My day began with an early morning shower before I headed downstairs for the advertised free breakfast. Apparently, this was a theme breakfast that they put together and the theme was "gulag". My meal consisted of two squashed hamburger buns, an orange juice and a coffee that I consumed while surrounded by the markedly spartan décor of a painted concrete basement while I sat at a shoddy old picnic table and listened to two Slavs (possibly Russian, I’m not sure) talking in another part of the room. I began to get the distinct feeling I had been deported to Siberia and this cheered me up immensely. I know it's going to be a good day when the weirdness gets started at breakfast.

I assembled a thin plan for walking which involved working my way north for a few sights before heading south for the majority of the points of interest. Dublin was described, in Let’s Go, of course, as an eminently walkable city, which is very good for me. I generally like to just walk around a city the first time I see it. To me, that seems like the best way to get acquainted with someplace I’ve never met. In this case, I met a city of red brick and mortar that was, for the most part, three or four stories tall. And, despite the wide boulevard running through its center, it had a close-quartered, tightly knit, working-class feel to it.

On my northern loop, I’m fairly certain I passed a few of the things I was looking for, though the lack of plain labels and my continuing lack of any idea of where I was made this a point on which I continue to be unsure. I diligently ignored my map, since the effort of finding where I’m going tends to detract from my ability to enjoy where I am. Philosophical baloney aside, I found myself at a park commemorating those fallen in the struggle for Irish freedom.

The park was a quietly pleasant location in the middle of a residential area. It was laid out with gardens on the outskirts conforming to the shape of a large, cross-shaped pool. Walking down the stairs into the park, I noticed the blue bottom of the pool was decorated at various points with a collage of ancient weapons: a shield, spear, swords and the like. Up the stairs above the top of the cross, a wall of masonry was emblazoned on one side with a paragraph in Gaelic and its English translation below (I can’t remember just what it said). In the center of the raised portion, directly in line with the vertical section of the cross, was a sculpture of men and women falling with birds soaring heavenward from their bodies. The symbolism was not hard to see. Neither was it hard to see that this was one God-awful, ugly statue.

Good Lord, does this thing suck.

I was trying not to laugh as I stared at this thing, but I could not suppress a smirk as I took in one hilariously hideous piece of sculpture. The lifeless bodies, in the act of falling down, were aesthetically oppressive by themselves, but the fact the artist decided to make geese the symbol of their spirits climbing into the sky was just too much. The disproportionately long necks, the ungainly, fat bodies, the lack of soaring grace in their demeanor: it was like the artist was trying to produce something campy. Maybe you have different ideas on this, but when I think of the spirit of freedom, I don’t think of birds that crap all over the lawn. It occurred to me that they may have been swans, but, let’s face it, when you think of swans, the first picture that pops into mind is not one of them in the air.

With my day becoming much funnier, I began my southerly course toward Trinity College. I followed the wide, divided avenue previously mentioned toward my next destination and took notice of a lineup of fountains and statues that dotted the sidewalk-lined divider in the center of the roadway. I crossed the river running through the city and managed to work my way over the College. On another side note, I passed Royal Liver Assurance just on the other side of the bridge. [Insert joke here. I couldn’t decide which one to use.]

Anyway, Trinity College is a lovely place. I entered through a large gate toward a sort of quad surrounded by academic buildings. It was the sort of calm serenity one expects from campus greens, in marked contrast to the bustle of people and cars outside its august walls. I followed a few signs toward my ultimate destination, that being the Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells, for those not aware, is actually a set of four books that are, collectively, the most famous example of medieval illuminated manuscript. Elaborate designs are found throughout the text, often relating the Bible story being told, but often just there for the purpose of allowing the artist to show off.

I purchased a ticket and entered a sort of gallery area explaining the book, how it was created, how it was bound, how it was painted, how long it took, how many artists worked on it, all that sort of thing. And, of course, there were enormous stills of some of the artwork contained within the Book of Kells. Quite remarkable stuff, it took me probably a good hour to soak it all up before I entered the room that held the actual book. The pages they chose to show were, indeed, impressive, some showing the very decorated pages, some just showing the scripting they used. The time, effort and skill that went into the design and decoration would be nothing short of epic, a point impressed very deeply into the psyche by a couple of pointlessly long and dull videos in the previously mentioned antechamber.

After that, the trail led into the Long Room, housing the Colonnades and probably my favorite room on this trip. To understand why, you would have to know that I happen to like books. I mean not just reading them. I like being around them, paging through them and seeing them arrayed shelf upon shelf in the libraries. And I love the smell of musty, stinky old books. While studying in the library (okay, studying period) was never my forte in college, I always enjoyed walking between the bookcases and glancing at the titles. I even enjoyed walking around the sections reserved for concrete analysis in German. The problem with this, of course, is that I cannot bring myself to actually get rid of books after I get them, which makes for several very heavy boxes of reading material every damn time I move. Anybody who has ever helped me move has commented on this fact, usually with a few expletives interjected.

The point of all this is that the Long Room is a 65-meter long, barrel-vaulted, two-story library with a hallway running down the center. The Colonnades is the term used to describe the ten-foot-tall shelves holding the, approximately, 200,000 books filling the outer sections of the room. The upper floor is open in the middle, allowing the folks on the first floor to gaze up at the shelves above. The books were obviously very old and they filled the room with the scent of centuries-old knowledge. I could have just sat on a bench breathing the air for an hour and been happy.

The display cases in the center of the room contained a rotating display and this particular iteration featured woodcuts of the Reformation. As expected, each shelf was abutted by a bust of some philosopher, scientist or writer (this seems to be a theme). There was an ancient harp in another display case of exactly the same type you see on the backs of Irish coins and the front of Harp beer bottles, as well as one of the dozen or so surviving copies of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The reason this proclamation was is famous was summed up in Trinity College’s website: "This signaled the start of the Easter Rising when it was read aloud by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office on 24 April 1916." This, of course, was another Irish attempt to overthrow the English rule, leading to Irish attempting to kill English, which led to English very successfully killing Irish, which led to another failed Irish revolt, which led to swans.

Travel tip: When visiting the Book of Kells, Long Room and Colonnades, get there early. By the time I exited, at not quite midday on a Wednesday, there was a line for tickets that stretched out the door and down at least half the length of the building.

From Trinity College, I headed up another street nearby to take in the conglomeration of shops that always seem to congregate on riverside streets near colleges in Dublin, Ireland. "You say you need a familial coat of arms? And one of those big hand drums? With a labyrinthine Celtic symbol in the middle? Sure, I can beat the price of the guy next door!" Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but it wasn’t far from that, either.

Another travel tip: When trying to get cash out of an Irish ATM, make sure the card you use one that is also a debit card. It will not accept a simple, non-major-credit-card-stamped piece of plastic. This was frustrating the hell out of me, because it had not occurred to me what the problem with my non-debit card could be and I had only a few punts on me.

After a trip back to the hostel for a traveler’s check, I returned to meandering. The walk to the hostel and back from the College that was roughly in the center of my map of Dublin consumed maybe thirty minutes, which should give you an idea just how easy it is to get around Dublin on foot. With that, I shall take a break and allow you folks a rest from reading.