Dublin!

I'M BACKKKKKKK!!!! Sorry for the little hiatus everyone. My laptop is broke :( and I can't post blogs from my iPad so i haven't been able to update! I'm using my dad's laptop now (my parents are here!) so the next few days I will be catching up on all the blogging that I've miss the past few weeks. First step.. DUBLIN!

Last weekend I went to Dublin to celebrate St. Patricks day. I think I have found my favorite country so far! Don't get me wrong.. I love Spain and cant imagine studying abroad in a better place... But if there was somewhere other than the US that I could see myself permanently living .. It would be Ireland!

Thursday evening, my best friend Maura flew in to alicante. After class all at I hopped on the bus to pick her up from the airport. She got in at 5:30, We caught the bus back to my apartment, met up with the other girls (Corey, Lizzy, Bianca and Jen) and headed back to the airport to catch our 8 pm flight. I wish i could say the flight was uneventful but then i would be lying. I would also like to say that there was bad turbulence, but that would also be understatement of the century. I fly a pretty good amount and i dont really get nervous but i can honestly say i was one more sudden drop away from breaking out my cell phone to call my family and say goodbye. It was the most terrifying flight ever. About 20 minutes in we hit turbulence, i ignored it at first and it didnt bother me until it got so bad that flight attendants got slammed into the overhead cabin.. Twice. The shaking would get really bad  the plane would have a sudden drop. This would go on for 15 minutes at a time, settle down for a few, then pick back up. The pilot soudned calm when he announced that we were "experiencing the light turbulence" (no shit!) but the ghostly-white terrified look on the flight attendants face was not helping the situation. After the 3 hour  flight from hell we landed safely in Dublin at 10:30 (time change!), jumped in a cab to our hotel, and immediately hit the streets of temple bar. The traveling was hectic but so worth it.

Me and Maura drinking Guinness on St. Paddy's day .. the good life

Some crazies we met on st. paddy's day!

Temple bar was packed.. Obviously. People were dressed in the most ridiculous outfits from full out leprechaun costumes to Irish flags and Indian headdresses in Ireland colors. (whether or not these people were actually Irish or tourists is another Story haha) We found the bar with the most space and started out the night with Guinness and jameson. St Patricks day in Dublin was as crazy as I thought it would be and sooo great! Maura and I have always talked about how we've wanted to celebrate st paddy's day in Ireland and I still cant believe we actually made it happen. We spent the night bar hopping and went in the actual temple bar. We had some great street food and met lots of crazy people. We headed back to the hotel around 4am and got some much needed sleep.

Friday we had to check out of our hotel so with all our stuff we headed out to see some sites. The weather was absolutely perfect.. 60s and zero clouds... SO not what i was expecting! On the way we found a really helpful tourist info place. The lady inside helped us book tickets to the Guinness storehouse (in order the beat the crowds when we got there) as well as group day trip to Wicklow, glendalough and Kilkenny. It was so nice to get that stuff out of the way because we had no idea what we were doing on our own.

Our first stop of the day was trinity college, dublins oldest university. The mall in college park is nice but had nothing on trinity college! We didn't sign up for a tour so we just walked around the grounds for a while. It would be so cool to go to school there!

After trinity college we walked down grafton street, a big (and very expensive) shopping district in Dublin. We mostly window shopped, but we found a great jewelery store. The had a lot of beautiful claddagh rings and lizzy ended up buying one. The shop was right next to the entrance for St. Stephens Green, our next stop.

St. Stephens green is a huge beautiful park in the city. The grass is so perfect, there are several ponds, fountains and statues and the flowers were so bright and colorful. We had lots of time to kill so we relaxed in the park for a while and enjoyed the weather and some good people  watching.

After a couple hours at the park, we made the 15 minute walk to our hotel. We stayed at the port
obello inn next to portobello college. It was about a 20-30 minute walk from temple bar, but it wasn't bad at all! I was thinking we would have to take a cab at night but in a big group we felt very safe and the walk was very easy and didn't seem that long. The hotel was cute and cheap and provied free breakfast so it was ideal. We dropped off our stuff and went to the Guinness factory.

When we arrived at the factory we were so, so thankful that we reordered our tickets. Not surprisingly, the line was wrapped all the way around the building and it was a little more than 2 hours to closing time ( it takes at least 2 hours to get through) we walked right in and started our self guided tour.

The Guinness factory was so much cooler and bigger than I thought it would be. It's 7 stories tall and the inside is shaped like a Guinness pint glass. The 7th floor is the gravity bar, surrounded by glass with great views of the city where you can enjoy your free glass of Guinness. At the base of the 'glass' is the 9,000 year leasse signed by Arthur Guinness when he started the factory. He must have been pretty confident to get into a commitment like that! During the tour they show you how the beer is made and let you try the hops. My favorite part was the floor where they showed all the old ads and labels of Guinness. It was cool to see how to the advertising style has changed (and hasn't changed) over the years. There was also a tasting floor, a floor where you could Learn how to pour a Guinness, and of course the gravity bar. The bar was great and of course we loved the free guinness, but it was packed wall to wall with people. Luckily we had expected the crowds so it didn't bother us too much. Corey ran into a friend she hadn't seen since high school, then as we were leaving she ran into another friend from umd... Obviously she's in the popular crowd.

After the guinness factory we were all exhausted (we got very little sleep the night before and Maura was majorly jet lagged) so we went to the hotel to nap. When we woke up we all quickly agreed that we would be staying on that night. We had scheduled our day tour to the countryside for the next day that left early and we didn't want to feel miserable for it. We stayed in, ordered a pizza and went to bed early (good thing Irish food isn't anything to write home about!)

Saturday we met with our tour group at 8:45. We weren't sure how the big group tour thing would go, but we were so glad we decided to do it! We sat in front which was a good call because our tour guide was the funniest most typical irish man and it was hilarious to hear him talking to the bus driver. He had lots of good sayings like when referring to a guy speeding really fast; “Would you rather be 20 minutes late or 30 years early?” His stories were really entertaining and kept us from being bored on the drive.

We had the best luck ever with Irish weather. The drive through the country was beautiful. Bright blue skies with endless green fields and rolling hills and lots of sheep. It was exactly how you picture Ireland to look like .. but better.  The first stop in the tour was Glendalough. Glendalough is located in county Wicklow and means “the land of 2 lakes.” In the next 100 years it will become the land of one lake. Our tour guide explained how one of the lakes is disappearing. Grass grows in around the edges every year and when it dies, it sinks to the bottom of the lake. Eventually that grass builds up and is causing the the lake to disappear! I thought that was really interesting since the whole city is named after the 2 lakes in the valley.

Glendalough was beautiful. It is famous for the monastery created there by St. Kevin. We walked along the bogs and saw the Round Tower, St. Kevin’s Church, and the old cemetery.

Me, Maura, Bianca and Jen in Glendalough

After Glendalough we drove to Wicklow Gap. On the way to Wicklow Gap we passed through the site where Brave Heart was filmed, so that was pretty cool! We stopped at the top of Wicklow Gap to look down over Glendalough. Again… beautiful. I knew Ireland would be gorgeous but it completely exceeded my expectations!

We then moved on to our last stop, Kilkenny. Kilkenny was a cute little Irish town. There was a lot more of a local vibe instead of a tourist vibe that we got in Dublin. We met the sweetest old lady as we were walking around. She heard our accents and asked where we were from and proceeded to point out lots of little details about the city and the background on certain buildings. She welcomed us to Kilkenny and told us that she was “so proud of our little town.” She was so sweet we wanted to just follow her around all day! Eventually our tour ended at the Black Abbey where we went inside a beautiful church with really intricate stained glass. It was small so it was pretty incredible to see such large detailed stain glass inside. After the church we got lunch, walked the grounds of the Kilkenny Castle, did a little shopping (I bought a trinity necklace!) and got back on the bus to head back to Dublin!



Kilkenny Castle

 For our last night in Dublin we decided to go back to the Temple Bar district. The Ireland vs. England  Rugby match [Ireland won!] was that night so everyone was out early and it was a pretty rowdy crowd. We watched a little bit of a different match then went to another bar to have some drinks. Later in the night we ended up meeting two british guys who were mourning their teams loss. They were a lot of fun so we did some barhopping with them. They loved our American accent and kept telling me I sound like Brittany Spears. It was pretty comical since I guess they think all Americans sound like her and I’ve never been put in the same category as Brittany Spears for any reason. We hung out with them until we decided to call it a night around 4 am.

For our last day in Dublin we had a great full Irish Breakfast at the hotel. Then we headed to St. Patricks Cathedral. Maura and I went inside and it was absolutely beautiful. I never get tired or bored of all the amazing churches in Europe. We walked around, lit candles and looked at all the stain glass and detail inside.

St Patrick's Cathedral and the park



Inside the Cathedral



 

 It was another nice day so afterward we walked to Lee Burdocks for fish and chips. Lee Burdocks is a really famous fish and chips place in Dublin. Outside they have a list of all the famous people who have eaten there (my favorites included Sandra Bullock and Justin Timberlake’s mom) Here’s more about them from Frommer’s:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/dublin/D44344.html

The fish and chips were great! Its not a sit down place so we grabbed our fish and walked back down to St. Patricks Cathedral to have a picnic in the park. I still cant get over how much we lucked out with the weather while we were there. After luck we went to check out the Dublin castle… pretty unimpressive, but that’s coming from 6 girls that practically have a castle in their back yard in Alicante. After some shopping and wandering around it was finally time to say goodbye to Dublin L

I seriously fell completely in love with Ireland and I am SO happy I get to go back during spring break! (I’m spending 4 nights in Galway). It’s not hard to fall in love with the place for the following reasons:

1.       The nicest people in the world! –  Literally every single person we met was SO nice. People would stop in their tracks to ask US if WE needed directions. They went out of their way to see if we needed help before we even had to ask! Like the woman on the street who stopped to be out personal tourguide in Kilkenny, at one point a guy in a street sweeping truck saw us with our map and stopped, blocking a whole lane of traffic, to ask us if we knew where we were going. At some points the kindness caught me completely off guard and I didn’t even know how to react. Definitely makes you realize how much easier everything would be if everyone could just be friendly all the time!

2.       Bright green grass and beautiful flowers.

3.       Irish-Catholic overload everywhere! You know your in Ireland when every café you go into has signs offering catering for “first communions and confirmations” haha

4.       Guinness and Jameson… enough said.

Can’t wait to go back!!!!