Welcome!

Before I start posting book reviews, I wanted to share some pictures of literary stuff Jordan and I saw/did on our honeymoon! We spent 3 weeks traveling around the United Kingdom and Ireland, and of course we had to stop to do some bookish-type things. :)

Dublin:
Although St. Patrick's Cathedral was quite impressive, I have to admit that my favorite part of Dublin was the Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square. :) Oscar Wilde has always been one of my favorite authors. Here he is:


Dublin:
While we were in Dublin, we also stopped at the Irish National Library to see an exhibit on the life and works of W.B. Yeats. I loved these stained glass windows featuring literary greats such as Homer, Chaucer, and Shakespeare:


And this shows a bunch of Yeats' manuscripts and notes, although it is a bit blurry:


Stratford-upon-Avon:
Here we visited Shakespeare's childhood home, which was exciting for me, in a very nerdy sort of way. It was a bit pricey to enter the house, and it wasn't really all that interesting...except for the fact that the flooring was made of the original stones! It ended up being worth it for me to say that I walked on the same floor that Shakespeare did! No pictures were allowed inside, but here's a view of the outside:


Grasmere:
We also visited the childhood home of William Wordsworth and even saw his grave (a bit morbid perhaps, but it was really awesome to be there):


Cliffs of Moher:
This is a bit of a stretch for literary greatness, but the Cliffs of Moher were the filming location for the Cliffs of Insanity sequence from The Princess Bride and we couldn't pass up a visit! :) This is my favorite image that we took of the Cliffs:

Wales:
I'll end this with our visit to a town in Wales that has one of the longest placenames in the world: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. :) Although it's not an actual Welsh word, it was still fun to visit.


Check back later for book reviews!

-Samantha