is THIS the bus we need to be on???

Day 20 - these days are going by WAYY too quickly....

Wednesday we were blessed with gorgeous weather so we took full advantage of it.

after class, some of us hopped on the dart (along w/Mr.&Mrs. B.Love) for a day trip to Dalkey - a really cute small town on the coast.

**Dalkey is Maeve Binchy's hometown and she is going to be there signing at the book fair this weekend...i may have to stop by again.

this is just a pretty building that was on the (only) main road in the town.

we toured Dalkey Castle. instead of having a boring "and on your left" tour guide, it was done by actors in period costumes. almost more of a show than a tour - pretty cool, definitely entertaining.

i'm surprised that she showed up in the picture, seeing is how she is a ghost of a woman that was murdered outside of the castle.

she's standing by the yew tree. it is poisonous and used by the Archer to make his longbow.

birds eye view (from the top of the castle) of the Church of St. Begnet. we touched the Weeping Wall (from inside, back wall on left) where we left our sorrows behind us and made a wish for the future.

<- like my Claddagh ring?

back inside the castle, Master Henry Walsh showed us various rooms in the castle (mostly the murder room), taught/showed us about the Barber Surgeon and talked of his affinity for King Henry VIII

he recited a poem about King Henry VIII's wives.

"divorced, beheaded, dies - divorced, beheaded, survives"

after that, the Archer took us to the top of the castle, where we had the perfect view of the city (which was ideal for those that wanted to see when the vikings were going to be attacking)

all of this learning/activity made us quite hungry, so after the castle we stopped in at The Queens Pub next door before heading to the waterfront.

Krysten, Hillary, me & Ana

we climbed around on the rocks for a while and enjoyed the view of Dalkey Island.

little did we know that the adventure had only just begun...

on the dart home, we were stranded in Dun Laoghaire because of an "incident" at Salthill. from that dart station we were given (bad) directions to a bus home, which we chased down the street at a full sprint.

after going 1 stop we realized that this was not the bus that we needed to be on, so we walked to another one.

this bus took us to a place that we recognized (but wasn't going all the way to UCD) so we got off and waited for another one....and waited.....and waited......for 49 minutes.

((thank goodness there was a McDonalds close to this stop and some of the waiting was spent with 1 euro sundaes))

turns out some of the buses are more reliable than others - the joys of Irish public transportation.

luckily, a different bus driver told us he could get us to City Centre. we knew our way home from there.

so let's see, that was 4 buses and 2 hours to get home from a place that is 20 minutes away

hahaha

just another day in Paradise :)