Dublin (June 14-16)

(the ladies outside St. Patrick's Cathedral)
(under the waterfall at the Guinness Storehouse)
(a pint of Guinness)
(the coast)
(pub crawl!)

Our Dublin trip did not start off well. We woke up uber early to catch the EasyBus to the airport. Unfortunately, we were not quite clear on where the bus stop really was, so we were all running around London like crazy people at 4am. Luckily, we were able to flag it down as it was driving away. This was also our first Ryanair experience... plastic, ridiculous looking seats, long lines to get on the plane, and the roughest landing I've ever experienced. But, it got us to where we were going for very cheap. We took the public bus from the Dublin airport to our hostel. Our hostel was in a great location. Not the nicest building, but the beds were clean. The eight of us (Mal, Noelle, Greta, Me, Jared, Preston, Trevor, and Kurt) were in a room together on bunk beds. We had two other French female roommates who we saw only like two times. The room was really hot with all of us crammed in there, but it was kind of fun all being together like that. After we got settled in our room, we met Amanda and Jackie, who were staying in the same hostel, and made our way to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was really beautiful, but unfortunately there was work being done on a good portion of the front of the building and there was scaffolding covering parts of it. We hung out there for a bit and sat on the grass and, get this, got Tim Horton's!!! The place next door to the cathedral had Tim Horton's coffee and donuts. Funny to think that we don't even have Tim Horton's in Albany, but we found it in Dublin. After the cathedral, we went to the Guinness Factory. We had to wait in line for a while to get it, but it was worth it. You make your way up by floor and learn about the ingredients and how it's made and whatnot. When you get to the top, you get a pint at this bar that overlooks all of Dublin. It was really awesome. I am proud to say I was the first girl to finish my Guinness (Greta got a soda, Nobe didn't like hers and gave it to Kurt, but Mal was right behind me). We found a great pizza place, Apache Pizza, and had dinner there. Tons of food for a decent price. We went back to the hostel to clean up and then we headed out for a pub crawl. The pub crawl took you to two pubs, a bar, and a club. It was fun, but clearly the places where all of the tourists went.

Day 2 in Dublin we wanted to see the "real" Ireland and get out of the city. So the eight of us booked a tour (Jackie and Amanda went back to London because they came a day earlier than us due to a different class schedule) that took you up the coast to the north of Dublin. The tour guide was probably the best part of this whole experience. He sang Irish folk songs on the bus and was absolutely hilarious. The tour took us to Malahide Castle and the most interesting part about that was as of 30 years ago, it was still somebody's house. I would have loved to live there. The bus continued up the coast and we got to see some beautiful green islands and lovely beach. I honestly would have liked to have seen more, but I'm really glad we got this little peek of Ireland outside of the big city. We got back to Dublin around 3:00 and we split up for lunch. Noelle, Preston, and I went to a pub we had been to the day before to order what other people had the day before. After that, Nobe and I split from everyone, a lot of people decided to nap and we were not down with that. We found a great area for shopping. We went to a couple souvenir shops and then we went on a hunt for a jewelry store because I really wanted a nice claddagh ring. I ended up getting a silver one with my birthstone at a jewelry store that we found on our adventure. We all went back to Apache Pizza for dinner (really healthy, I know) and then afterwards we made our way to this street Trevor had gotten the name of from some guy in the bathroom the night before. The guy said it was an area where tourists didn't really go. The first pub we went to, Ryan's, was great. Greta and Trevor talked to these two older Irish gentleman, who were very difficult to understand, and Trevor ended up singing Irish songs with a couple people. After Ryan's, we went on a hunt for dessert and ended up at Eddie Rockets (that would be Johnny's younger brother). It was a 50's diner type thing where a bunch of us got Kit Kat sundaes. After dessert we went to a pub across the street that didn't have many people in it. Some of us were beginning to think that this whole thing was kind of a bust at this point. But then we met Michael. Trevor started talking to this group of guys who were all about 28ish. Before we knew it, our two groups were sitting together, singing each other songs and whatnot. We went to two other pub's with them after the first one closed and Michael bought rounds of Guinness for us at each place. We had such a great time.

Monday we all got up and went to a souvenir shop and grabbed a delicious breakfast. Then, we all went to the airport. Noelle, Jared, Kurt, and Preston had an earlier flight (by about an hour and a half) than Greta, Mal, Trevor, and I. So, the four of us had a bit of time to kill. We broke out every stupid game we knew and ending up having a lot more fun than we should have playing the "I'm going on a picnic..." game. We hit up Subway for dinner when we got back to London (this is something we do a lot... because of the "Two can dine for 5.99" deal). We got back to school and shared stories and pics with Rick (Evan and Rick had gone to Brighton for a day), I watched some of The Office, and went to bed.