Hallelujah! Spring Break!

Hallelujah on Fishamble Street

Well, Judy and I decided that we would return to the Anglophone world for our spring break, and so we booked some cheap Ryanair flights: Rome to Dublin, Dublin to Manchester, and Rome to Perugia, with a visit to Lytham-St. Annes and Oxford by train.

Let's start with Dublin: We arrived in the middle of some Rugby madness that I couldn't quite understand, maybe England vs. Ireland, or Italy vs. Ireland. The plane was filled with raucous Italian teenagers who never stopped talking and never sat down, and this was after a three-hour wait at the Ciampino Airport check-in counter. But in Dublin a stranger gave us her left-over bus pass and we were on our way to the George Frederick Handel Hotel on Fishamble Street -- yes! -- near the spot where GFH premiered Messiah. Hallelujah!Dublin seems like a fun place, at least where we were staying, and we wallowed in meat, potatoes, beer and Irish music. High points? Lamb Boxty at Gallagher's Boxty House, Sliotar at The Porterhouse, "The Class" at the Irish Film Institute, a bus ride to the Irish coast and Malahide Castle. But I must concede that my personal favorite was the statue of William Edward Hartpole Lecky, the eminent 19th Century Irish historian, on the campus of Trinity College. (Of course, I had no idea who this guy was until I googled him.) I really liked the comfortable pose he strikes in this statue -- so relaxed!!!