We woke up around 7:30am and started our day with a complimentary breakfast, checking our bags in, and checking out. We headed for the Tourism Bureau and arrived 20 minutes before they opened. The map on the wall next to the door gave us an idea of where to go, so we picked a street and started walking. With a vague sense of direction we managed to get back to the tourism center about 2 hours later after visiting several places. We also managed to finish up some Christmas shopping for Sheena’s family to say thanks for having us. After eating in a little café, we walked the grounds of the castle across the street and the cathedral.
While looking at post cards I came across an interesting card with the picture of a bronze statue. The statue was of an Irish woman, Molly Malone, pushing a cart with baskets of mussels and cockles (mollusks), and the card has the words to a song that she sang to get people to buy live mussels and cockles. I thought it was an interesting story and song, but seemed somehow familiar. Then suddenly it dawned on me, Terry Prachet’s Mort uses the concept the story of Molly and her song in its entirety except that Molly is a ghost. Just goes to show that not everything in fantasy books is really fantasy.
That evening we took the train up to Northern Ireland, and were met at the train station by Sheena. The rest of the evening we spent relaxing and talking after a traditional Irish dinner.
While walking to the train station Dublin I was thinking about how lazy I am at home. Chris and I spent at least 30 minutes walking to the train station, which I would have never thought about doing back home. We walk 20 minutes from the dorm to downtown area without even thinking about it. It would take me about the same amount of time to walk from my house to Hollywood video by Dominick’s, but I would have never considered walking there to rent a video