Christmas in Ireland

Maybe not what you would expect to see when you read the title of this post. I took the above picture in the walled garden next to Malahide castle on December 27th. It was an extremely windy day and we had a lot of rain. It was also cold and we spent most of the time indoors looking at old furniture in the castle and souvenirs in the Avoca shop.

Playing with HDR. The church is next to Malahide castle.

When we came back and I showed Lee Ann this and some of my other Malahide pictures, she couldn't believe I had taken them that day. Because the wind was blowing so hard, it would rain one minute and then, for a few seconds, we would get blue sky with clouds drifting very quickly.

Malahide castle

For the holidays we had James, Anika, and Jessie, a childhood friend of Anika's, here. The two Js had never been to Ireland so we tried to show them a little bit of Dublin and the surrounding area. This is not the best time of the year to visit -- we had to wait out a bunch of rain and storms -- but we nevertheless got some sightseeing and some cultural events in.

Anika

Jessie

Lee Ann and James

The picture of Castle Rag (and here) is sort of an accident. We went to Naas to see Jigginstown Castle because a book Lee Ann got for Christmas had a cool picture in it. But it was surrounded by a fence and scaffolding. From the looks of it, only some of the brick walls survived. Not even worth taking a picture. The one in the book was from the inside, where we could not get to.

Castle Rag near Naas.

In a field next door was the much cooler and older Castle Rag. It seems that used to be a common type of dwelling at the periphery of The Pale (beyond which things get really bad.)

St. Patrick's cathedral

On Sunday before Christmas we went to St. Patrick's cathedral to attend a service. (Check out the 3-D view on the bottom of their page!) I don't usually do that sort of thing voluntarily but this was a sung service by the cathedral's choir. We were there an hour early and had good seats near the front by the choir. It was pretty neat.

Christ Church cathedral

But, we did even more culture! We saw the film Moon Man at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) and went into the medieval crypt of Christ Church cathedral for a Christmas market and to look at the exhibits; including the cat and the rat which, during a chase, got trapped in one of the organ pipes and were later found mummified. The Moon Man movie is visually very imaginative, but not exactly a thriller, even though it has marching armies and space ships in it. The Secret of Kells was better.

Coach House of Dublin Castle

We also saw the Chester Beatty library, next to Dublin Castle, which is very interesting.

Bective Abbey

From the back

On a brief trip to Kells we stopped at the almost 900 year old Bective Abbey which is often overlooked by tourists but well worth a visit. Of course, we also did Grafton Street and other touristy parts of Dublin's city center such as the George's Street Arcade. And we ate our share of Irish food in places like Bewley's Oriental Cafe, the Winding Stair, and O'Neill's.

The Winding Stair

My pictures are here and here.