Believe it or not, as meandering as the stories can get here on the Ramble, we actually do try to keep an eye on the word count and also try to at least have a loose shape to the story of any given day or trip. Having been on the other end of plenty of disorganized or just plain boring vacation stories over the years, we try not to inflict those horrors on our friends. Sometimes we end up leaving things on the cutting room floor, so to speak, that in retrospect are stories that we think will stick with us. Here, then, are a couple of things we left out.
(Fun fact: since we don’t advertise or broadcast ourselves to the four corners, we probably know 80-90% of y’all personally. So, Hi!)
Back in 2012 we started off our honeymoon in Dublin. While we didn’t mention our hotel by name, it was The Westbury and it was just lovely. We loved its central location and being nestled into a kind-of-pedestrian area, plus the hotel itself was grand and they took care of a couple of American newlyweds splendidly. They took our bags off of us when we arrived early, and when we came back later to properly check in our luggage was already in our room, along with a bottle of champagne and serving of strawberries, by way of congratulating us on our nuptials.
Fast forward 13(!) years, and we’re back in Dublin on the tail end of our jaunt through the British Isles. Lisa has earmarked exactly one destination in the city for this trip: Cloth, a fabric store. Although honestly, calling Cloth a fabric store is kinda like calling the Vatican a church. I mean, yeah, but that’s a massive undersell. Cloth is small but exquisitely stocked, with knowledgeable staff willing to chat with you about any old thing, confident that eventually the talk will turn to textiles. (Another fun fact: they are the only supplier of Irish linen actually in Ireland. Although maybe that’s not so much a fun fact as a weird one.) So, on one of our free mornings we grab directions from Ye Olde Google and head out on a pleasant 15ish minute walk. Imagine our surprise when we saw where we had arrived.
That’s right, Cloth was literally attached to the Westbury in a shopping venue. Suddenly we are both full-on tripping down memory lane, going back and forth with “remember whens….?” and generally having a grand ole time. It was an unexpected delight that morning.
When we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, we also, almost as a matter of course, visited The Long Room. When we visited it back in 2012 it was full to bursting with books, being the college’s original library. While they had certainly expanded into a larger and more modern building, the Long Room continued to house older books of interest. Now, however, it was undergoing a massive renovation to catch up with current standards for preservation (humidity and temperature control for example.) The room no longer held any books at all and was mostly a historical curiosity as far as visitors were concerned. However, they had decided to make good use of the space by displaying the planet, in its entirety. Entitled “Gaia” by artist Luke Jerram, with the magic of modern tech it manages to project an accurate scale image of planet Earth onto a giant sphere; the image moves to give the illusion of the sphere rotating albeit faster than 1 revolution per 24 hours. It is a truly spectacular object to spend time with, and the frission of such a modern piece of art to be hanging in a 300+ year old library that smells of old wood and leather. Honestly we’d have bought a ticket if “Gaia” was the only thing we’d get to see.
