I’ve been watching Long Way Down (I have a sad love of Ewan McGregor) and his travels have got me thinking about my own.  And I’ve discovered the little moments I remember most usually involve me sitting on the ground.

For some reason there’s something about sitting on the ground in a foreign place that  just allows you to soak up the place (it’s best not to think about the logistics of that).  Two moments in Italy in particular stick out for me –

1) Sitting under a tree on a small patch of grass in Verona, a few blocks from “Julliet’s” tomb, downloading an album on my ipod (my friends say this image should be an ipod touch/iphone commercial), soaking up the sun and picking tiny wild flowers.

2) St Mark’s Square Venice.  Completely knackered at the end of a long day of walking around Venice, I just parked myself against a pillar and waited for the rest of the gang to show up.

Just sitting in these places, sitting on the ground, as if I was part of the buildings and the stone and the grass, was brilliant.

I don’t have as strong moments like this from Ireland.  Maybe because I always sat on steps or the like, never truly on the ground. Probably because I wasn’t alone as much as I was in Italy.

But I highly reccommend sitting on the ground when you travel.

Or: The Longest Book Ever.

Okay, I may be exaggerating a touch, but it really feels like I’ve been reading this book forever.  I started it over Christmas — it seemed the ideal situation, with lots of time spent in airports.  At 779 pages (not that I uh….) you would have thought I’d have finished it a lot faster than I did.  The Princes of Ireland is one of those books that you read in bunches or spurts, not really all at once.  And it’s perfectly structured for this type of reading.

The book follows the stories of various families and their descendants over hundreds of years, specifically 430 – 1533.  Each section of the book covers roughly a generation.  It’s wonderfully set up that way, as you can read the stories of one generation and leave the book for a while, not really needing to remember the exact plot lines because you’re starting over with the next generation.

It also keeps your attention.  You go into just enough depth in each section to care about the  characters and really want to know what happens to them, but the story never gets bogged down in the tiny details.  Rutherford paints the stories of each family with broad brush strokes, and I am grateful for that.  Some authors really don’t know where the strength of their story lies.

And with The Princes of Ireland (also known as Dublin: Foundation) the strength is in the history.  A stagger work of historical fiction, this book explores not just families over generations, but the changes over time in the city of Dublin itself.  I’m not normally a big fan of historical fiction — ironic considering how much of it I’ve been reading lately — but this captured me because of my trip to Ireland two years ago.  It’s incredibly cool to be able to follow the story and know exactly where the author is talking about.  It helps, of course, that while the characters are generally fictional, Rutherford’s picture of Dublin over the centuries is based on much historical research.

Highly reccommended if you enjoy historical fiction, or even just irish history.  Just know that there’s no rushing this book, it takes its time.  And actually, the story isn’t even finished.  There’s book two in the saga “The Rebels of Ireland”.  It’s sitting on my to-be-read shelf right now.  There is, after all, almost 6 centuries more of Irish history to cover.

So last year when I was in Ireland I visited Trinity College Library in Dublin. While there I saw the Book of Kells and the Long Room.

Oh the Long Room. This place is clearly the inspiration for the Jedi Archives in Episode II: A Horrible, Horrible Movie.

I totally geeked out when I was there — and not just because of the Star Wars thing (although that was pretty huge). But man is this place a real library. The kind you can sink into.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of it, because pictures were not allowed.

But it was BRILLIANT.

The Jedi Archives

Trinity College Library