Weekend Trip to Dublin

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In the early morning of last Friday: Carson, Kali, Alyssa, Marnie, I left on a four hour bus ride to Ireland's capital city of Dublin. We all slept the ride away and arrived at about noon. We had many things planned for the three day trip, but we played it by year as far as when each event would take place. We first got some food from a fast food-ish place and processed to head to the National Museum of Ireland. It was rather unimpressive, disorganized, and over-whelmingly large (but it was free, so we can't complain!). Some parts were interesting; including life of soldiers through the decades and some exhibit on the start of the Irish Revolution. After we left we were rather tired, but we needed a bit of a pick me up, so we headed to the Guinness Storehouse! This place was awesome! The self guided tour explained everything from brewing to history to advertising! It was extremely visually pleasing and fun to walk through. At the end of the tour we got to enjoy a free pint at the top of the building at a pub called "the gravity bar". It was amazing, 7 stories up, and it was 360 degrees of glass so you could view the entire city! It was surreal, very beautiful. We left and hopped a tram, then a train to go to Alyssa's cousin's apartment to get a free nights stay. It was great to stay there (when we finally found it) and I was greatful for the free food and bed.
Saturday was grand, I was really dragging from the early morning on tuesday, but after a nice night of rest I was ready to go. Taking the train then tram again to dublin was what we did and our first stop was our hostel. It was rather nice and not too expensive. We headed out to check the Dublin Trinity College, where the Book of Kells is kept. Unfortunately it was getting repaired so we didn't dish out the cash to see the library. The College campus was very old and beautiful. It wasn't too large, and had some cool art on campus. After that we got some subway and took it to go to the city centre. By chance, we ran into a huge HUGE marching protest. There were over 100,000 marching about a Irish Bank scandal and many were protesting capitalism in general. It was sight, I climbed a huge statue to get some sweet pictures of it all. Afterword we went to the bodies exhibit (like the one in st. paul, but I never went) about 6 blocks away. It was so cool, I enjoyed every second of it. It was unreal the way they could preserve bodies like that. We next ventured to the temple bar area, got groceries for BLTs, ate at the hostel, and processed to start the night off! After some great conversation over a few between us 5 we headed back to the temple bar area and went to 3 different pubs. It was good time and we all slept well that night.
After breakfast and check out we went to check on the kilmainham jail about a 3 or 4 mile walk away. This proved to be a mistake, we needed to check a 2 pm bus and the next tour was at noon. We headed back and caught that bus back home! It was all and all and great trip!

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Photos

Bodies!
Not allowed to take pictures inside