The Luck of the Irish

Alright, I thought that since St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner and everyone is in the Irish spirit I would write about Sarah’s and my (Demetra) trip to Ireland last year.  Sarah made the (terrible mistake) of letting me plan our trip to Dublin, and I believe I have said it before and will say it over a thousand times I am terrible at planning trips.  We flew out of London Gatwick or Luton airport – (can’t remember) on a Friday night around 9 P.M.  Fortunately it is only like a half hour flight to Dublin so we arrived there, passed customs, and were out on the street of Dublin sometime around 10-ish.  We took an airport shuttle bus into the city centre of Dublin, of course I had NO idea where our hostel was and turns out it was no where near the city centre.

OH WELL, Sarah, we are in DUBLIN! we NEED to go to a pub and have a Guinness before anything, I convinced my roommate, trying to buy myself some time to figure out how the fuck we were going to make it to the hostel.  Lucky for me it was pretty easy to convince her of this point and we went to the nearest pub we could find, Madigan’s.  We went inside with our luggage and everything – Sarah ordered a Guinness, I didn’t even get one I ordered a cider hahaha.  We were speaking to the bartender and I asked him how we could get to our hostel.  Well OF COURSE it was far as fuck and he explained the trains were no longer running.  We were kind of screwed.  Plus, a cab would be pretty expensive.  But, bless his kind soul – the bartender knew a few cab drivers and one agreed he would take us to our hostel for half the price!  We quickly got into the cab, and I SWEAR the Irish are the friendliest group of people on this entire planet.  He told us sites we should see, and basically gave us a fucking historical tour of the city as we drove towards our hostel.  He showed us bands, Koldaline and London Grammar, that were pretty popular at the time, and even offered to wait for us to make sure we got into our hostel.  Being the genius that I am I politely declined.  Well – probably shouldn’t have because our hostel closed at 8:45.  Oops.  I explained to Sarah that I think we may have to sleep in the gangway between our hostel and the neighboring building.  She didn’t agree that this was a great idea.  Next door was a pub so we decided to go in and see if anyone in that pub was staying at our hostel and to ask if they would let us in.  This didn’t work out – and there was like a bar fight so we left.  We walked back to the hostel and I was basically explaining to Sarah how we could take turns sleeping on each others shoulders – she wasn’t having it.  She knocked on all of the windows of the hostel until someone let us in.  Well at least we got to sleep in a bed!

The next morning we got up pretty early and found out that we had to take a train into the city centre if we wanted to see anything.  The train signs, and most signs in Ireland are in Gaelic, so you def might want to know that before you try getting around!  When we arrived in the city center we decided to grab coffee and breakfast.  Sarah got a bagel and I got a full Irish breakfast (I was obsessed with full english/irish breakfasts the entire time I was abroad.  Seriously I ate one like every other day).  NOT the black pudding tho.  We walked around and the first thing we saw was this statue of an angel with a bullet in her chest.  We then souvenir shopped for a bit and I bought this Irish knit hat I was obsessed with.  If you go to Dublin there is a great deal for a hop-on-hop-off bus, it takes you to everything there is to see in Dublin and it is a pretty good price.  We purchased tickets for the bus and first got off at the Trinity College/ Library.  We saw the book of Kells, and walked around the college campus.  We then hopped back on the bus and got off at Dublin Castle, we walked around inside of the Castle and the grounds/garden outside.  It was really pretty, we did not pay for the guided tour because it is just so much better to explore at your own pace.  We then visited the Dublin city hall which unless you are really into politics and history of politics I would suggest skipping it was pretty boring.  Next stop was the GUINNESS factory! a MUST see!!! It was so so so cool and you get to pour your own guinness.  It is a huge building with several floors and you get to drink your beer on the very top floor.  We may have had a bit too much to drink after that because I turned into my ulter-ego mega bitch when Sarah and I couldn’t find out how to get back to the City center.  (sorry sarah, you know i love you)  As we walked back from the guinness building we decided to grab dinner and another drink at a nearby pub.  I got bangers and mash and a cider.  We then walked over to Temple Bar to check out a few of the pubs, it was very busy we had a drink or two then headed back to our hostel on the train.

The next morning we took the train back into Dublin and decided to check out a few of the churches.  We took the hop on hop off bus again and decided to visit Christ Church first.  We then checked out the Jameson brewery but did not do the tour ( i CANT drink jameson.)  We then grabbed coffee and a light snack (Sarah got couscous…) and attended church in St. Patricks Cathedral.  You do not need to pay the insane fee to see the cathedral if you attend mass there plus its so cool to be able to say you went to Sunday mass at st. patricks in dublin!  We must have had our backpacks with us because we then caught the shuttle back to the airport.  The people of Ireland are so friendly and helpful.  It is just such a great place I swear even the air just feels more fresh.  The trip started off pretty bumpy but it definitely picked up and made Ireland one of my favorite places in the world, I would seriously consider even living here, and I am SO happy that I got to explore such a great place, and part of my nationality with one of my best friend’s ever, and sister, Sarah.