Clean clothes and a very good night’s sleep made for a great wakeup. It was fake raining (light drizzle) which went on for the entire day. We made our way into the city and started at the Dublin Castle. We had a marvelous tour guide for our 11am tour. The tour went about an hour and we learned a grundle about Irish history.

After that we made our way over to Grafton Street, another pedestrian shopping street. The only thing thing we purchased was some ice cream …. and a 10 Euro watch for Nina at the Argos catalog store.

We also spent some time people-watching at one of the large parks in downtown Dublin. By the late afternoon the clouds had cleared and the sun was out. A couple of hours later the clouds were back and the drizzle started again. After getting back to the hotel we took a taxi over to the Tesco store and returned most of the stuff we had purchased because our luggage hadn’t arrived. Then we walked and walked looking for a restaurant that was advertised as an all-you-can-eat buffet. We finally found Cosmos … it was a very large buffet. The rule was all you could eat in 1 hour and 20 minutes. For us it turned out to be ”all we wanted to eat.” There were quite a few loaded plates going by us. Our plates were not so much. A cab ride back to the hotel and time to crash for the night.

According to the Church’s website, the Clondalkin Ward met at 10am about 2 miles away. The address on the website was just a street name, no number. The cab driver first went up the street and nothing resembling a church was found. He turned around and we went back to the intersection, continued a bit south, and there was the building. He was very surprised that there was a church there.

The ward was very friendly. The building had a lovely 3-manual organ (I would have loved to play it), but all the music was played on the piano. Different young people played each of opening, sacrament, and closing songs. The primary children sang an intermediate hymn accompanied by another young person who just played the melody. But, everyone sang! And sang nice and loud. It was delightful. The speakers were a young man, probably Teacher age (14-15 years old) who spoke on the Holy Ghost and gave a very well prepared 10-minute sermon. A fter the Primary song, an woman spoke as the closing speaker. She was fun, but sometimes very hard to understand. We’re the ones with the accent, I keep reminding myself.

Sunday school was taught by an American expat. Two other couples were visiting from the US. One couple volunteered to drive us back to our hotel. Turns out he grew up in Grace, Idaho, and his great grandfather was our Stake Patriarch who gave me and Nina our patriarchal blessings. After church they had a pot luck luncheon. No need to buy anything for lunch!

We took the bus into Dublin and went to the National Gallery. We only visited the first floor but really enjoyed the paintings and sculptures. We only had a couple of hours available due to the abbreviated Sunday bus schedule. It was raining pretty hard as we walked back to the bus stop. We were both Very Tired when we got back to the hotel. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and collapsed into bed. Another very good day.

Highlights were definitely the Dublin Castle Tour and church meetings on Sunday. And, the art gallery.

This was the end of our time in Dublin. It was time on Monday morning to collect the rental car and head to Cork.