Wednesday 25 June 2014

The 6 day trip to Ireland - Dublin (Day 5 early afternoon) - Christ Church Cathedral - The 14th of June 2014


We walked along Dame street heading towards the Dublin castle into Lord Edward street so as to reach the Christ Church Cathedral we knew to be celebrating the Dublin Garden festival over the weekend.













 



Because of it the churchyard was filled with little stalls and seen from a distance it very much looked like a medieval fair was going on. Products of all sorts were being sold, namely home made jams, assorted cakes,  strawberries, several handicraft artefacts could be seen in display and to our surprise even falcons and owls.

























The Cathedral's entrance fee had been doubled because of the flower exhibition festival but Jenie and I decided we would nevertheless visit it, not only because it is considered one of the city's finest buildings founded by the Hiberno-Norse and later rebuilt by the Anglo-Normans but also because there was some curiosity on our part as to what it would look like with the garden-like decorations.

They stamped our hands upon entering the main hall so as to allow us to walk in and out during the day if we felt like it.

I wanted to focus on the architecture said to to be  of an intriguing blend of 12th and 13th century material alongside exactingly recreated Victorian Gothic features but I couldn't with the number of trees, flower beds and decorations almost everywhere.


















































































We ventured onto the medieval crypt, said to be one of the largest in either Britain or Ireland, but also the oldest structure in Dublin. It stretched under the entire church but it looked more like a  fair ground where quite a few ladies were selling things. We had to ask some of those ladies to kindly move so we would take some pictures of the statues, especially the ones of Charles I and Charles II (who looked so alike that not even the old ladies could say who was who).














Once back up I walked around for a while taking some pictures and wondering what it must have been like during the Medieval times when Sitric was the Danish King of Dublin and this was a major pilgrimage site in that period.
 





































 

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