Arriving in Dublin

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Today marked another travel day - Galway to Dublin. We are on the final leg of our trip, as we are headed back to the good old U.S of A on Sunday. After leaving Eddie and Helen at our B&B in Galway, we hopped on the bus and slept the three hours to Dublin. We arrived in what seemed like “San Francisco times one hundred.” Hustle and bustle, dirty, loud, monumental buildings and statues, people whizzing by…it was not like Galway or Cork.

There are about 15 different ways to cross an intersection in Dublin, and every one of them includes possibly getting hit by a car running a light. I had absolutely no idea where we were, so thank god Erica is good at reading maps. After checking into our hotel, we hit the pavement to get the lay of the land. We strolled through St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin’s largest park, which lies in the middle of the city. We shopped along Grafton Street, which is the promenade of restaurants and shopping, walked through the National Museum of History and saw the Christ Church Cathedral - it wasn’t open, but we got some great photos.

We had some time to kill and while walking by the Abbey Theatre, saw that there was a theatre production showing at 7:30 called “The Comedy of Errors.” We decided to buy tickets, and after some dinner, we saw the show, which was entirely in Shakespeare. It was funny at times, but it almost took “work” to listen to the actors, since not only did they have Irish accents, they were talking in Shakespeare. Afterwards, we walked down to Temple Bar - the hot strip where many a “hen” parties and “stag” parties take place nightly. It is known for being touristy and so most people say to go down it just to take a look then go elsewhere to actually sit and have a beer. It actually reminded me a lot of Halloween in Isla Vista. There were tons of street performers, and actually some really good bands. I bought one of the bands CD’s for 10 Euro. We got some gelato and met a guy named John who was from Hawaii. Small world, John and I have a mutual friend who went to UCSB with me. CRAZY. We went into some pubs, and sang/danced along to some cover bands.

The streetlights in this city are very pretty though - elegant and tall. The signs are incredibly blatant (i.e., the trash one), which we think is hilarious. We also appreciated the helpful “Look Right” painted on the cross walk - way to help out the Americans!

Busy day tomorrow…. starting off with a gym workout - thank god our hotel has one!

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