Dublin

Dublin was the second weekend in a month long stretch of no rest. I'd be there two nights with Scott and Jen, then Debi, Sam and their friend Lidia would join us on Saturday night.

Dublin was my first experience on the infamous Ryanair. I had heard so many warnings about them; dodgy takeoffs, dodgy landings, bad customer service... I had no problem with them at all. The Irish woman at the check-in desk was probably the nicest airline employee I've ever met, and she just started the long run of incredibly nice and helpful Irish that we came across during our time in Dublin.

The city was... ok. It was very Americanized, lots and lots of pizza and hamburger joints. After I got back, I was talking to my friend Liz about it, and she thought it was a lot like Boston, which I have to agree with. It didn't have that European city feel to it. What added to the Boston feel was the streets. Though on a loose grid system, the streets change name every block, so if you're looking for a certain street you might not find it. So my advice? Buy a map. Of course, we got into the city when it was dark and rainy and we couldn't find our hostel... Not the best beginning. When we were wandering around, we did see a city map hanging in a window. While we were trying to get ourselves oriented, this guy walking down the street and stops and asks if we need any help. Incredibly surprising, no one would do that in the States.

We eventually found our hostel and settled in. Then we went out to the Temple Bar area. As we quickly found out, Dublin is a pretty damn expensive city. We went to this pub and ordered Guinness & beef stew for 16 euro. It was really good, but... it's stew. Granted, we were in a big tourist spot, but other places we went were still expensive. Later, we learned that if we wanted to save money, we should've stayed on the north side of the river.

For the night, we went to this one club type place and sat up on the roof the whole night, just drinking Guinness and talking. The great thing about Guinness in Ireland, that in addition to it tasting magnificent, is that's a domestic beer and therefore cheaper. A little slice of heaven. As I went up to get another round, the bartender started talking to me in an incredibly heavy Irish accent. It was a bit hard to understand him. But what I really got out of this conversation was a lesson about Budweiser. He told me that whenever he went to the States, he could never find a pint of good Budweiser. I say, what do you expect, it's a crap beer. He insists that it's not and gives me a sample. And you know what? It was really damn good. They should sell that stuff here.

The next morning was our sight seeing day. First, we stopped at a hotel/restaurant on the corner of our street and got an Irish breakfast, which was of course amazing. Then we walked to Trinity College. We didn't go see the Book of Kells or anything. None of us were that interested and we were trying to not spend too much money. The campus, however is gorgeous. The courtyard you first walk into is beautiful and the architecture was very cool.

From there we walked down the street to Dublin Castle. Again, we didn't go in. The Castle didn't seem too big or unique. Though the courtyard, I thought was impressive, just like at Trinity. Then we walked even further down to Christ Church Cathedral which was pretty impressive. I kind of wanted to go into this, but money and time concerns didn't allow for it.

We were going to go to the Guinness factory with my friend Ashley, who is there for a year for her major. So while we were waiting for her, we went to this pub across from the church called the Bull & Castle. It had a pretty good beer selection and while a little pricey, was still better than most places we had seen. We finally met up with Ashely and her friend and walked to the factory.

The factory is massive. It's seven flights, five of which are a self-guided tour. It was pretty impressive, but if you've been on one brewery tour, you've been on them all. It was basically the same as the Sam Adams tour, except more interactive and just bigger. But the story was the same. On the top floor is the Gravity Bar. It give a 360˚ view of Dublin. It was dark, so we couldn't see much, but it was still a cool sight. And the Guinness at the factory is really all it's made up to be. It was like the nectar of the gods.

After that we walked back, with Ashely leading, and somehow ended up on the other side of Trinity. We went to a pub and had dinner. I just had fish and chips, which was the first time I had an order of that while abroad. Again, nothing special, especially for the price. This is when Ashley and her friend went home, since they live outside the city and apparently the bus service is horrible.

So we headed back to Temple Bar. I had somehow developed a massive headache by this point, yet we still went to a club for several hours. The club was nothing special and actually kind of annoying. While we were walking back we saw a hot dog stand and we each got a 4 euro hot dog, which kind of made everything better. I felt like I was at a ball game paying those prices for a hot dog. We were in a deep sleep until around 4am when some of the people sharing our room came back and were generally incredibly loud and rude. They did not whisper, they turned lights on, one of the guys started tickling a girl, they were taking pictures with the flash on... generally just being wankers. It sounded like there were a bunch of them, but when we woke up the next day and met them, it was just four kids from Wales.

On Saturday we got up around noon and got ready. We were supposed to meet the other group of people around the Spire. We went to a cafe right on the corner by the Spire, had another Irish Breakfast them met up with Sam, Debi and Lidia. The plan was to go to the Jameson factory. So we walked over the factory. Lidia and Jen didn't want to do it, so they went shopping and I went through the factory with Scott, Sam and Debi. Again, the factory was pretty standard stuff, except I learned a little bit more about Whiskey. Plus, there was free Jameson at the end. We then went to the bar downstairs and got an Irish Coffee, because we had heard they were amazing, which they were.

After that we had to walk back to their hostel to drop some stuff off and meet back up with Lidia and Jen. We were trying to figure out where to go that night and eventually decided to go back to the Bull & Castle. We went upstairs and were able to secure a long picnic table to seat all of us. We had a nice long night there. Met many many friendly about around the bar and outside. They even had Sam Adams, which was a nice surprise. They also had the best food we had in Dublin. And all we got was an appetizer sampler. I think that's a good comment on Dublin's food. It was a good night, we left and walked the girls back to their hostel, got some pretty tasty pizza and went to bed. Then we flew home.

Picture link added on the right.