The Rainy Walking Tour & First Time at the Movies

We all met up at Trinity College this afternoon for a walking tour of Dublin depicting specific parts of the city that were affected during the 1916 Easter Rising. The tour was also a field trip for history class, as we've recently been talking about this tragic yet monumental day in Irish history. Our tour guide pointed out several of the famous statues throughout the city as we worked our way from the college up O'Connell St. to the General Post Office (commonly referred to as the GPO) to Dublin's City Hall and finishing up at Dublin Castle. Throughout the tour it rained, which I'm starting to begin to accept as normal Irish weather. The tour guide was hilarious and really made the two-hour walk interesting. He pointed out the bullet holes left in the columns outside of the GPO and a plaque placed on the outside of city hall to commemorate those who lost their lives during the 1916 Rising. It was really informative, although the rain didn't really help to make walking around the city very exciting.

Before the tour, Melissa and I went to a local farmer's market downtown. Apparently, the market is open seven days a week! We found some great deals on fresh produce: apples, bananas, carrots, celery, lemons, and a pineapple for under 10 euro. I think we might start buying our fruits and vegetables in the city centre from now on.

After the tour we went to Brewley's, a local chain cafe on Grafton St. for soup and brown bread. We ate early so we could make the 5:30 showing of Valentine's Day. Only a day late, we figured it would be fun to go to the movies. Tickets for the movie cost 6.50 euro with a student id, since the showing was before 6 o'clock. (6.50 euro is about $9.75). We were both surprised by the set up of the theater: it reminded me of an actual show theater, no stadium seating and walls were covered by a long red curtain. When it came time for the film to start, the curtains opened and the previews ran. The Blindspot was advertised to be coming soon (it came out before Thanksgiving in the U.S.). After the previews, the curtains shut again. We thought may be there were technical difficulties, but no one in the theater seemed to be surprised by the curtain. After a few minutes the curtain opened again and the movie ran on the gigantic floor-to-ceiling screen. It was a cute movie, and I think we both enjoyed the experience.