Well, it's Thursday and I am still recovering from a weekend in Dublin. I had been planning on going for St. Patrick's Day pretty much since I got into my program. The only problem was finding out how to get there and where to stay. Naturally, I waited to book everything about two weeks before leaving. The only room left was a pretty nice apartment just outside the downtown area. It ended up being about 30 euro a night, but everything is expensive in Dublin so that wasn't too bad. Flights on ryanair were pretty cheap and now I just had to figure out what to do while in the city, which obviously included drinking Guinness. When we got there, we decided to be extreme tourists and went with the two day "Dublin Pass" for 40 euro and got us into all the big tourist attractions in the city. Big suckers, but I figured if I was going to pay for this thing, I would definitely get my money's worth. And I did. I have never done so much walking in my life. After three days of refusing to take a cab, my feet were all but dead.
We ended up going to the Guinness Storehouse, Christchurch Cathedral, and walked through Trinity College and Dublin Castle (not really a castle compared to the ones in Scotland) the first day. The Guinness factory was definitely a highlight, much more impressive than the Budweiser brewery which is the only other brewery I have visited. The cathedrals were actually pretty interesting with great medieval architecture and stained glass windows. I just couldn't believe you had to pay between 4 and 10 euros to get in a church, damn Irish Catholics. We visited the Jameson distillery, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Kilmainham Goal (Gaelic for jail) the second day. Lots of walking and Irish history lessons. The jail was actually very strange, a huge stone building used to hold prisoners during the Irish War of Independence between 1919 - 1922. They told us some pretty creepy stories about executions, hangings, and various prisoners in the tiny cells.
The third day, we made a day trip to Howth, a beautiful fishing village in the suburbs of Dublin. It was a pretty quick 20 minute train ride out of the city, and we spent the whole day there. We watched people throw dead fish into the bay and watch the seals fight over them, pretty amusing. Then we basically climbed up a cliff, which was pretty difficult because we were carrying all our stuff for the whole trip with us. The views from the top of the cliff were incredible though. For miles you could see the stark Irish coast, two uninhabited islands, beaches, harbours, etc. We got dinner at a seafood place in town and then headed back to Dublin.
That night, I met up with Julia, one of my friends from back home who is studying in Dublin. She was very kind to have four people crash in her living room of a small apartment. We enjoyed the Dublin nightlife at a couple bars in the area the last two nights and it was a very enjoyable trip. The only thing that went wrong was that I lost a bag with a gift for my brother in Howth. Oh well, I guess he's not getting anything... But I am happy to say that I visited Ireland, but now have a giant hole in my wallet. I think it was worth it though.
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