This morning Philip left early again for the conference. He had a lunch meeting scheduled with one of the professional genealogists for one-on-one discussion and help with his research so we didn't plan to meet up until late in the afternoon.

I did laundry again then went exploring the old city some more. I bought some t-shirts—one at the English market and 2 at the UCC student bookshop. I was able to visit the Boole Library, too, although Lorna had said that she didn’t think they would let us in since it is only for students. There are no regular classes going on now, so not very many people were in the library. It seemed small for a university of its size, and they use Dewey which surprised me. Not very many universities in the States still use Dewey.

The library had a nice display on Cervantes and another about the new student hub being installed to replace the library by 2018. The library is named after George Boole who was the first mathematics professor of the university and is considered the Father of the Information Age and the designer of Boolean logic.

After all my running around today, I made it back to the apartment to clean up and meet Philip for the closing lecture and presentation of certificates to everyone who took part in the conference. Philip deserved his; he worked hard. I registered and paid for the conference, but just went to the fun things after the first day.

We had another field trip afterwards and first drove to the site were Michael Collins was shot and killed. He was one of the leaders in Ireland's fight for independence from Britain. He signed an agreement with Britain on behalf of the Irish Republicans that gave all but the six northern counties their independence. In doing so, in failing to get independence for all the Irish counties, but signing the agreement anyway, he supposedly told the British that he was signing his own death warrant. It was not long before he was ambushed and killed.

The second stop on the field trip was supposed to be at a Franciscan friary and graveyard nearby. Unbelievably, the organizers did not plan this well and did not take into consideration the size of the bus versus the narrowness of the road leading to the ruins. The road was a very narrow two-lane that included a bridge too fragile for the weight of the bus and no place for the bus to turn around once it got to the bridge. We would have been able to walk the short distance across the bridge, but the bus could not back up along the road to a safe spot to turn around. I am very surprised that no one thought about that before scheduling the trip.

Since the trip was cut short, we had an hour extra before the celebratory dinner started. Phil had his computer case with him and we decided to take it back to the apartment before dinner. The bus driver was kind enough to let us stay on the bus after everyone else disembarked at the university. He was going to drive right by the apartment so he dropped us at the closest marked bus stop on the road. We have liked all the walking we are doing, but it was nice to have a ride since Phil had his heavy computer case.

The last group dinner at the Kingsley Hotel was okay. Nice to talk to a few more people whom I hadn’t met before. My food was okay; Phil really liked his fish and chips. It all seemed overpriced at 35 euro each for three courses. We were some of the first to leave the dinner while many were still chatting, but we still didn’t get back to the apartment until 11:00.