the Old Library to see the Book of Kells – a Gospel book created by Celtic monks around the 9th century that contains the four Gospels of the New Testament. It is considered one of Ireland’s National treasures, and after seeing it in person I would have to agree. The level of detail was very impressive and it was hard to believe that it has been around for over a millennium.

The following is a picture of one of the more famous pages, which I found online since pictures were not permitted.

The ticket for the Book of Kells visit includes access to the Long Hall of the Old Library as well. The hall definitely lives up to its name, as it is nearly 200 feet long and supposedly constitutes the largest “single-chamber” library in the world. I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it

We spent the remaining daylight walking around the area and some nearby parks – Merrion Square Park and St. Stephen’s Green – which were on the way back to the hotel. We passed a lot of colorful doors along the way.

For dinner we found a place near the hotel called Davy Byrnes. I chose some sort of meat and potatoes concoction (big surprise in Ireland, I know), which turned out to be one of my favorite meals in a long time. I didn’t expect the food to be one of the highlights of the visit, but so far so good. It might not look like haute cuisine, but it tasted pretty good to me...

Dublin

This weekend Emilie and I went to Dublin, marking my first visit to the soil of my Irish ancestors. We decided to take a Friday afternoon flight out and return early Monday morning, so we were able to benefit from having two full days for our visit.

If there was any question of where we were headed prior to boarding, it became overwhelmingly clear once we began to board. First there was the Aer Lingus plane, which was as Irish as you can get – covered in green with a shamrock on the tail – and then there was the purser: Sinead O’Neil.

We took a cab from the airport to the hotel and our cab driver was a bit of a trip. He had as thick of an Irish accent as you could imagine and I could barely understand a word that he was saying. He also seemed to have a preference for U.S. country music.

Our hotel was adjacent to St. Stephen’s Green, and after dropping off our stuff we walked to the nearby Temple Bar area to get some dinner. It felt a bit touristy, but we found a nice restaurant serving some traditional Irish food.

I went with the Fish and Chips, which turned out to be a perfect choice.

And we were both very original with our beverage choice: Guinness.

After dinner we wanted to experience a true Irish pub, so we headed to The Brazen Head -- the oldest pub in Dublin at nearly 1,000 years young. I can’t say that it really felt like an authentic pub given the size (I think it's definitely grown a bit over the years), but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

To finish off the night, we stopped at another pub – O’Shea’s. There were a couple of guys there playing traditional Irish music, which was a lot of fun to watch. And once again I decided on a Guinness. I guess that I just figured "When in Rome..."

Orchestra de la Suisse Italienne

 

Last night we went to see the Orchestre de la Suisse Italienne perform at Victoria Hall in Geneva. The venue was very nice and the following picture is one that I found online since the camera phone shots I took didn’t come out very well.

The performance included pieces by Mozart, Tchaïkovski and Beethoven, which all were very nice. While reading the program, I was reminded of a particularity of music performances in French-speaking countries – the use of solfège (think “do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do”) in the naming of the various pieces. So instead of reading the French equivalent of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A Major, instead it’s Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in La Major.

Driving School

This Sunday I had one of my more humbling (non-language-related) experiences in Switzerland. Emilie took me to a local parking lot to teach me how to drive her car, which is a manual transmission, and I proceeded to fail in nearly every sense of the word.

Manual transmission cars are pretty much the norm in Europe, and people over here look at you like you're some sort of weirdo if you don’t know how to drive stick. (Is it my fault that the majority of cars in the U.S. are automatics and that’s what I happened to learn on?) As such, I decided that it was finally time to learn. Plus, I think Emilie is ready for a break in being the chauffeur.

I’m not sure that I could have done a worse job given the number of times that I stalled and grinded the gears. While there was pretty much no one in the area, those who on occasion happened to pass by definitely looked at me as if they were wondering what in the world was going on.

And though I did make some improvement over the course of the hour-long lesson, it’s clear that I’ve got a long way to go before I try to brave the roads of Switzerland (particularly given that I need to start paying more attention to the traffic rules).

Les Soldes a Lyon

We’re currently in the middle of the soldes (sales) season in France, so Emilie planned a trip to Lyon yesterday for a day of shopping. I tagged along, but given my aversion to shopping I instead took the opportunity to see some sights in the city.

This was my second visit to Lyon as we had done the same day trip last year. It seemed like a completely different city in a way, though, given that the weather this time was warm and sunny as opposed to cold and snowing.

My first stop was the Fourvière Basilica, which requires a funicular ride from Vieux Lyon (old Lyon) to the top of Fourvière Hill. As with last year, the basilica was very impressive.

 

I particularly liked these statues...

And the view from the the top of the hill was very nice as well.

I then made the short walk to the nearby Roman Theater, which is the major remnant of the ancient Roman city of Lugdunum. I had intended to visit the theater during my first trip to Lyon, but literally hadn’t been able to find it due to the snowstorm. Fortunately, it was well worth the wait and seeing it during warm, dry weather probably added to the experience.

 

It turned out that there were actually two theaters. This is the smaller one.

The following were apparently the equivalent of Roman luxury boxes...

And here’s a view with the cathedral in the background.

After finishing up the theater visit, I took the funicular back down the hill to the old town and walked around for a bit by the river.
 

I then headed to the Presqu'île – the center of Lyon on the tip of the peninsula between the Rhône and Saône rivers. While I had seen much of this area during my initial visit, it looked / felt very different given the Spring-like clime.

Visit to Morez

Emilie and I visited her mom in Morez for the weekend. We went cross country skiing on Saturday and the conditions were pretty bad with very little snow. Despite the significant snowfall in early December, it has been a disappointing winter given the warm temperatures and sporadic precipitation.

We planned to do some more x-country on Sunday, but it rained all day so we stayed in. I can’t say that I minded the change in plans, though, particularly given that my body hadn’t recovered from Saturday’s trek. Instead we ended up playing some board games, including a Swiss game (it had tons of inflexible rules, not surprisingly) and the French version of Trivial Pursuit. Needless to say, I didn’t pose much of a threat in Trivial Pursuit.

New Year's in La Clusaz

For New Year's we spent the weekend in La Clusaz, which is a small a resort town about 50 miles south of Lausanne in the French Alps.

The snow conditions were pretty average but the weather on Saturday was great with sun and warm temps. Here are some pictures that I took on the mountain.

We were fortunate in that the slopes were pretty vacant. I think a lot of people had been there for the full week after Christmas and simply headed back home for the weekend.

On Saturday night we didn’t have dinner reservations and spent an hour walking around town trying to find a place that wasn’t “complet”. It’s a bit humbling to get denied from effectively every restaurant in such a small town. Eventually we lucked into a spot at a restaurant that had a second seating, albeit after spending an hour walking around outside in the cold.

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The weather on Sunday was a bit weird, with a thick fog-like cover at most elevations.

Once we cleared a certain altitude, though, it was completely sunny and we were surrounded by a sea of clouds.