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Published: August 9th 2007
The Guinness Factory
Beth, Hannah and Leah after a cold oneSunday started with a city tour around Dublin by a proper Irish guy, accent and all. We had a look at the Garden of Remembrance, General Post Office and Phoenix Park. He taught us about the Irish Flag: Orange = Protestants, Green = Ireland and White = peace between the two people - kinda cool; as well as Irish folk song about Molly Malone - Alive, Alive oh!
We went to the Guinness Factory for a tour. They had spared no money on their displays! It felt like we were walking through an adventure park, not a factory. After looking at all the interactive displays, we made our way to the top of their tower to the ‘Gravity Bar’ to get out free pint of Guinness and 360º views over Dublin. We were surprised at the lack of tall buildings, which made the Spire in the centre of the city look very tall.
By the time we left the wind had got up and it was absolutely freezing!! There was a queue to get in to the Guinness Factory that was so long it went up and around the corner - so very glad we were not waiting in
The Gravity Bar
Klaus, Hannah, Leah, Beth with our free Guinness and birds-eye view of Dublin that! There was no sign of our coach, so we quickly found a taxi and got a lift back to our hostel. We put on all our warm clothes (and anything else we could find) then headed out for a bit of sightseeing.
We walked up O’Connell Street to see the Spire and the General Post Office - the base used to plan attacks against the British Army during the Easter 1916 uprising. We walked along the Liffy to Customs House (the parliament building) then carried on to Trinity College with its beautiful campus. It stated to rain so we jumped inside their information centre, and the next thing we knew, all these people started coming inside covered in hail! We looked out the window 5 minutes later to find it snowing!! - Crazy!
We figured we were not going to be going anywhere in a hurry, so agreed to pay the €8 to have a look inside while we were there. They had a display on the ‘Book of Kells’, a 1000 year old manuscript, and then headed up stairs to the most amazing ancient library, referred to as ‘The Long Room.’
The grand room presented
two stories of countless shelves of books that were so old we were all convinced that at least one of them would lead you to a magical world - like Harry Potter. Large wooden ladders provided access to the high wooden shelves at the top; each carefully labelled and were each lined with a marble statue of some of the greatest philosophers of all time, such as Aristotle, Plato etc. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos, so instead we sat on the old wooden pews and absorb it all in.
By the time we left, it had stopped snowing and raining and in fact had partial blue sky. We made our way to the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on the other side of the city. However, sure enough, on the way back to the hostel it started snowing again!
We went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner, and then Leah and I got all rugged up to watch the fireworks over the Liffy. Although, when we got down there some Irish people told us they think it had been cancelled due to the weather. We hung around in the cold for a while longer, but
Irish Girls!
Beth, Leah, Hannah gave up and headed back to the hostel with our tails between our legs.
We all headed two doors down the road to the Aberdeen Hotel to meet up with the rest of the tour group. We did some traditional Irish dancing (thinking we looked really good).
We eventually headed home, running in lust of our favourite pizza takeaway placed - to find they were shut!
We burst into our room, and told Brendan of our dilemma, who well… WAS asleep, and then grabbed our coats to go on a food mission. We went to some American diner that was recommended to us by some random guys walking by and got a chocolate milkshake-yum!
On Monday, we got up earlier than I normally would for work. We threw our stuff in our bags and got on the coach for the 7am departure. We made our way to Dublin Port to head back to Holyhead on the ferry. However once we got most of the way across the Irish sea, the Captain told us that due to 50-60knott winds, we could not dock in Holyhead - nor could the ship that was already there!
We spent another
Party Time
Brendan, Leah, Hannah, Beth 4 hours waiting as we cruised up and down the coastline in the rough seas until we were finally able to dock, turning a 4 hour trip into 8 hours!
We watched a few movies in the coach on to pass the time and finally got back to Paddington Station in the late evening - being quite thankfully that we were so close to home rather than battling with the tubes across London!
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