Our Last Day - Dublin

It came all too quickly. We knew that once the plane rides started, our trip was soon to be over. Thus it was that when Ben and I got up Monday morning (a crazy idea) to catch our plane ride to Dublin, it was to be over in two short days. Dublin was, therefore, the place that I remembered our entire trip. We didn't plan to see much in Dublin (as compared to our first day in London), so it was easy to realize that this was indeed our last stop in Europe. Thankfully, these thoughts did not make me sad, but grateful for the time I was able to spend with Ben and in Europe.
Enough said. Here are some pics of where we went.

Inside Dublin Castle's walls.

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Throne made for King George IV in 1822.

It's hard to see in this picture (it was hard to see in person also), but this chandelier is made of roses (symbolising England), thistles (symbolising Scotland), and shamrocks (symbolising Ireland).

St. Patrick's Hall

A cool story about this room. This room is called St Patrick's Hall, as it was built to be used by the Order of St Patrick (an attempt by the English king to unite the Irish nobles under England's name). After the Irish War for Independence (1918-1922), the Irish wanted to do was at with all things that tied them to the UK. In the early 1930s, the debate for the absolute demolition of this gorgeous room came to the floor. The president of the time was completely adamant...that it could NOT be destroyed. His argument was that Ireland needed to learn to turn the pages of history, not rip them out. If Ireland forgot why it had taken its independence (by the removal of such memorials), then their work was in vain. As it was, he won the debate, and St Patrick's Hall remains the inauguration site of Ireland's presidents and a banquet/reception hall for foreign dignitaries (including Queen Elizabeth in 2011). There, that's probably more history than you wanted to know...so let's move on.

Ben and I have a strange obsession with colleges...this one is Trinity College.

This is the Long Room (at Trinity College), which houses 200,000 of the college library's oldest books. It has had multiple expansions since it's creation in 1732.

St Patrick's Cathedral. Over to the right is a pool where it is believed St Patrick baptised Irish converts.

Inside St Patty's.

These banners are those of the knights of the Order of St Patrick.

St Patrick's (again) from the outside.

A beautiful sunset

This picture is not so much in Ireland...in fact, it's about 6,000 miles away. This is fifteen minutes or so outside of landing back home in Portland. The flight home was interesting. We left Dublin at about 12:10 pm, and arrived home at 9:30 pm the same day...but about 17 hours later. A nice, long flight followed by a good night's rest ended our European journey.

I had loads of fun on this trip with Ben. Though there were some times that we had different ideas on what a day was to look like, it was overall a very pleasant trip.