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Moving...
It feels like we brought waaaay too much stuff. This set up only lasted about 5 minutes.After a delayed flight at LAX and a long sprint through the San Francisco airport (fueled by freeze-dried strawberries and Gardettos... breakfast of champions), I met Brittany (my travel buddy) at the gate to our flight to Ireland, where she was stalling the flight crew from closing off the boarding so that we could both make it on to the flight. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, we tried (but failed) to get some sleep. Good thing Aer Lingus had movies and games... they kept us pretty entertained for the duration of the 10-hour flight.
We arrived in Ireland around 9:15 am and the weather was perfect! We caught the bus to our hostel (or so we thought) and ended up lost for the better part of an hour (we soon found out that Ireland is not so great with directions or organization... more to come on this later). We finally found our hostel by having a local hotel call around for directions. We met a few people from the mid-west that had been traveling around Ireland by car for two weeks and were heading home the following day. They gave us some great recommendations and wanted to make sure
Temple Bar
Cheers to arriving in Ireland! Britt and I enjoying some time at the Temple Bar. we tried Ireland's fresh milk. The hostel was great and after a very nice nap to sleep off some jet-lag, we set out to explore Dublin by foot.
We had lunch at Sofia's Cafe, where we talked with some locals about Ireland, and they were eager to share their views about Americans and our political system. We found Trinity College, which we later found out was where some of the fight scenes from Star Wars were filmed. The college campus was beautiful. It seems like almost every building in Dublin looks like a castle or some historic sight. We continued to explore and eventually found the Temple Bar area, which is Dublin's cultural center. We returned later that night to sample some Irish beer (Kilkenny beer) at the historic Temple Bar. We talked to a few people and lost track of time and ended up power-walking back to our hostel in time to meet curfew.
The next day we did a walking tour of Dublin. Our guide, Daniel, was a college student that does city tours in his spare time. We met at City Hall and progressed around Dublin, learning about the Vikings, Irish mythology, superstitions and much
Temple Bar
The bar itself, our hostel is right above it. more. We visited the gorgeous Christ Church Cathedral, a Viking settlement, the Halpenny bridge (which has a plaque dedicated to a man who never existed... an Irish college prank), the central spire, O'Connell Bridge, Trinity College (which influenced UC Berkley, and holds the superstition that if you walk under its central archway, you'll fail all of your classes, but if you climb to the top, you'll ace them all... but likely get shot). We saw the Dublin Castle, which only one corner looks like a castle, often used for entertaining dignitaries. On the back of the Dublin Castle was a series of multi-colored towers, which Britt and I dubbed the "Ikea Castle" but Daniel said they were painted that way because "the artist fancied the colors." We also saw the world's fanciest helipad and largest sculpture.
Later, we headed down Grafton Street, which is a big pedestrian street and shopping center. We were amazed at how Americanized Dublin was. We saw a bunch of US franchises all within a few blocks of walking. We headed back to our hostel to figure out what we were going to do for the next day. We met a few of our hostel
Temple Bar
At our Barnacles hostel in Temple Bar district. Gotta love the lime green beds, bright orange walls, and 3 am fire alarms... roommates, one of which was a poet, down for the night to do an open-mic event. Our tour guide had mentioned visiting Galway, which is off the west coast of Ireland. We booked two tickets and will be heading out at 8:15 am. We are excited to see more of the Irish countryside and less of the city. Dublin is great, but it is jam-packed with people and has that "big city" feel to it. Some of the other people in our hostel decided to go to Galway as well, including three students from Massachusetts, one of whom, Dave, aspired to go to law school and was quite the traveler. They are staying at a different hostel, but apparently Galway is a small city so we'll probably run into then again.
The night was again sleepless. Someone had decided it would be a brilliant idea to pull the fire alarm at 3 am and startle the entire hostel. It was quite the send off for the coming morning. Ha ha. But, such is the life of a traveler.
Next Stop: Galway, Ireland.
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