Day #82: Dublin

Today we had to begin our trek home to Vienna. But first we spent the day in Dublin! We had breakfast in Galway and trained back to Dublin. I threatened to jump out the window and force my travel companions to tell the world I fell off the Cliffs of Moher and they never found me, while I spent the rest of my years in the Irish countryside around Galway, practicing on the organ at the cathedral and living off of my talent and Irish hospitality. I did get to hear the organ at the Galway cathedral, by the way - we visited it yesterday and  there was an organ concert going on. So I got to hear the organ - the organist was very talented! He played a piece that was based on Psalm 33, which I plan to research a little more when I have more free time. It was one of those modern, dissonant but cool dissonant pieces. 

When we first arrived in Dublin we dropped our bags off at our hostel, then we attempted to find the tomb of the venerable Matt Talbot, a holy man who was a reformed alcoholic. But the church his tomb was supposedly in was locked, so we couldn't go inside. Our next stop was the Irish Writers Museum, where we learned about James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and other Irish writers. They also had the chair that Handel sat in when they first performed his Messiah, which was first performed in Dublin at Christ Church. The museum also had an exhibit of several paintings by the artist Jonathan Barry, who has done several illustrations for some very famous books from The Chronicles of Narnia to The Lord of the Rings to the Sherlock Holmes novels. They were excellent. I loved his illustrations for Sherlock Holmes. 

We wanted to see if we could go to a vigil Mass at the cathedral rather than rushing back for Mass the next day, so we set out to find St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. As we approached the cathedral we noted an advertisement for a concert of St. John's Passion by J.S. Bach being performed the next day - naturally, the day we were gone! :-P BUT, when we asked about Mass, which was at 6 pm, the gentleman told us that they were rehearsing the Passion in the cathedral right then. So we snuck into the church, took a back pew, and I got to listen to about an hour and a half of the rehearsal, which was fabulous! The musicians and the singers were very talented! I really hope I can see the St. John's Passion performed some day! Perhaps in Vienna... The music for the Vigil Mass was interesting. I've heard that that the Catholic Church in Ireland is going through a situation similar to that in the U.S. right now, which was noticeable. They did the Kyrie in Gaelic, though, which was interesting. And then some of their hymns I could have sworn I was listening to Celtic Women - hopefully not... But it was neat to have had the opportunity to go to Mass there, and at the end of Mass the organist played Bach's Prelude and Fugue in a minor, which was AWESOME!!!! 

Day #80 : The Cliffs of Moher

Today we went on another bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher. We were originally going to take a boat out onto the ocean to see the Cliffs from the water, but we learned that the train we needed to take to get there on time for our boat ran only during the summer. In addition, the train back would leave at 1:45, giving us only an hour and a half at the Cliffs. So we had to change our plans, and fortunately our lovely hostel was able to help us get a tour to the Cliffs. The tour took us past a couple castles and an abandoned church or two on the way, so we figured it was worth it.
Whereas Connemara was lots of mountains and sheep, this tour took us to see the Burren, a limestone landscape covering 320 square km. The first stop was a fairy circle, the Ballyalban Fairy Fort, a prehistoric ring-fort or ancient farmers homestead, home to fairies and/or little people. It's a lot of bare rock, really, with short grass growing up in between. Our next stop we saw a portal tomb called the Gleninsheen Wedge Tomb - a tomb that looks like a stone table of some sort.  We got to see an abandoned church called the Kilfenora Cathedral and Crosses, also known as "The City of Crosses" because of the abundance of Celtic Crosses that adorn the 6th century monastery. In the cemetery I found several familiar names: O'Briens, O'Donohues, Mcmahon, and Walshe. :-)
We stopped at Doolin for lunch, then we drove for about fifteen minutes to the Cliffs themselves. I must say that the Cliffs of Moher are probably one of the most beautiful thing I have seen - I think I would almost put it on par with the mountain and the hermitage in Assisi. The weather was gorgeous the entire day, and the sun was gleaming on the waters. The Cliffs were stark, darkly contrasting with the blue of the water. You could hear the distant, constant roar of the waves crashing against the rocky walls. The foam from the waves gleamed white. The sunlight danced on the water, dazzling the eye. The seagulls floated through the mist rising off the water like fairies in an enchanted glen, making the cliffs seem all the more magical. There was a harpist set up on the walkway, playing in the background, adding to the mood. I drew a sketch of her, and a sketch of the Cliffs - this one wasn't very good, I fear, but I hope to do a better one when I have a photograph to look off of when I return home. There was a tower called the O'Brien's Tower one could climb for two euro to get a better view of the Cliffs - if that were even humanly possible. I wonder if the O'Brien's who built the tower or inhabited it are a distant relation? I prayed a Chaplet of Divine Mercy at the top of the tower, and the fourth movement of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri Cantata came to mind : "Surge, amica mea, speciosa mea, et veni: columba mea in foraminibus petrae, in caverna maceriae." -Song of Songs 2:13-14. This translates, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff." Perfect, no? I bought an Irish crucifix made out of turf at the gift store. It's very simple, but it had a person at the base of the cross embracing the wood, which I really liked, and I thought it would be a nice memory along with the Cliffs.
We stopped along the way back to Galway to see the shoreline, then we returned to our hostel. Tonight I think we are going to browse the streets in search of a traditional Irish pub with traditional Irish music. Tomorrow we are exploring Galway!