Day 6: Kevin's big day

Thursday was the reason we came to Ireland to begin with. It was the day of Kevin's presentation at the conference! The Programming Language Design and Implementation is a VERY prestigious conference in his field (only a few *professors* at Purdue have gotten papers accepted there, and he's still a student!) so it was a big deal to give this talk. He decided to skip the morning meetings to practice his presentation some more, so he was still at the hotel at 10am or so when I finally got up. So, we had breakfast together in the hotel (most hotels in Dublin provide breakfast included, and ours was no exception. The breakfast was pretty amazing! I definitely over-did it with the eating those last few days at the Schoolhouse hotel--but hey, I missed the first two days of breakfast entirely because I was sleeping, so I figured I might as well gorge myself.)

Kevin headed back to Trinity College after breakfast, and I slept a little more (still trying to get all the way better.) Then, I rode the bus up to O'Connell Street, which is pretty much the main street in Dublin, very busy with businesses and lots of tourists. And lots of cigarette smoke (but that's kind of a given in Europe.) I went to scope out a few things: I needed to find a laundromat or somewhere to get our laundry done, and I needed to find a cybercafe or something where I could print another copy of my "Master Travel Plan", which I thought I had lost (turns out, the pages weren't lost--they were in Kevin's backpack, but I didn't know that.) I also wanted to buy a cheap compass if possible, because I thought it would help us in navigating the crazy roads in upcoming days.

I actually checked out several laundry services online and in person, and it turns out that in Ireland you pretty much can't do your laundry yourself if you don't have your own washer and dryer. Instead, you give the clothes to the laundry service and they wash them *for* you and then charge you a small fortune. I think it cost me about 10 euro (~$14) to do ONE load of laundry, once I finally caved and gave up on trying to find something more reasonable. Craziness. Still better than the ~$5 PER SHIRT that the hotel would have charged to do it...

Anyways, I scoped out the laundry situation, printed my papers, and bought a 2 euro compass and then took another bus over to Dublin Castle and had a tour. The castle, for the most part, is not what you'd imagine a castle to look like. Maybe they should call it "Dublin Palace," because that's pretty much what it is. I guess the castle burned in 1684 and they decided to rebuild it in a more "modern" fashion at that time, so little of the original castle is left. There is a section of the original castle which they discovered underground during excavations, and which they take you down to see during the tour--that was pretty neat.

Dublin was originally a Viking city, and back then there was a Viking fortress at the castle site. The Irish briefly took it over, but then the Normans invaded in 1169, and later built a stone castle, which was ruled by the British ever after (until 1921 when Ireland finally achieved independence). The English Kings ruled Ireland through a Viceroy who lived at Dublin castle (and occasionally the British royalty would visit and stay there too.)

Aaannnnd, the Irish are not too fond of the way the British ruled their country (they tried to gain independence many times before they finally succeeded), so it's kind of an interesting place to visit. In some of the pictures you can see a statue of "Justice" standing at the gate of the castle. (see the bottom right side of the first pic above of the castle , and in the pic to the left here you can see her back above the gate) Some of the Irish will tell you that it's ironic that she stands with her back to the people (she's facing the castle instead), is depicted without a blindfold (as you usually see "Justice" since she's supposed to be blind), AND, the scales that she's holding apparently used to often fill up with water, making them tip one way or the other. Such is the "justice" that the Irish felt they were dealt by the British.

Nowadays, the Irish government still uses the Castle to host visiting dignitaries (I think Clinton stayed there, and Margret Thatcher), and for state events.

One interesting thing inside is a throne, which apparently used to be taller until Queen Victoria came for a visit and couldn't get up into the throne because she was too short, so she order its legs to be chopped off.



Anyways, that's probably more than you wanted to know about that. After my tour, I walked back to Trinity College, in time to catch Kevin's presentation. As far as I could tell, it went splendidly (although most of it was over my head). The picture is not so splendid, alas. Maybe you can barely see Kevin's outline in all that blurry blackness?



We ate dinner in a pub in the Grafton St. area. We saw a few pubs with live traditional music going, but they were soooo crowded that we decided to forego them. I ordered fish and chips, just because I *had* to order that at least once while we were in Ireland. Truth be told, I'm not a fan.

On the way back to the hotel, we bought some frozen yogurt with berries (which I was a MAJOR fan of), and walked through St. Stephen's Green (another big, beautiful park inside the city.)

A successful day! Now Kevin could relax a bit (although he still had two days of the conference left) and I was feeling mostly better, so things were definitely looking up.