Ireland Day 5: A little bit of Dublin

n Tuesday I allowed myself to sleep in until noonish, since I was still recovering from being sick. Kevin was again off to his conference at Trinity College (the above picture shows the campus) all day, so after I got up and got dressed, I made my way to the little convenience store for lunch again.

This time, however, I determined to eat it someplace besides the hotel room. I decided to head to Marion Square, which is a lovely little park inside downtown Dublin. There are lots of trees and a few statues, including an amusing one of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. (His house was very near Marion Square.)

After I finished my sandwich, I decided I wanted to see some more of Dublin. Not feeling quite up to tons of walking, though, I opted to take a "hop-on hop-off" bus tour of the city. That was a pretty fun way to see the highlights, although I got a bit chilly up on the second story of the open-0n-top double-decker bus.

After the tour was done, I made my way over to Trinity College, where I planned to meet Kevin after his conference and from whence we would head out dinner in one of the pubs nearby. It took me a ridiculously long time to find the right building (turns out I walked past it like 3 times before realizing it was the right one), but when I got there, I couldn't find Kevin. I knew he had planned to practice his talk with one of the professors from Purdue after the conference session let out, so I just waited around for a while.



When Kevin kept not showing up, I figured he must have not gotten my text messages and just headed back to the hotel, so I grumpily walked all the way back, only to find him not there either. It turns out that he and the professor had planned to back to the professor's hotel room to practice, but the guy didn't have such a good sense of direction as he proclaimed and led Kevin off in the wrong direction for like half an hour, after which Kevin finally took the lead and led them back. So his practice took an extra hour or so because of the wandering.

I wasn't feeling great (although I *was* a lot better than the day before) and didn't want to walk anymore, so we just grabbed dinner at a blah restaurant nearby the hotel. The food was not that great, especially since Kevin "forgot" we were in Ireland again and ordered fajitas--again! They were just as silly as the last time. A word to the wise: avoid Irish Mexican food.

So, all in all, it was not too wonderful of a day, but at least I got to get out and see a couple of things! And I was glad to be on the mend finally. I don't know how I manage to get sick every time I go on vacation--the jet lag? the stress of travel? the germy airplanes? Kevin laughed at me because I was kind of obsessive about wiping down my seat and tray on the plane with disinfectant wipes and using hand sanitizer, while he refused...and yet *I'm* the one who got sick! Ah well--such is life.