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Published: April 5th 2008
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A Weekend in Dublin
Sometimes I forget how small Edinburgh actually is, but being in Dublin definitely reminded me of that. The city was crowded and very urban, but nonetheless interesting, and above all, I got to see two of my friends from Claremont McKenna.
Day 1: Saturday An Airport Adventure The trip didn't get off to a very good start: the plane was significantly delayed. Everyone was getting nervous at first, the boarding time had passed and soon the take-off time as well, and still, there was no plane outside our window. Eventually, we were informed that our plane had landed at a different terminal but had to refuel, so we would be boarding after that. Therefore, after about three hours in the airport (having arrived two hours early for an international flight and an hour delay), I boarded the plane and began my 40 minute flight to Dublin.
First Day in Dublin! Because of my flight delay, I just barely missed Jeremy at the hostel, where we had planned on meeting, but he soon returned and we set out to explore the city while waiting
At the Dublin Castle
Alisha, Kana and Jeremy for Kana to arrive. We walked around the city for a while: to a park with a lounging Oscar Wilde statute, the Temple Bar district (though it was fairly quiet there, possibly because of the holiday weekend) and popped into a couple of museums. After having a leisurely dinner and wandering around some more, we went to the bus stop to wait for Kana to arrive. Having forgotten to take into account the time it would take to pass through immigration, we began to panic when she hadn't arrived by 11:30 PM, but she arrived soon enough without any problems.
Day 2: Sunday On Sunday, we continued to wander around the city but as Kana wanted to attend Easter Mass, we began the day at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which despite the name, was not actually a Catholic Church but rather an Anglican-Episcopalian Church. Jeremy had assumed since the nearby cathedral was Anglican that this one would be Catholic and I looked at the name and assumed it was Catholic as well. After the mass, we then proceeded on our walking tour of Dublin (lead by Jeremy, who had visited Dublin once before). We went to a
couple of parks, walked back to the Temple Bar area and went up and down a few of the major streets, looking at stores and other scenery along the way. However, because it was Easter, Dublin was fairly quiet, so we spend a lot of time just sitting in the park and talking.
Day 3: Monday Monday was our busy day. Having promised Kana that we would visit the Guinness Storehouse, which she promised would be interesting for even us non-beer loving folk, we headed out early in the morning towards the Storehouse, stopping at the Dublin castle on the way over. The castle was probably the most interesting castle that I have even seen. Parts of it resembled a traditional castle but at the same time it was situated in the middle of modern Dublin and so was surrounded by modern buildings. Additionally, parts of the castle (or what looked like castle parts) were painted the oddest colors, mainly yellow and blue. As we were walking around the castle, we kept staring at it and each other, going--this is a castle?
Once we had our fill of this castle, we continued on our way
to the Guinness Storehouse without getting too lost, although when we were in the general area, we got in a minor disagreement over which street to turn on and this guy popped out of the near-by store and saw three college students and immediately said: The Guinness Storehouse is two streets down and turn left. So, we made our way down, turned left and found signs to the Storehouse. As Kana promised, it was rather interesting. The factory was filled was lots of information on the process of making Guinness and the history of the beer but it also had this amazing waterfall in the middle of the factory and a whole floor each for Guinness advertisements and moderate drinking. The advertisements were really cute and Kana and I fell in love with the toucan, while the moderate drinking floor was both interesting and funny.
After the Guinness Factory, we decided to finish off the day with a trip to Trinity College, which ended up being a beautiful and small campus. In the early evening, we returned to the hostel, had dinner and spent the evening talking and trading stories of our study abroad adventures.
Early Tuesday morning,
Dublin Castle
the traditional looking part I hopped back on the plane back to Edinburgh and had a relaxing rest of the day.
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