The Book of Kells

Even though we are out of Ireland, and back in the UK I wanted to look back on a couple things in Dublin.

We spent only three full days in the city, but we packed in the sights. Immediately after stepping on Irish soil, we went to the Guinness storehouse. I highly recommend it. The beer there tastes unlike anywhere else in the world. Even better than the pubs just down the street. We did the Jameson tour as well, which might have been better than Guinness. Even though the whiskey isn't distilled at the site anymore, you get to go through the process with a guide who explains every little nuance. I even got a "golden ticket" to taste test Jameson against Glenfiddich and Jack Daniels. To be honest, the scotch tasted better but our guide made it clear we had to choose the Jameson as our favorite. 😉

Mandy convinced me to pay the €15 to go into the Trinity College Library which I resisted at first, but afterwards am so grateful she twisted my arm. Both of us are voracious readers and love spending time in book shops and libraries so I'm not sure why I didn't especially want to see this one (probably the entry fee). 

It was gorgeous. You first walk through an exhibit about the Book of Kells which is probably the most important Irish piece of writing. It's a work of art within itself. The first four gospels in Latin, it was written by monks in the 9th century on the island of Iona off the Atlantic coast and came to Trinity College in 1661. The concept of "old" here is so much more drastic than in the states. There are buildings built in 'modern' times that are older than the US. It's insane sometimes. 

So you walk through this exhibit and get to see enlargements of the book and then the book itself. No photography here AT ALL. This is such an important book. 

But after that you get to visit the Long Room Library. By law it is required to hold a printed copy of every British and Irish publication ever. So it houses over three million books. Most of the rare and old ones are held in the vault of course, but they bring them out every once in awhile to show the public. Handel's Messiah is housed there. The anniversary of Irish independence under King Brian was this year so they were showing books commending the Battle of Contar. Those were really old too. 

Confused by the organization of the books, we asked a security guard how they were arranged, and boy are we glad we did. His name was Benny, he's a base player with a special affinity for old books. We talked with him for about 45 minutes after he explained that the books are organized by size. BY SIZE. No Dewey decimal here. You have to look up the book by title and then it gives you the coordinates of its location on the shelves. Alphabetization isn't a thing. Just size.

You can see how the big books are on the bottom and get smaller as you go up.

So Benny gave us a great overview of how the library functions; still as a research resource for graduate students at Trinity. He also gave us pub recommendations which we unfortunately couldn't make it to, but it was cool to have the inside scoop of what's what in Temple Bar. 

I've been to quite a few libraries while I've been galavanting about, and Trinity library definitely has the best selection of books. But there are other amenities that are important in a good library. Here's a couple of the most interesting libraries/book stores I've encountered so far:

Light was a big thing in this one at the 

Rijks museum in Amsterdam. Every Dutch book published was housed there.

The Shakespere and Company bookstore in Paris is a famous expat hangout, where the employees actually live in the shop. You walk through the selection and there's a little bed behind a curtain tucked between two bookshelves. They had staff recommendations that were really interesting and I ended up buying a book that didn't even fit in my bag. I dumped my shampoo for it when I took the train to Bath... The things I do for books...

The public library in Cardiff was a center for the community.

There were restaurants beneath, and books categorized in Welsh and English, with awesome little nooks to read in. I actually spent some time in this library reading because Cardiff ended up being more of a shopping town than I realized, and I did not have the space to buy anything. 

Good old Foyles in London. It's the new store, right next to the flagship one in SoHo. I was super impressed by the collection here and they even had a DJ playing jazz remixes on the fiction floor! There were entire floors dedicated to different genres. The fiction one wrapped all the way around, and there was a music/entertainment, humanities, nonfiction, and a couple more floors. I didn't get to all of them because I was so distracted in the fiction and feminist sections.

The British Library was definitely the most impressive. They had a free exhibit of important books and accessories to history within the building. The Magna Carta was there, original manuscripts of Shakespeare, Leonardo DiVinci's journals, and Jane Austin's writing desk. 

The king's library is there too; not really sure what that entails but it's in an impressive glass case right in the center of the lobby.

I didn't make it to the National Library in Edinburgh because of the flu, and I was really disappointed since I heard it had some great collections. Next time!

Now that I have consistent wifi, I'm going to catch up on everything. So look out for a few posts in the next few days. If there's something you want to hear more of (or less about) or any kind of question, don't forget about the comments section below each posting. 

Cheers!