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Published: March 20th 2005
Speaking the Truth!
I may be not be Irish, but no worries!Is there any better time to visit Ireland than March 17? We think not. The night before, Laura, Natalie, her boyfriend and I all flew into Dublin and grabbed some food before heading to bed for a good night´s sleep. From 9am on March 17th when we woke up, there were people in the streets dressed in green and simply enjoying life---a trait of the Irish! We watched the parade go through downtown Dublin where colorful floats, Irish dancing, and marching bands abounded. All of us dressed in green showed our spirit, Irish background or not!
Most of my pictures are on my disposable camera since I wasn´t risking my digital in crazy Dublin that day, but I´ll hopefully get them up soon. We had lunch at a nearby pub before meeting up with Chelsey and Mal...our Drake pals studying in England who met us in Dublin. We all split the tab of a 4-star hotel and got to hang out in Ireland. That evening we went to the Temple bar area where I have never seen so many people out together, and most of them completely drunk---more drunk than I´ve seen on a college campus if that says anything!
A free one after the tour!
Guinness for all, though we all tried it and found it a little strong for our liking... We ate a nice meal and then walked through the area, stopping for sure at the Brazenhead, the oldest pub in Dublin. So many people, so many bars, but so much atmosphere! It was great.
By law, all bars closed at 11:30 (coming from Spain this was incredibly early!) and by then the drunk tourists were getting a little to crazy for us so we ended our walking around and headed to the hotel for a late night snack.
The next day we spent touring the city where we saw Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick´s Cathedral, toured the Guinness Brewery-Factory and went through the Charles Beatty Library where we saw Bible texts as old as 200 AD! We ended our tour with the Dublin Castle and went home to clean up for a nice evening where we went to Mulligans pub---the place where JFK was said to have spent his free time in Dublin enjoying the atmosphere and having an Irish beer. We had a nice dinner, went back to the hotel for late night gossip and slept hard!
The next day we parted with Mal, Chelsey and Nat´s Boyfriend, Cody, and got on a bus to
Kilkenny, a small Irish town south of Dublin where we walked the streets, saw a few of their 9 churches and 80 pubs (and let me tell you, that´s a lot for a small town) and enjoyed the sunshine---we were incredibly lucky with the weather---it didn´t rain once! We shopped and indulged in hot bread at a supermarket right out of the oven---yum! Then we waited for our next bus at a nearby pub where an Ireland vs. Wales rugby game was being watched so we took in some culture and watched the raging fans cheer on their team though Ireland recorded a big time loss.
Finally, we were on our way to the Irish coast, a town called Rosslare Harbor where we spent the night in the last room they had available so we could wake up at dawn to catch our ferry to Wales. We were sad to leave Ireland, and more sad to be headed toward a country where the pound is their currency, but we knew we had more adventures in store for us ahead!
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