Day 17 - Dublin

Woke up to a lovely day in Dublin.  No rain!  I wrote yesterday about how I liked this hostel because it had internet and hot showers.  The plan for the day was Trinity College, lunch with Adam Petersen, and then the Guinness Storehouse and, for once we followed the plan pretty closely.
Trinity College is right across the street from the hostel.  We walked in the gates with chopped off maps, sat in the sunshine and got to hear a lovely presentation on Hamilton from Jamie.  From there, we went to the museum building which houses the Geology department.  Once again, it is exam time, so most of the buildings are closed, but we checked out the exhibits.  We also got to see a copy of the curve which looked very familiar to me (apart from the possibility of earning an A++), but the students said they only saw in Birgen courses.  From there, we asked where the Hamilton Building was.  We sneaked our way in and the secretary gave us copies of what a first year student who was studying maths would be taking.  The students only take maths courses in what are called modules.

From the Hamilton building, we walked over to the Old Library which holds the Book of Kells and the long room which has busts of famous scientists and other thinkers.  Because time was starting to get short, I offered to purchase admission to anyone who wanted to come, but wasn't going to insist on anything.  Most students took me up on the offer and toured the Book of Kells.  From there, we gathered to go find the Pub where we were meeting Adam.  I had to leave a few behind with directions to the pub because I had stragglers and needed to get moving.
It took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but we found the Pub and the boys and had a nice soup and sandwich lunch.  Tales were swapped between the Germany trip and this one and then we all headed off to the Guiness Storehouse.  Now, I am not saying anything against anyone in particular, but there are a lot of students who aren't very good at map reading.  I am starting to think of an ID course where you take students to a strange city with a map and instructions on where to go and what to find out and grade them on how well they can follow instructions by the end of the day.  It could be called "Life."

Anyway, while we were about 2/3 done with the Guinness tour, the fire alarm went off and we all evacuated the building.  I am definitely beginning to parse the accents pretty well because I thought the announcment was clear, while some of the students were saying they couldn't understand any of it.  We evacuated calmly and I thought, hey, there is a geocache nearby and this will take 15 minutes to sort out.  I looked and looked, but couldn't find it.  Since someone else found it the day before, I just must not have been on my game.  We returned to the top floor for our pint of Guinness Stout (and soda for Jeri) and we were off to home.

On the way, we looked for another geocache at the Castle.  The location was beautiful, but the cache was not found.  A bit deflated with two DNF's, we returned to the hostel and Jeri decided to take a nap, while I went off to find some Irish geocaches.  I wandered off for some distance, but the only two caches I found were quite close to the hostel.  I returned for Jeri and we found some snacks for tomorrow and then we split a bangers and mash at the Pub under the hostel and returned to the room for an early bed.  We have a 5:30 AM alarm for a 6:30 breakfast and a 7:00 leaving of the hostel.  Since I am on the 8:45 AM ferry as I type, I can say it all went smoothly.