Two weekends ago (19th&20th) my API group went up to Dublin for the day on Saturday. Deborah, our awesome RD, told us that people often stayed over the night on their own for more time in the city so of course a bunch of us hopped on that idea. We decided to book a hostel because, let's face it we're all cheap college students. Well, at least I am. Anyways, we left bright and early Saturday morning. It was also the first time I was taking the train anywhere so that in itself was kind of exciting.
Turns out besides having tables in front of the seat and having a trolley with food go around it was just an average train ride. I was super tired from waking up at the grueling hour of 6AM (go ahead roll your eyes Baumanns) so I fell alseep as soon as I saw the trolly go by. And I'll be totally honest, I really wanted to see it go by cuz it felt like Harry Potter. Nerd and proud of it!
We got to Dublin around 10:30ish and surprise surprise, it was raining. It wasn't torrential down pouring so I didn't care, but what I did care about was that it FREEZING. I had dressed in fairly warm clothes but I was pretty chilled to my bone for most of the trip.
Our first stop was to Trinity College where we were meeting our tour guide. He was a professor at the history department at the college. He really knew his stuff and was funny too. His eyebrows were kind of distracting at times because they looked like fuzzy caterpillars glued to his head. We set off for our tour of the city and both thankfully and not thankfully it was a walking tour. It was still kinda gross-ish out but at least I was warmer from walking everywhere.
We first walked around campus a bit and it's gorgeous even in not so good weather:
I think this was the bell tower...probably.
Bicycles! =D
Actually there was a funny/not-so-funny story about one of the chancellors of the college. He was given lots of money to rebuild buildings and do lots of new construction stuff which included building new housing. Now, the heads of colleges in those days were supposed to live on campus in house number 1. So it was the building behind the bikes in the picture above and he build houses and had a number 1 on the where he "lived". Turns out, it's just a long hallway going through to the back where there's another path to his gigantic mansion he build for himself. So now, he not only had a kick-ass house, but it's away from those pesky students and they can't bother him. Needles to say the people who gave him the money in the first place were not impressed with how he had squandered it. Glad to see that nothing has changed since then either.
After that we headed more into the city area. There was this cool statue:
After that we moseyed on over to Temple Bar which is the main touristy area. It jam packed with shops and restaurants and of course everything is mad expensive there.
We then went to the city hall which has some pretty cool mosaics all over:
They also had one of the seal of Munster which is the state/province (I don't know what they're called here) where Cork is:
After that we passed this shop:
We continued our tour which was winding and twisting so I had no clue where we were. We eventually came upon this church:
At one point we walked by an old marketplace where merchants and travellers would gather. When it was built the person in charge decided to show it was a marketplace by having faces of different people that would be there or represent the different goods. So they had an oriental face, a native american one, and to be totally un-politically correct they had the "winking jew" who was supposedly cheating you out of your money:
After that we headed to lunch at some pub closer to our starting point and it was delicious. Granted, we were all so cold at that point we would've eaten dirt if it was hot and we got to sit someplace warm. Even if we weren't freezing our asses off it still probably would've been good.
We then went back to Trinity College to go see the Book of Kells. For those who don't know they're copies of Bible passages (maybe the whole thing? not sure myself) that were done my monks a long long long long long long long long long time ago. And they're pretty with paintings and stuff. The exhibit was cool because they had pictures of all the different paintings and writing in them and gave lots of background info on them but the actual books were not all that exciting. Yeah they were nice looking but each of them were only open to one page so you couldn't actually see the whole book.
What was more impressive was the Long Room which is this GIGANTIC library. It's over 200 feet long and 2 floors. The whole time in the exhibit we weren't allowed to take pictures and there were so many security guards ready to swoop down if you so much as thought the word camera. So unfortunately, I don't have a picture of it. Thank god for Goolge Images though!
Afterwards we were allowed to roam the city as we pleased. Those that were heading back to Cork had to meet at the train station at 6ish so that gave them about 3 hours but we were basically let loose since we were staying. We decided to head up to O'Connell St which had huge pedestrian shopping areas. As a side note, there are a lot of those here. Just areas completely devoted to pedestrians where you can either shop or eat. A decent part of Cork city center is like that too and I really wish places in America would get more of them. Needless to say, it would help shrink people's waistlines. It was a cool place though with lots of street performers and good people watching.
We then decided to go to the Guinness Storehouse which is basically the same thing as touring the distillery but with beer instead.
It was a cool place and it was HUGE. It was about 6 or 7 floors of museum/how-we-make-beer tour. One thing I thought was funny was the lease signed by Guinness back when he first got the building.
As is typical of these type of tours, we all got a free Guinness at the end. We could choose to have ours just served to us or we could wait in line and be taught how to pour Guinness properly and then get to pour our own. You don't really need to guess which one I did.
I even got a certificate for it....Which will be going up on my wall right next to my whiskey tasting certificate!
After that we walked to the train station to drop people off and then headed to the hostel to drop our stuff before dinner. On our way back we saw this:
The hostel was cool and exactly what I expected of a nicer hostel (we had sheets! how exciting) but the guy at check-in was a real ass. We had 2 people cancel on us last minute and we didn't know the place had a 24 hours cancellation policy. We just asked him if we still needed to pay full price as we didn't know and he honestly couldn't have been ruder in his response. But besides that, the place was cool.
We then went hunting for a place to eat and came across a swinging pub that had pints for 3 euros until 8pm...because that's the important thing for finding a place to eat. When we eventually found a seat and got menus, we realized we were the only people eating. This wasn't the first time though. I've often gone out to eat with people and realized that we were the only people eating at the place. I truly am mystified as to when people actually eat though. I know "tea time" is big here and that's usually around 5pm or so and that's like 1st dinner with tea and a light snack. Then dinner is usually later at like 8ish. But still, we've gone out to eat at both those times and STILL we've been the only ones eating. Some places we walk into didn't even serve food after 5...which is kind of weird if they have "restaurant" outside the pub.
Anyways, we all got super tired as we were eating. Like, nearly fall asleep at the table tired. Instead of go back and go to sleep like someone smart would've done, we decided to stay out. Christine knew someone studying in Dublin so we decided to meet up with him and made the long trek there. Along the way I had briefly said something about how it's funny eavesdropping on people's conversations as we walk, and lo and behold, someone had been eavesdropping on us too. The guy was American and had heard our accents and just started talking with Christine while his other friends started talking to me. These guys turned out to be Brazilian and only one of them actually spoke English. He had come to Ireland to learn English. He wasn't studying or working, just living there to speak English. He probably didn't know that he had chosen one of the worst places to learn English since sometimes it's hard for even me to understand people. Most Irish people find the American accent "hard to swallow" or "it's takes some getting used to" both direct quotes that people have actually said to me. Mr. Brazil said it was "musical" which I thought was rather strange because musical is NOT a word I would use to describe how I speak. He did say it was amazing how much easier it was to understand me which was part of why he liked it better. Yeah I would like someone's accent better too if it meant I could actually communicate with them.
We had been walking for a good amount of time and chatting before we realized, oh hey, we're going the wrong way. So we said goodbye to our newly made friends (we never even asked their names) and about faced to go in the right direction. When we finally got to the pub and met up with Christine's friend we were all so tired we could've easily turned right back around and gone home. We ended up staying for about and hour or so before finally deciding that, yes, we need to go sleep if we don't want to resemble a pack of zombies. My bed was conveniently right next to the radiator which made up for being freezing the entire day.
The next morning after downing toast and a bowl of "granola" that looked mysteriously similar to something a donkey would eat, we headed off to the Dublin Zoo. It was a nice walk through what I presume is the main park of Dublin with lots of "excuse me"s from runners and dog-walkers out and about.
We tried to get to the zoo as early as possible so we still could get home at a reasonable time but it was actually an awesome time to go in general. The animals were all up because it was feeding time so they were all moving around and doing animally things. We even saw this one jump up into the tree:
Wrong continent I know, but you could say that about a lot of the animals. I was actually surprised because it was frigid while we were there and they were still all out and about. I guess they can handle cold better than use hairless apes can. This little guy was one of my favorites and would try to hit your hand if you put it up against the window...which he was climbing:
and of course, this is a hippo. He is fat. His mother is fatter.
At one point while we were there, it actually started hailing which, of course, is always a blast to be outside for. We finally made it through without causing too many problems though. The only exception being when Amanda opened the door that clearly says "Emergency Exit: Alarm Will Sound" and boy did it.
Overall I deemed it a successful trip since not one of us was able to stay awake for the train ride back to Cork. The true sign of a good trip.
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