I had 2 interesting dreams last night, the first relating to my job; while the second dream was about meeting 3 girls from Singapore and we sort of end up doing some traveling together. I slept a little longer today since my main itinerary today is to join the free Dublin walking tour, at 10.20am. The hostel breakfast is rather simple; toast, butter and jam spread, coffee / tea / hot chocolate and some kind of cake. After that, I went out for a quick walkabout before the tour begins. It is really misty and cold today with very poor visibility. I walked towards the river where there were some sculptures of some Irish families with very rugged clothing with sad faces. I do not really understand what the sculptures are about as the plates on the ground beside the sculptures just list the family names etc. As I was walking along the O' Connell's street, I looked up and found the tip of the spire disappearing into the mist. As the time nears, I went back to the hostel to meet the pick up guide. There were 6 of us from the hostel and we picked up another 6 from the nearby Isaac's hostel before moving on to the main meeting point at City Hall. We were separated into English and Spanish group, the English group has around 30 odd people. The area was quite noisy with passing vehicles and since I was standing at the back row, I couldn't hear clearly when the guide gave us introduction and some brief history about Ireland. Luckily things got better as we moved to other places and I try to stand closer to the guide. 
During the 3 hours tour, we were brought to a number of places around Dublin, many of which I've been to on my little exploration yesterday. However, having a guide explaining about the backgrounds definitely adds more color to the place. Our tour guide, Connor, was pretty funny and lively as he told us story after story of the Dublin's past. It was extremely cold today, 6 deg C. I had my hood up and I thought I looked absolutely funny compared to the rest on the tour because I looked as if I'm all geared up for winter sports :p But I don't care as long as I am getting myself warm (although I still felt a little cold under 2-layer my jacket). We break for a quick snack at 12.30pm at the Temple Bar area. Normally on these kind of tour, the guide will bring us to some specific cafe for lunch cum toilet break, and in exchange the guides get to eat free. I've packed 2 bananas and a pack of crisps as lunch today. After the break, we continued on our tour for slightly an hour more before finally ending it at St Stephens Green park. These free walking tour guides survived solely on tip basis. I gave the guide €2 as tip and went into the park. I sat on a bench to rest my feet and had a bar of Snickers. The sun has finally shown his face for the day and the temperature warms up a little. After the break, I had a nice little stroll in the beautiful park, with river, stone bridge, gazebos, and the colors of the trees and flowers, all these creates a surreal scene as if a scene in a fairy tale story. I then visited Grafton street, a busy shopping street in Dublin.
After that, I went in to the National Gallery of Ireland, which houses the Irish national collection of Irish and European art. Entrance is free but you need to deposit your bags at the cloakroom (free). There were lots of portraits and art pieces on exhibit inside. I wasn't that interested in these art works, so I left after a quick tour of 15mins. When I went to retrieve my backpack from the cloakroom, the elderly man at the counter told me that I couldn't get my backpack until half an hour later. That answer really caught me off-guard so I showed a blank face and blurted 'huh'? Then as his serious face turned into a big smiley face, I realized that he was just joking with me. This became like an ice-breaker between us and we chatted a little he asked me where I was from and how I liked Dublin. I then asked him if the National Museum nearby is open. He says 'Well, yes! Today the National Museum is especially opened for people from Malaysia'. We both burst into laughter. What a funny guy. He then told me the direction to get there. I thanked him and wanted to walked out the door I came in from earlier and he called out to me, 'No, no, no... not that way, sigh do I have to do everything?' He then came out from the cloakroom and escorted me out to the correct exit and again told me the direction. :p However, I did not go directly to the National Museum as I had to hurry to the tourist information center before they close to book for my day tour tomorrow. I signed up for the Wicklow and Glendalough tour from 'Day Tour's Unplugged'. The tour costs €25 and will start at 9am tomorrow morning.
After that, seeing it is near to the museum's closing time, I decided not to go back to the museum. Instead, I went to the nearby post office to mail my postcards back home. The postage here is a little more expansive compared to posting in UK. Then, I decided to call it a day and walked back to my hostel. Tonight, there were 2 young ladies in my room who were from Singapore and they are currently studying in Cambridge University. If you could remember earlier in the post about my dream? What a coincidence (although in my dream there were 3 girls)! Also, there were some incidents in the hostel where there were some girls being kicked out from the hostel because she hasn't paid her dorm money and also she was involved with the loud party the other night. One of my dorm mate was a friend to one of the girls so she let her come in to our room while she try to call some other friends asking if she could crash at their place for the night. Well, all sorts of things and people you see in hostels ;)
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