Well another early start as we left Galway to get back to Dublin.
On the way we stopped at Clonmacnoise. The town along the river Shannon was founded in the mid 6th century. St Cieran established the town around a monastry.
We visited the ruins of his cathedral and the grounds around which contains a lot of gravestones.
St Cieran was very clever and established this town along the river where it would be a key traffic site. Many people would cross the river at this site and the town benefited from trade. St Cieran also marketed this site very well and it was believed that if you were buried here then it would guarantee you sure passage into heaven. The big keymark cross was donated by a wealthy politician. He knew his deeds in politics were crooked so he tried to buy his way into heaven by donating this huge cross and guaranteeing his burial on this site.
Arrived back in Dublin around 2pm and had free time until 6pm when the coach was due to take us to our group farewell outing.
Decided to go visit the book of Kells which I had decided against when i arrived but it was raved about so it was off to Trinity College again....Then i visited the James Joyce centre. Dublin takes great pride in the literary accomplishments of their people. They have a heap of bridges the cross the River Liffey and they have named them after Irish writers such as Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) and James Joyce (Ulysses).
At night we were taken by bus to a pub just outside of Dublin. It was our tour group farewell dinner. There was live entertainment in the form of Irish dancers doing dances similar to Lord of the Dance. There was also some musicians. I'm starting to get to know some of the Irish songs and have really enjoyed hanging out in the pubs in Ireland listening to Irish music and having a drink... I still dont really like beer but found that I really liked an Irish cider called Bulmers.
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