Ireland and Dublin!

Sorry this post has been delayed, but I'll get to that later.

Dublin was awesome! I don't want this to be too long, so I won't go into incredible detail about everything. But I will start at the beginning:

We arrived in Dublin at 12:10 am on Thursday morning. I got to sleep in the hotel (which was really nice) by around 2:30. Then I was awake at 5:15 so we could meet our bus to the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs of Moher are far from Dublin, so I decided to make a little map of our trip so you could all see:

 Our first stop was this castle. We'd already driven through Limerick at this point. We never made it inside the castle because there were some nice stores to go to, but we did buy some cheap fleeces that ended up being great for the cold weather in Ireland!

 We drove through a lot of Irish countryside, but it's hard to show good pictures of that for three reasons:
1) I had gotten like 3 hours of sleep. I was really tired and therefore slept through some of the driving.
2) No cameras take good pictures behind glass bus windows.
3) It was raining on and off, so most of the pictures show really gross weather and are pretty dreary.
So this is one of the ones I would deem good.

 Our guide took us to Clare, which is on the Atlantic Coast. Apparently it isn't a stop on the official tour, but it was gorgeous. There are more pictures of it (and ones with me) in my facebook album.

 We finally got to the Cliffs of Moher and it was really beautiful. This was one of the better pictures I got after it stopped raining. Once again, there are more pictures in the facebook album.

 Another picture of the Cliffs of Moher, this time the other side. That tower was built to better observe the side above. The Cliffs were really cool but there were signs all over warning us that they were unstable and we could die at any second. Crazy!

 After the Cliffs of Moher we went to another place our guide wasn't supposed to take us. It was really pretty, too, but I'm not really exactly sure what it was. So this picture is of me there!

Our last stop before the three hour drive back to Dublin was Corcomroe Abbey, built in the early 13th century. That roof you see at the top is the only non-original part, built to preserve the stuff under it (its the alter? whatever its called, the part in a Church with the table and Crucifix). It was kind of cool that it hadn't been disturbed, but it was also a little sad that no one seemed to care about its preservation.


After we got back from the tour, we ate dinner and then pretty much crashed. We still didn't get back to the hotel until around 9 or 10. The next day we bought 3-day passes that included the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Tour, the Dublin public buses, and the airport shuttle. They made it super easy to get around the city, including to and from our hotel.

This day, Friday, was our first actual look at Dublin during the day. It was really pretty and clean. Even though it was cold and rainy outside people seemed pretty cheery. And there were so many redheads!!

We decided our first stop in Dublin should be the Guinness Storehouse (what else?) because already we'd seen "Guinness" all over the place. That, and basically everyone who's been to Dublin has asked if we were going to go there or not. Unfortunately the bus tour decided they should be stop 13 and not 2.


That gave us a great view of the city and a good uninterrupted tour of what we were seeing! I took a lot of pictures of exteriors of Dublin, but I doubt you all want to see random pictures of buildings in Dublin.

 By the time we got there it was almost 1 and we were hungry, but we knew we weren't near anything to eat anyway. So we went in, paid the 11€ student entry fee, and started the museum. So we learned a lot of things. First, Guinness is a stout, not a beer. More importantly, they started brewing at this location in 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease on the property for £45 per year. Yes, I'm for real. It was a nine thousand year lease. Guinness is made with four ingredients: hops, barley, yeast, and

 water. They had exhibits on each ingredient (including water). I tried some roasted barley--it wasn't very good. The whole process of making Guinness takes 9 days. Then we went to the Guinness Taste Experience where the bartenders "taught" us how to drink Guinness, which involves drinking it and then exhaling through your nose to get the whole taste. Then there were exhibits on things like advertising campaigns.

 There was a small part about the Guinness Book of World Records, which was started by a member of the Guinness family. Apparently he was having an argument in a pub one night about what the fastest flying bird was and didn't know how he could look up the answer, so he decided to make a book so people arguing in pubs could know the answer to things like that (a.k.a. for people like me pre-iPhone). Ironically, the fastest bird was NOT in the first edition of the book. Then there were parts about Guinness worldwide (including a picture of the Chicago River dyed green for St. Patrick's Day) and some other stuff.

At the top was the Gravity Bar, the highest pub in Dublin. There you get to exchange part of your ticket for a free pint of Guinness! For the record, I actually liked it better than any beer I've tried before. Not saying it's my new drink of choice, but if I had to get some sort of beer I'd probably choose Guinness. Or it might have been better since we were at their factory.

After Guinness, we stopped for lunch and then went to Kilmainham Gaol, which is a prison that was open from 1794-1924. It was designed as a "new prison" meant for rehabilitation which basically meant that there was sunlight and the cells were originally designed for one person instead of the large rooms that held dozens. It was also built that way to keep people from dying from disease.  Even though these were the plans, it didn't quite work out. For example, during the Irish Potato Famine people would intentionally break the law to get the meager food provided in prison, and more than five people would be in the same cell. This picture is from the newer section--the picture below is from the original prison in 1794:

Those two things took up most of the day. Also, it was really cold and raining by the time we got back. Therefore, we decided the best thing to do was to go see the Green Lantern. I was of course supportive because Ryan Reynolds is the star of that movie. That, and it was in English with no subtitles!

The next day we decided to start earlier and had made a list of priorities. The first place we went was Trinity College, which was founded in 1592 because the Queen didn't like that the Irish Protestants had to go to France for their education--Catholics weren't allowed in. Then we went shopping on Grafton Street which is their main upscale shopping street. They also had a lot of souvenir shops. After that we went to Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Dublin Castle.

 Christ Church Cathedral was built as a Catholic Church c.1030 by the Normans. Its now a protestant church (meaning Anglican) and has a crypt in the basement. The crypt is less creepy than the rest of the church though because they built a cafe and a gift shop down there. They did have a mummified cat and rat on display that got trapped in the organ sometime in the 15th century, so that was cool.

 After that we went to St Patrick's Cathedral, named after St. Patrick who is known in Ireland for bringing Christianity and in the US for bringing lots of alcohol (which he does in Ireland, too). We opted to not go in though because it cost money and that seemed weird to us (Christ Church did, too, but we'd already paid at that point). Even Notre Dame is free!

Did I mention that we were there during their Pride weekend (well, everyone's Pride weekend)? The parade marched (no floats, so it didn't roll) right past the cathedrals and our next stop, Dublin Castle so we got to see it. It was very well-attended considering the whole population of Ireland is only 4.5 million.

 Dublin Castle was the only thing we had to wait for. We signed up for a tour and waited for it, and it was pretty cool when we went. The castle was originally built by the Vikings in the 12th or 13th century but burned down, so only one of the original towers remains. It was rebuilt and used as the residence of the Viceroy (the representative from England) during the British control of Ireland and Dublin.

This was one of the rooms in the palace. Apparently it was the women's dressing room. We also went into a part that was still built by the Vikings (it was stone and looked nothing like this) and they showed us where the original moat and stuff were.

After the Dublin Castle tour pretty much everything touristy shut down because it was already 5. We decided to go check out a pub in Temple Bar, the sort-of-touristy pub area right near the River Liffey. We ended up at a pub called the Porter House.

Alissa and I knew we wanted Irish Coffees before we left, so we got them here. I was surprised at how good it was! (for those who don't know, an Irish coffee is coffee with Bailey's Irish Cream in it) Then we got dinner.

Have I mentioned yet that Saturday I got sick? Just a bad cold, but enough that by the end of dinner I was ready to go home and go to sleep. So that's what I did while Lindsay and Alissa went to see another movie (we'd already done the pub thing and that's the only nightlife they really have in Dublin).

Sunday we knew nothing was open until noon because more than half of the Irish still go to church on Sundays, but we decided to go to the National Gallery of Ireland in the afternoon before we had to go to the airport. When we got there we didn't realize that the vast majority of the gallery was closed for renovations, so we quickly looked and went to the airport. We finally landed at about 10:30 pm (an hour late) and ran for the train after the bus to get home.

But now we're back and I'm headed to France on Saturday morning, then Wednesday I go to Rome to meet Mom and Andy! Can't wait!