Dublin Castle and a boring evening

Report of Thursday, the 15th

In the morning we started with our English course at 8:20 AM like the other days before.

When it was over at 11:50 AM we took the dart from the station BAYSIDE at 12:30. We got of the train at TARA STREET and walked to “Dublin Castle”. We arrived there at 1:30, but the tour that we could take started at 3:45. Because we didn’t want to wait the whole time we bought the tickets and split up in 2 groups. One went to “St. Patricks’ Cathedral”, and the other group, who were Marie, Alexander, our teacher and I, went to the “National Gallery”. There we walked through the pictures of the 19^th century. I don’t know what the others saw at the cathedral, but I think they saw the cathedral.

We all met again at 3:30 and had to give them our bags, because they were afraid that we carry something away, maybe we would have done so if we had had our bags.

When the tour started at 3:45 our tour-guide began talking about the history of the castle, which is now a building from the government. He told us about the symbols of the families who were owner of the building, and the great fire when there was a party in the 17^th century and so everything was rebuilt, but they tried to let it look like before.

We also saw the other historical rooms and heard a funny story about the picture of the Irish who met the pope. They thought that the painter was dead because they didn’t hear anything about the painter any more. But on a tour some weeks ago, one of the tourists said that he was actually alive. The tour-leader asked him if he was sure and he said that he was sure because he had played golf with him the week before.

There was one room for the ladies where they could relax and “choose” their new husbands with a very complicated way of flirting.

At the end of our tour our guide showed us the underground of the buildings where they had their weapons and other stuff that they wanted to hide in their halls. But in the 17^th century there was a explosion in the weapon area and then everything crashed down. But they had also rebuilt them, but not for their real use.

It was a very interesting tour, also because the guy who was our tour-leader spoke very interesting and made many jokes.

After our tour we went in the building again to get our bags and then we drove back home to our host families. But no one wanted to go out in the evening, only me, but in the end I stayed home too. Just reading and watching “South Park”.

We stayed home, because “Boring people do boring things.”

Richard Pammer