Dublin Day 2

Bo took a day off work today to show us around Dublin (although i suspect that his main objective was to test out his new toy! ;) Danny and Dai Pang, who are B & O's (sorry, takes too long to type out ur full names) flatmates, joined us today. Our first stop was Trinity College, which is located in the heart of the city centre. The college's been around since 1592 and has a beautiful campus surrounded by a bunch of old, historical buildings! I just wish UofC is like that! We walked around the campus and snapped some pictures. We even stopped for a bit to watch a football match. What a beautiful campus! Olivia bumped into her friend Riley in front of the Book of Kells entrance, it was quite timely as students can get their friends in for free! Too bad that I only had a chance to look at everything inside briefly, as I didn't wanna hold up the group. :( The old library building was amazing because it housed many old books dating back to hundreds of years ago. I've seen these old libraries in movies, so it was almost kinda surreal when i saw these old bookcases lining up neatly in front of my eyes. We did more walking around the campus afterwards. Riley tried to show us this Harry Potter style cafeteria :) but too bad the doors were locked. :( Btw Riley is Olivia's friend from Calgary. He's a student studying Dentistry at Trinity College. He was backpacking in Asia for a few months this year and shared some interesting stories with us. I love these travel stories and hope i can go on a backpacking trip next year!

After our tour around Trinity College we took a bus down to the Dundrum area. The shopping mall there is the largest in Ireland, but it's probably no bigger than SouthCentre mall here. Didn't have much time to shop around, but it's probably a good thing because things in Ireland are so bloody expensive! I've started to appreciate Canada more after my trips around the world; like how cheap things are in Canada compared to the rest of the world.

In the evening we made it back to the city centre again and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I've heard Olivia complained about the bad Chinese food in Dublin so i didnt have much expectation, but the food turned out to be quite good! I was later told that the restaurant we went to was the only acceptable Cantonese restaurant in town! After dinner we followed Riley to an Irish Pub. I guess my trip to Ireland will not be complete without a visit to an Irish pub! (Thanks guys!) All the pubs were quite full on a Saturday night but we managed to find one that's quite dead after walking around for a bit. Turns out that Olivia had never been to an Irish pub either, so we had our first half pint of Guinness there! ^_^ The taste is actually not too bad, and I'd say it's better than some of the beer that I've tasted in North America. We were there until closing and got back to the flat by around 1:00. Since it was late and Bo had to work the next day, i went to bed without a shower for the first time in many many many many many many years! I felt quite uncomfortable (sorry, i am a bit of a neat freak) but then it's something I have overcome especially if I want to become a real traveller!