Entries about churches

Today we had a somewhat relaxed day. We slept in a bit and then walked to the university to do the self-guided tour. The walk to the university took us through Greyfriars Kirkyard, which is an interesting place. It feels exactly like the stereotypical "spooky graveyard." Tom Riddle is buried here, as well as other people whose names were used by J.K. Rowling for characters in the Harry Potter books.

While we were walking through the graveyard we saw a girl gathering sticks. We weren't sure why she was doing it, but it seemed like she was intent on creating a significant pile of sticks in her arms. Then as we passed the church associated with the kirkyard, we saw her add her pile of sticks to this pile that already existed in front of the gravestone of Greyfriars Bobby, the dog who sat faithfully on his master's grave. Later on in the day we saw a plaque stating that a local pub owner had trained Bobby to come to his pub at one o'clock (at the sound of the one o'clock gun) and get a meat pie. It seems that the community here loved Bobby when he was alive and still loves him now that he is gone.

At the university. The weather was drizzly and cold but not raining too hard when we set out, but it started to rain more as we kept exploring.

Daniel at the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology.

Us in front of George Square. Many of the university's buildings surround this square.


A lot of famous people once lived in these houses, including Eric Liddell (a University of Edinburgh alumnus and the inspiration for and main character in Chariots of Fire), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (also an alumnus), and Sir Walter Scott (also an alumnus).

It was raining pretty heavily so we went into a Chinese restaurant across from the university for lunch.

We went back to our room for a bit, then went out again as it was getting dark to see if we could buy a gown and hood for the graduation at Ede and Ravenscroft. We had hired a gown and hood, but would prefer to have one to keep from the original ceremony. Ultimately, we were able to buy a gown but not a hood. We will have to order the hood later. The Ede and Ravenscroft salesperson was very helpful, and explained to us also that the royal family uses their services for their ceremonies. The Edinburgh shop is not especially involved in the upcoming coronation, but the London shop is. It was a beautiful walk down to the shop in "New Town" Edinburgh.

The university's "new college" which is near the castle. Historically it exists because of a schism within the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Now it is part of the university and appears to be mostly used by the School of Divinity.

Some kind of carnival in New Town.

A dark and ominous-looking staircase that is actually a part of a system of staircases that constitute a shortcut between where we are staying and the castle.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was tapas from a Spanish restaurant nearby. They were delicious and, although different from the traditional American Thanksgiving, had a similar feeling due to the wide variety of foods available.

A view of our walk home. It was a wonderful and relaxed day, and we can't wait for graduation tomorrow!

Today, Katie and Anthony had to fly back home. We got ready a little bit earlier to take them to the airport, but thankfully their flight was at a reasonable time and we were able to have a nice breakfast. Daniel prepared one of our pineapples from the plantation tour, and Katie and Anthony went on a walk and returned with malasadas (Portuguese doughnuts) from a nearby bakery. We had a nice breakfast, then helped them pack and drove to the airport. We had lunch at the same food truck court as we did on our first day, then dropped them off at the airport. Although we are excited about our next few days here, we were sad to see them go. We had a lot of fun snorkeling, hiking, and playing cards with them. It has been a wonderful trip so far.

After dropping them off, we decided to see the town of Paia. It was an interesting little town, but seemed to consist of nothing but women's clothing shops. Eventually we found a souvenir shop where we got a print of three sea turtles.
We also found a shave ice place. Catherine got blue vanilla and fruit punch, and Daniel got "mounds," which consisted of coconut flavoring, chocolate syrup, and macadamia nut ice cream. After we finished there, we decided to go to a wine tasting at a winery that Daniel had heard about. They use Maui Gold pineapples for some of their wine, and have tastings in a building that was used as a residence by King David Kalakaua, who wrote the book Daniel is reading. It was towards the other side of the island, along the southern slopes of Haleakala, so we had to drive a little ways.

Holy Rosary Church in Paia. It is a very beautiful church. We just happened to drive past it, but we decided to stop in and take a look. It was completely open, and there were a couple other people visiting it as well.

Outside of the church is a shrine to St. Damian of Molokai. There is a great deal of interest in, and devotion to, this saint in Hawaii for his selfless care of the people suffering from leprosy who were housed in a colony on the island of Molokai. As we continued our way, we came upon...

...another church! This one is amazing. It is called Holy Ghost Church, and is built in a unique octagonal style. It was the parish for the Portuguese community, who traditionally have a great devotion to the Holy Ghost.

Pictures of the inside of the church. There is a beautiful altar, and the Stations of the Cross were carved in Europe and have inscriptions in Portuguese. The information book inside the church suggested that the octagonal shape was either based on the design of the original crown of St. Elizabeth (or Isabella) of Portugal, or simply that it was architecturally strong in the high winds the area gets.

The dome.

The view from the church.

As we drove into Upcountry Maui, we started encountering mist and this verdant landscape, complete with rock walls. If it weren't for the heat and the lava rocks used for the rock walls, we would have thought we were in Ireland!

Some views of the beautiful winery. It was a perfect place to go: it was cooler than the lower areas of the island, and the wind was more like a pleasant breeze. There were several interesting trees and other plants, and the setting was so incredibly different from the rest of the island that we've seen.

This land belonged in the 1800s to Captain Makee, from Boston. He was friends with King Kalakaua, who at one point was his guest. It was seen as inappropriate for the king to stay in a house with commoners, so a cottage was built for the king's use on their land. This is the house, and this circle of statues sits on the stumps of the trees that ringed Kalakaua's hula grounds, where dancers would perform while he and guests watched from the porch.

The small museum at the tasting room. The pictures show the entire story of the lands, from the first purchase by the Captain, to the King's stay, to the use of Maui wine at President Reagan's inauguration, to the present day. It was a fascinating story. They had a complimentary tasting, and we purchased a bottle of the pineapple wine.

We had a wonderful time! Afterwards, we went back to the hotel, then got ready to go to dinner and watch the sunset in Lahaina. We went to an Italian restaurant, which had delicious pizza and bruschetta. The pictures of the sunset seem unbelievable, but they look exactly like what we actually saw. After dinner, we walked around Lahaina a bit, then stopped at a grocery store to prepare for our drive to Hana tomorrow morning!

We woke up very early, but we rested a bit longer and ended up getting up around seven. We went downstairs and found breakfast in the kitchen. Our host asked if we had everything we needed. We had a delicious breakfast of scones, toast, tea, and orange juice. It was very good. We had the hop on-hop off pass, and so we decided to walk to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and start our tour.

On our way we walked through the grounds of St. Mary's Catholic Church, which we can see from our room. It's a beautiful building, so we stepped inside to see it. It's over 200 years old.

Dublin has a tradition of brightly-colored doors all over the city. On our walk, we saw many of them. They are usually dark and solid-colored. Red, blue, and yellow seem to predominate.

Because we already had a tour booked at the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, and it was getting late, Catherine suggested that we take a taxi rather than walk. We found two taxis resting nearby. The one sitting behind the other had a visible driver, the other did not. We approached the one behind, and the driver (an older Irishman) told us that he could only take us if the driver ahead of him couldn't. We approached the other car and found that the driver was lying down in his seat talking on the phone. He agreed to take us. He seemed to be from Poland, but he didn't talk much so we didn't learn much about him. He also didn't want to drive in the chaos near Trinity, so he dropped us towards the back. We toured Trinity, which was a fairly quick but interesting tour. It included a lot of information about famous people who had studied or taught there. We were near a group of people from Oregon. They were loud and they knew everything. The young man said that he was going to go to college to study beetles. Catherine now describes the condition of being a noisy know-it-all as "beetle mania."

We saw the Book of Kells, which was amazing. We didn't take pictures because the signs were ambiguous about whether or not it was allowed, and the entire book is available to view online anyway at the Trinity College website. It is amazing to see how well the colors and script have held up over the 1200 years since it was made. We then went to the Long Room of the library. Daniel described it as the most beautiful building he's ever seen. The books are beautiful as is the construction of the building.

This tour couldn't have happened without Catherine's suggestion to take a taxi. We got on the next bus and headed for Teeling's.

Teeling is a new distillery. It opened in 2015, and is the first distillery to be built in Dublin in over a century. The Teeling family, however, has been distilling since 1792. The founders of this distillery are the sons of John Teeling, who founded an independent distillery called Cooley and then sold it to a larger corporation. He kept a million barrels, which his sons are using to get the distillery started. Their logo is a phoenix, which is associated with Dublin (Phoenix Park, etc) and represents their industry rising from the ashes (literally... one reason why distilling ended in Dublin was a huge distillery fire.)

The distilling room tour was fascinating. The process is complex, but basically boils down to making beer, then distilling it. At present, because their distillery is new, they haven't produced any actual whiskey there yet. They do market some of the unaged spirit as poitín, or Irish moonshine.

The copper pot stills are named after Jack Teeling's daughters.

The tour guide explained how whiskey is aged in barrels that have had other things in them. Rum barrels, red wine barrels, bourbon barrels, etc. Teeling Single Malt apparently ages in all of these barrels and more.

They gave samples for an organized tasting. We tried three of their whiskers and a cocktail. Catherine really liked the summer cocktail. We also tried a (small) amount of their poitín so that we could say we tried poitín.

We had lunch at the Teeling's cafe. It was delicious. Then, having tried poitín, we were off to the gaol.

The bus coming to take us to Kilmainham.

Kilmainham Gaol (jail) is a very dismal looking building. It was a British prison that originally housed men, women, and children. During the Famine prison food was coveted and so incarceration rates went up.

The Catholic chapel at the gaol. This is where Joseph Plunkett (a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising) married Grace Gifford hours before his execution.

Many famous people were held at Kilmainham, including most of the leaders of the rising. It is interesting to see their cells.

Grace Gifford Plunkett's cell is especially interesting. She was held here for supporting the anti-treaty forces during the Civil War. She drew this image of the Virgin Mary then.

All of these leaders of the Rising were executed by firing squad at the site where this cross stands.

Except James Connolly, who had not been imprisoned at Kilmainham and was brought in through the other gates.

The tour guide noted that Eamon de Valera was held in Kilmainham for approximately 20 years, cumulatively. He returned in the sixties as President of Ireland to open it as a museum.

The serpents over the door represent the "Five Capital Crimes": murder, rape, treason, larceny, and piracy (though when we were trying to remember them Catherine suggested "wearing socks with sandals" as one of them.

Catherine's favorite Dublin door.

Going by the bus drivers' information we thought the Guinness brewery would be open until 7. When we arrived, we found they closed at 6. We asked the cashier for a dinner recommendation, and she suggested Arthur's pub. We went there and it was perfect: we had soup, brown bread, and apple pie for dessert. It seemed like a perfect Irish meal.

Some pretty churches on our walk back to Ballsbridge.

A statue of the Virgin Mary with the Dylan Hotel in the background. We came back to our room and rested, then wrote this blog post. Tomorrow: Tara, Newgrange, and Donegal!