Wendy's Blog

When we were looking for a place to live last year, I came across this little gem.

I didn’t know Dublin had these. The only place I have heard of these type of building conversion is Vienna. It’s beautiful. I love these converted industrial looking buildings.

Basically the building used to be a gas holder (or gasometer) build in the late 1800’s. Instead of demolishing the holder frame, they just build an apartment building inside of it, which I thought is an awesome idea.

Because of the dog, the Mr didn’t want to live in an apartment. His theory is that it would be a pain on the butt to take the dog out for a pee at night. Which is ironic, because the dog is scared of the stairs in this house so we have to carry him up and down the stairs anyways!

I have always wanted to visit this building. It just look so cool! I had planned to go to a lecture at the Dublin City Gallery (I made the effort to book and everything!) but I missed it. I thought I could get on the train and get there at 11:00am. I totally mis-calculated.

Instead of turning back and coming home I decided to go look for the Gasworks. After consulting my phone (I don’t know what I would without it!) I was able to navigate back into DART and get off at the Grand Canal Station.

The track is above the water.

It’s surreal at the station because it’s like walking into Google Complex. As soon as you get out of the station you see at least 3 building with the Google sign and there are people walking around with their laptops and google badges.

I was a little worried because I didn’t exactly know where the building is. Even with the phone guiding me where to go, I still get lost.

So as I was wondering around, I looked up and there it was. It is really hard to miss!

Here are some shots. It is truly a beautiful building.

Christ Church, my last stop of the so far awesome Culture Night. It is totally worth the wait. Sure I could have done the self guide audio tour, but it is always nicer have a guy who knows the place taking you around.

I was a bit early, and the signing was now over but I took a video for you all to hear the pretty choir of Christ Church.

Here’s my sticker proving that I had the right to attend the tour!

The 8:00pm tour was so large, it was split into two. I was in a smaller group with a priest! (A real life priest with the outfit and everything!) I wish I took a photo of him but I didn’t have enough courage to do so. I am shy!

I totally forgot that this was a Church of Ireland and not a Catholic church. Good thing some guy asked a question otherwise I probably would look like a fool! It turns out that Protestant churches don’t have someone like the ‘Pope’ that governs all the churches. Instead, each country have their own ‘Pope’ like guy. For example, in England the head of Church of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury and in Church of Ireland it’s the Archbishop of Armah. So I guess each country rule their own churches.

The church was like a patch work of because part of it had fallen down. It’s got all sort of different architecture style all mushed together. If you look at the wall closely you can see that it leans to the left. The guide calls it the ‘leaning wall of Dublin,’ which I thought was pretty funny.

This is one of the baptismal fountains. The lid itself is very heavy! The priest said he tried to left it one time and he couldn’t do it.

See the stain glass in the room? The architect put in the stain glass of saints with the same name as him and his wife!

In the church, there were tiles like this all over the place.

It’s a medieval pattern. The architect liked these so he have them made up to place in the church. Except he didn’t know where they should go so he just like of put them where he thought was best.

These are the ‘real’ tiles in it’s original position.

It’s weird if you want to you can touch it or go stand on it. It’s amazing how these stuff have survived!

There’s also a heart of St. Laurence O’Toole. I thought Protestants didn’t believe in relics so it as a treat.

Some of the tourists asked the priest if anyone had opened it and he said no. It must be holy. But there’s no sign or whatever so if you don’t know it’s there you probably wouldn’t have seen it. The reliquary itself I thought was quite pretty.

The original bible holder. The king way back when (I think it was a Henry) wanted everyone to read the bible so he had one of these in the church. But he was afraid people might steal the bible so see those holes on the wings, that’s where the bible is chained down!

The church is full of moments done by the same artist. See this one below?

There should be an angle on both side. But there’s only one because someone didn’t finish paying so the artist took the other one back!

The guide also took us around the crypt. Even though it’s called the crypt, it is really not a crypt. The church is actually on the 2nd level, and the crypt is actually used to be the first floor.

Anyway, they had a display of costume from the show the Tudors. Apparently, the show was shot at the church a lot. They used it for weddings, etc. The guide said he saw a lot of Henry related weddings there.

Also the crypt was full of old monuments. At some point many of the monuments were moved to the crypt because someone thought that churches should be a place of worship and not an museum. So he chopped them up and moved them down stairs.

See the broken bits on top right? The guy broke it so it would fit in the crypt. The top bits is next to it.

The best part of the tour was learning about this guy,

Yes, Strongbow! I remember when we were here 10 years ago, the Mr was all excited about this guy. Now, I didn’t know much about Irish history so I had no idea who he is. If you want to learn more about him, you can click here.

Well guess what! That’s not him! His tomb was destroyed when the church collapsed. That’s some other random dude they took from some other place to replace him. You see, they had to do it. Way back when, when there’s no public bank, this is where people come together to exchange money. (I am not sure how that works though, wouldn’t it be really crowded?) When the tomb was now gone the king was afraid that people will stop commerce, so he had it replaced with someone else who kind of looks like him. If you look at the photo, the face is all worn off because of people exchanging and touching it. That is the best part of history! If you didn’t read up or take the tour you probably think it’s real and got all excited like the Mr.

The tour was totally awesome. The priest is a funny guy. He was cracking jokes and very charming. We were looking at a picture of the icons or whatever and he was explaining each symbolism and end up saying well that’s just his interpretation. He said people couldn’t read back then so this is like a power point for them to understand god. That’s hilarious! He was not preachy at all.

Over all, I had a lot of fun at the Culture Night, even thought I wish I went to more venus. There’s another one in October, so I definitely will try harder now I know the lay of the land!