Ann vs. Jason

Ann has been writing about recent adventures with Athena but I’ll pick up from where I left off, visiting Dublin. One of the most popular attractions in Dublin is the Book of Kells, a 1200-year old illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels. I’m a bit of a history geek but I had heard that going to see the book was a bit disappointing for some people – standing in line for a long time and paying 9 euro to see two pages of one book isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

On Sunday I met up with my friend Tilek and we decided to head over to Trinity College and take a look around. It turned out that you can do the campus tour and see the book for just one euro more. The tour, given by a recent grad, was very entertaining. Let me pose the same question he gave us – what word would you use to describe the color of the clock in the photo below?

– 02-May-2010

Our tour guide had posed the question to tourists from all over the world, and no matter what language they spoke, the answer was basically equivalent to “sky blue.” Except in Dublin, where residents are more likely to see the clocks than the blue sky, and therefor it is known as “Trinity blue.”

The Book of Kells really is an amazing piece of artwork, but so is the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College. With it’s carved woodwork and high barrel-vaulted ceiling it’s like a cathedral of the written word.

Afterward we decided to head up north on the DART to Howth, a hilly peninsula on the end of Dublin Bay, and do a bit of hiking along the cliffs. The weather went from cold and gray to sun and bitter cold, but the view of the sea and the coast made it all worth it.

– 02-May-2010

– 02-May-2010

I neglected to bring my polarizer which would have helped with the glare coming off the sea from the evening sun. You can see some photos that did come out in the gallery below.

I got some much better photos the next night, walking along the Grand Canal back to my hotel. The canal was once a major freight and passenger route, but now it’s mostly used as a linear park wrapping around the older parts of the city. The locks are maintained and canal boats still ply the waterway for dinner cruises.

– 03-May-2010

– 03-May-2010

With well-lit streets on either side and calm, flat water it’s a great place to take photos as the light fades into dusk.

– 03-May-2010

– 03-May-2010

I had a lot of fun taking long exposures of the canal boats, headlights streaking by, and even joggers crossing in front of me. I didn’t get back until quite late.

– 03-May-2010

– 03-May-2010

The canal itself isn’t very large – the common joke is that it’s not particularly grand – and it actually reminded me a bit of the Ohio and Erie Canal near Cleveland, since both are maintained now as urban (or suburban) parks.

The rest of the photos can be found here:

By Jason

I recently spent two weeks in Dublin, Ireland working with our team there.  After work and on weekends I had time to explore the city, alone and with friends, and later Ann joined me for a little bit of traveling through the countryside too.  I didn’t have time during the trip to send out an update but I wanted to share some photos and impressions of the country.  This may be the first in a series of posts (depending on how long Athena is napping).

Between cramming as much into my two weeks at work as possible and the time zone mismatch with the Mountain View office, I found myself at work pretty late most days.  I know this sounds completely unreasonable, but we don’t have dinner service at this office.  All jokes aside I was really surprised – dinner is one perk that Google definitely gets its money’s worth out of.  It’s much easier to stick around and finish a project when you know you can just grab dinner in the cafe – I wonder if anyone has ever calculated the total value in extra working hours this generates?  

In any event, this was good because it meant I had to wander around and try lots of different restaurants.  Being tied up during the day also meant I ended up taking a lot of long-exposure photos at night, which was fun.  Here’s a picture of the new Samuel Beckett bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava:

– 29-Apr-2010

– 29-Apr-2010

Here’s a view down the River Liffey toward the city center:

– 29-Apr-2010

Brick streets and low bridges near the Google office:

– 29-Apr-2010

For more photos of the bridge check out this album:

Unfortunately for my cholesterol level, most food I encountered in Dublin was either red meat, fried, or covered in cheese (or all three).  It was also very hard to find a sandwich that did not have mayonnaise on it. When I ordered a sandwich and asked for no mayo they looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.  Luckily my friend Elif knew of a healthy vegetarian restaurant, Cornucopia and I went with her, Manuel and Juan:

– 29-Apr-2010

The area around the Google office, the Docklands, is a good introduction to the city – there’s a dynamic mix of old and new, with new glass buildings wrapped around rehabbed brick warehouses next to rows of small working-class Georgian houses. This area used to be a pretty rough part of town but was hit big by the building boom of the last decade. One of my favorite juxtapositions was the curving steel-and-glass backdrop of the new rugby stadium, Aviva Stadium:

– 30-Apr-2010

Another fascinating nearby building is the Gasworks Apartments – in this case, the building itself is a mix of old a new, apartments built within the red steel frame of an old gasometer. You can see it in these photos, peeking behind the “hobbit houses” and partially silhouetted by the evening sky:

– 30-Apr-2010

– 30-Apr-2010

I stayed at the Grand Canal Hotel, just a short walk from the office. More about the Grand Canal (the waterway) in a later post. I had to include this photo of Matthew and Mariya laughing as Marcel relates the greatest story of the triumph of capitalism of all time. It involves long-lost relatives, record players that automatically change disks, Skippy Peanut Butter, and, I kid you not, Chuck Norris.

– 30-Apr-2010

My first weekend I spent Saturday wandering around the city center with Chris. By the way, you should check out his photos of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland – amazing. My favorite spot was the Chester Beatty Library, located on the grounds of Dublin Castle. It’s not a huge museum, but the collections and the exhibit of Chinese painting and drawing were fascinating.

Dublin Castle itself isn’t very exciting. Additions have been added over time – there’s a medieval tower, wrapped in a gothic chapel, connected to neoclassical buildings and a large, primary-colored section that I can only assume is in the Playmobil school of design. Altogether it doesn’t quite work. We didn’t spend much time there, instead wandering through the city over to the City Center and back through Temple Bar.

– 01-May-2010

More photos around Dublin, including some shots of the city from the 7th floor balconies at work:

This was a tough trip in some ways because I had never been away from Athena for so long before. Thank goodness for things like Skype and Google Video Chat.

More coming soon.