Weekend in Dublin!

I was in Dublin this past weekend! A group of 9 girls all went on an 8 am bus on Saturday morning. 4 hours and a nap later, we were there!...and only a 5 minute walk to our hostel.

My first hostel experience was a generally good one, I’d say. We walked in the room and there was a Mexican girl there who was about to leave for the day. She left her laptop out and told us we could use it if we wanted to. We were shocked at how trustworthy she was of us….considering I brought my money belt with me which carried my passport money and credit card. But I don’t blame her for trusting a group of American girls who were eating PB&J’S and drinking out of juice boxes for lunch…We were in a room of 12 people including a few men, which was weird at first, but they were really friendly. One was from Ireland, one from Switzerland, and two from Germany.

We then made it over to the Guinness Factory after a half hour rainy walk through Dublin. It was kind of like a prettier version of NYC except it had a river running through the whole city and a different bridge every 3 blocks. After arriving at the Guinness Factory we went through the tour ourselves, with each of the 7 floors representing a different aspect of Guinness. It was probably one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever been through. I actually read everything! We got up to the 7^th floor and there was the Gravity Bar. A room with glass walls looking over the city of Dublin. So pretty! We handed in our tickets for our free pint of Guinness and began a difficult task of getting through the whole glass before it getting warm. Success! Sorta..

The girls at The Gravity Bar!

We then walked around Dublin looking for a place to eat dinner. We ended up at a restaurant called Sweeney’s and I got a chicken sandwich- soo Irish. On the way back to the hostel, an short little Irish man began yelling at us for causing the Civil War. We walked away…fast. When we went back to the hostel, we talked to our roommates and decided to go out with them. We ended up going to Temple Bar- which is an area of bars and well as an actual bar. Everything was way crowded and kind of Americanized which was a disappointment. So we just bought some packages of 99cent cookies and went home to sleep in our surprisingly comfortable bunk beds.

The next morning we woke up nice and early to get our FREE breakfast, where we all had at least 2 of everything and then set off on our adventurous day through Dublin. It was sunny and 50 degrees yay!! We first headed over to Trinity College and became very touristy and took pictures of everything. It was soooo beautiful. And I thought Marist was nice…

Gateway into Trinity

Then we walked over to St. Stephen’s Green, which was also gorgeous! A soon as we walked through the gate, there were a group of children wearing yellow daffodil appreciation day t-shirts having bouncy ball races. After creepily taking pictures and videos of them, we walked through a path with fountains and ponds with swans and ducks and there were babies everywhere! A dream come true. I almost gave out my babysitting card…

St. Stephen's Green

We walked over to the Dublin Castle which had a stunning chapel in it, and then headed over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and took pictures from the outside, considering it was 4.50 euro to see inside.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We kept walking through the streets of Dublin where we saw people of many races and people of different psychological levels. (One man pulled out a real diamond ring and asked me to marry him through a window where I was sitting trying to enjoy my hot chocolate…He stared at me for 3 minutes, until the owner of the café told him to leave…awkwardddd).

We went back to the hostel and took a 4o’clock bus back to Cork…man I missed it here. Although my weekend in Dublin was really fun, it reaffirmed my decision of coming to Cork for the semester. I don’t think I would be able to handle too many proposals for 5 months in Dublin. One weekend was definitely enough.