Need to know
Barnacles- name of our hostel
James-name of our pub crawl tour guide
Friday
We took the bus to the train station, train to the airport, and plane to Dublin! Kind of a hassle for a 45 minute flight but it got us where we wanted to be. We flew on Ryanair airlines…which kind of has a bad reputation. They are known for their delays and they pin you with a bunch of hidden fees. You are only allowed one carry on and they are super strict about it, we had to put our bags in a measurement bin to make sure they fit and we couldn’t even have satchels or purses they had to be shoved in our bags! So having only a backpack for 4 days was a bit of a struggle. The plane actually wasn’t bad at all…I was expecting the worst so I was a lot more calm once I realized the plane was actually nicer than what I usually flight to High Point on.
When we arrived in Ireland we knew it, their accents are so strong and hard to understand. I was just getting used to the British accent and now I’m in a place where the combination “th” doesn’t exist.
Three- tree
There-tere
Another-anoter
Thirty-tirty
ETC. it’s kind of funny, but really can be a struggle to understand!
Anyways, we got to our hostel, Barnacles. Again, I was kind of expecting the worst..i’ve never stayed in a hostel and well the only knowledge I have on them is the bad reviews and the horror movie ‘hostel’. So basically I was scared to death. We had a room with 3 bunks…so six people…and we only made up 5 of them. Reception told us we would be having a 6th roommate for the weekend…great. When we went up to our room we were happy to see no one was in there, so we claimed our assigned beds 2-6. The room was bright pink and green it was fun looking.
Our hostel was in an area called Temple Bar, which is basically the center city where everything is. All the site seeing touristy things, pubs, bars, restaurants, shops, everything to do was in walking distance which was really nice.
Then we got ready for the Pub Crawl!
We visited 5 different pubs over the course of the night.
At the first pub we got 1 free beer…obviously I didn’t. Matt got some oyster beer which sounded disgusting I don’t know how he drank it. Katie got a beer that was like some ridiculous 7% or something? She wanted to vom and said it was gross…Sarah and Emily got normal sounding beers and I got a glass of wine…I’m such a girl. It was great that we got a free drink but then james told us we had 3 minutes to drink them…annoying.
The next bar we learned how to pour your own pint…which again I clearly didn’t.
3rd bar had cheap cocktails.
Okay 4th bar was swanky and their deal was cheap shots. Katie and I got distracted downstairs in the bathroom with these 2 german girls who were asking our advice on guys. They asked if in America you are supposed to wait around for the guy you like to text you. We said no you should text him right now…so after asking ‘are you sure’ like twenty times she handed me the phone and had me text something to this boy. When the boy responded she and her friend literally started screaming at the top of their lungs. Sarah barged in the bathroom nervous to see what was happening...only to realize it was us and our new friends screaming for i don't even know what reason. It was hilarious…When we finally got back upstairs to the bar we got “baby guinness” shots. They were so cuteee
The 5th and final bar was a cocktail bar where we all tried to learn Gaellic, and all failed miserably.
We went home, but not before getting pizza..not okay.. and nervously opened up the door to our room scared our roommate would be in there. We all looked to the right up at bunk number 1 where he would be and phewww no one. I was relieved I could get a good night sleep without freaking out about a stranger across the room from me.
Saturday we bought a “hop on hop off” tour which was a city site seeing tour where you could get on and off this bus as many times as you want for 2 days. The bus had around 23 stops each stop having a certain tourist attraction.
The first place we went to was the Jameson Distillery
We all got a free drink made with Jameson whiskey at the end and Me and Matt were chosen to be Whiskey Tasters at the end of the tour! I was so excited.
We had 3 different types of whiskey in front of us
The first one was scotch whisky- tasted like wood.
The second was the American whiskey- tasted like burnt flowers
The third was the Jameson whiskey- I don’t know what it tasted like but I didn’t like it.
so as I tasted each one…I wanted to vom and washed it down with my free drink. Needless to say after washing each taste of whiskey down with a whiskey drink on an empty stomach…I was feeling it. The whiskey alone was not something I liked, but the drink that I got was cranberry and jameson and I actually really enjoyed it…but maybe that’s just because anything would have tasted good after drinking a whiskey that tasted like wood. Regardless it was really fun, and Matt and I even got certificates that say we are professional whiskey tasters now Haha!!
After Jameson we went to the Dublin Castle!
When we left the Castle it started to downpour and we had a good walk home…so we kind of turned into a run instead. When we got back to barnacles we were soaked. And I mean like my jacket was dripping my boots were ruined socks had to be thrown out soaked. It was awful. But we went to the hardrock café for dinner and the mac and cheese cheered me up. It was the best mac and cheese everrrr and it better have been seeing I paid 15euros for it. Yes I don’t want to talk about it.
We went to a cute little Irish pub after but got back at a decent time because we had another jam-packed day ahead of us. We walked into our room once again nervously looking to the right to see if bed number one was occupied yet. PHEW. No one there still. We all felt relieved and it didn’t look like we would have a roommate all weekend! Yay.
SUNDAY
The first thing on our list was St. Patricks Cathedral. It was really pretty, but it was kind of like all the other Cathedral’s I have seen. After that we headed to the Guinness storehouse. It was giant! There were 7 floors which covered everything you need and want to know about Guinness, how it’s made…what it is made from, advertising techniques, etc. It was really interesting and fun. We even got to ‘trace our Guinness roots’ to see if we had any ancestors who had anything to do with Guinness, and I found Stewart Wilson, which is actually my grandfathers name too so that was pretty cool!
There was also a room where we got to taste the Guinness…ew I tasted it, for some reason thinking it wouldn’t taste like beer…well I guess it didn’t. it was worse. But I had to taste it being in the Guinness factory and all.
On the top floor was the Gravity bar which had a 360 degree view of Dublin. It was such a nice day and the sun was coming through it was so pretty!
Our last stop of the day was the Kilmainham Gaol (jail) which is one of the largest jails in Europe. People were put in this jail for things such as stealing a loaf of bread, or to the extreme of murder. There were men children and women. The youngest prisoner was FIVE years old. Can you believe that!?
some of the jail cells were open and we got to go in them, so claustrophobic
It was our last night and we got dinner at a pub where they were actually playing American Football and the Patriots were on so that was cool. I got a burger but their burgers here are really weird, they aren’t anything like American burgers…I don’t really know how to explain them but I miss American cheeseburgers. Anyways. We got back to barnacles and walked into our room for the last time looking right cautiously to see that still, no one was in that top bunk. PHEW we made it the whole time! As we walked in a couple more feet…I yelled….as I saw a man….sleeping…IN MY BED. Katie looked like she had just had a heart attack and she stumbled back grabbing me and we all exited the room right away. Then we were in hysterics laughing about this situation. Except as much as I was laughing I was not finding it that funny. Get this boy out of my bed…what kind of joke is this. After standing in the hall for 10 minutes laughing and figuring out what to do we went back in…and I had to sleep in the top bunk where this boy should have been but for some reason thought he should get in my bed instead! So scary. Tried to sleep with one eye open…
The next morning we woke up, happy to be alive because some strange man was in our room all night. I’m clearly still not over it haha. So we walked around Trinity college, but didn’t do the formal tour because it was kind of pricey after the amount of money we had spent already. We went to a place called Dublina, which is a museum that has 3 exhibits. The first exhibit was for the Vikings!
which was really fun, did you know that there is no proof Vikings ever wore hats with those horns on the sides? The horned head pieces did exist but they were really for religious ceremonial symbols and they were most likely not even around anymore by the times of the Vikings. Such a let down about the image we think of when we hear Vikings!
The second exhibit was for the medieval times
we got to dress up a lot in each exhibit which is probably why we thought it was so fun. But I actually did learn a lot in each one. This museum was one of the most interesting I’ve been too because it was so interactive and informative at the same time.
The third exhibit was archaeology history
In this exhibit we learned about what archaeologists do and how they do it. We also learned things like how they can determine how old a skeleton is, or what gender etc. It was very interesting.
Our next stop was St Christs Church Cathedral, where we had tea in the Crypts! It was cool…and kind of creepy actually.
We finished our day with dinner at an Irish pub with Irish music, and then it was time to head to the airport.
Ryanair lived up to its bad rep this night. The plane was delayed…Once we were on the plane the pilot apologized for the delay because of ‘severe weather conditions’ I was freaking out! But it turned out not to be such a bad flight thankfully. However…because of how delayed the plane was we missed our train…which caused us to have to stay in a hotel for the night! Ugh. But I suppose it wasn’t so horrible because I got to have a nice shower and sleep in a big comfy bed! ☺ nice way to end the vacation I would say.
Overall Dublin was awesome! I absolutely loved it, and I definitely hope I can go back some day. It was very similar to oxford except it was almost like a “themed” oxford…obviously because it was loaded with Irish things. It was like every where we went you heard Irish music, or saw the flag, or cool things outside gift shops. It was a fun experience and I enjoyed every second of it!
No comments:
Post a Comment