Dublin Weekend

My favorite photo from the whole trip!  Brendan and Kyle along the Liffey River. :)

A video from Temple Bar.  Loved the music!

It's been a long weekend to say the least!  I've just returned from a weekend in Dublin followed by the Christmas Ball (with the Hockey club) and am glad to be in bed at the end of a long (albeit, exciting) day.  This will be a long post about Dublin so I've set up some sub headings to make it easier to get through but for the most part it should be in chronological order.  If you just want to see the photos then click the first one and watch a slide show although I suggest taking a look at the headings if you want to catch some of the stories from the trip! : )

Transportation

Brendan, Kyle (his brother's best friend), and I all met up at the bus stop to catch an easy jet bus to the airport.  I had never been on the new tube trains that bend instead of having separate carriages.  It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen!  It's like being in Alice in Wonderland but modern real life.

The floors in the airport were slippery/waxy so Brendan decided to practice ice skating.

The bus took us to Stanstead airport where we took Ryanair to Dublin airport.  Instead of going from the terminal through the gate and on to the plane we got to go on the tarmac!  Haha I had never done that before so it was exciting for me but I guess everyone else in the world does that...  Our plane left London on Friday around 6pm and we got to Dublin Airport and took a bus to our hostel.  We got there by around 8pm.

Kyle getting off the easyBus from Baker Street to Stanstead Airport.


Once we got to Dublin they had these awesome trams on the streets but sadly we didn't get to ride one.

Accommodation

I can't really compare the hostel we stayed in to anything because I've never stayed in a hostel before but this one had it's good and bad qualities.  It had a TV with movies and nice couches in the lobby.  I even saw a little bit of television in Gaelic (picture Dora the Explorer but Irish).  And they served breakfast in the morning but the dishes were "cleaned" by whoever the last person was and they didn't have soap or sponges to use.  Needless to say we only ate breakfast there once.  Our beds were in a room of 16 beds.  The bathrooms were okay, the linens were okay and the rooms were warm so for 10 euro a night or however much it was one really can't complain.  It wasn't so bad.

                 The front of the hostel.                             Kyle posing in room B.

Dublin at Night

After checking in to the hostel, we got some dinner and took a stroll along the Liffey River.

The Samuel Beckett Bridge and the Liffey River ("Liff-ee")

The GPO on O'Connell Street on the left.  O'Shea's with Christmas lights on the right.

Along The Liffey

We walked along the river again in the morning!  I love rivers in cities.

The ship looked awesome.  It was actually a famine museum though.

These birds were all lined up!  It was odd.

O'Connell Street is one of the high roads on the north side.  The hostel wasn't too far from there.

Brendan's Wallet

When we got back to the hostel Saturday night Brendan's wallet got stolen.  He threw his coat down on his bed and left while Kyle was still there to go to the bathroom but then Kyle left and in the thirty seconds between Kyle leaving and Brendan returning the guy staying under Brendan had taken his stuff and Brendan's wallet.  We couldn't find him but it wasn't so bad.  Brendan lost some cash and his credit cards but really it was more of an inconvenience then anything.  He still had his passport, plane and bus tickets, and camera so that was good!

The inside of the police station.  Sadddd.

Ghost Town?

On Saturday we woke up early and walked around the entire city.  It seemed odd that we didn't stumble across many people, it felt empty.  We thought maybe everyone had been hungover from the night before but then when we hit the town hall we found them!  They were occupying the space around it if you know what I mean.

The Sights

Gaelic and English!

We walked around and saw a lot of the sites.  Our morning actually started with a walk along the north bank to Phoenix Park.  From there we walked along the south bank (the "ritzier" side of Dublin) and simply everywhere.  These photos will be a bit out of order and spanning across the entire weekend:

Phoenix park was huge but I believe we only covered a small portion of it.  Seemed like a nice place though.

Trinity College (University of Dublin)

A tour of the Guinness Storehouse!  This was actually really cool.  We had a complimentary beer on the 7th floor in the Gravity Bar.  You could see all of Dublin from there!

 It had never occurred to me that this book had anything to do with Guinness.  It came into being when a manager at Guinness had a conversation in a pub about the fastest game bird.  Then he realized, after having this happen another time, that pubs around the world needed a book with this sort of information.  So they made it.  hah.

The view of Dublin from the Gravity Bar with the Spire in the distance.

Outside the Factory they had a lot of horses with carriages (it was the first form of transportation they used to deliver their barrels of beer).  Kyle and I petted them!

 

St. Stephen's Green on a chilly rainy day (about 40 F).  Dublin is surprising windy too.  It was raining Sunday but Saturday was pretty clear!

Brendan and Kyle in front of the General Post Office (GPO).  The occupiers had since moved to the GPO.  We also stopped by the remembrance garden and the Dublin Castle was not as awesome as we'd hoped and then Dublina was too expensive so we continued to walk around as much as we could.

The O2 stadium.  Not quite as awesome as London's... hah.  But Dublin has an even cooler stadium.

The Aviva stadium holds 50,000 people and is mostly used for Rugby, one of Ireland's biggest sports.  They also do "hurling" which the RPI field hockey team apparently learned how to play when they visited but I had never seen pictures of the sport before until I saw them in Dublin haha.

We saw the stadium on a long journey towards the light house.  Unfortunately, we never made it to the light house but we stumbled across some cool things.

The bridge on the right goes over a dam.  We had to cross it to make our way towards the light house.

This was an interesting sign.  These little row houses lined the street that we walked along.

We couldn't make it to the light house because of all the ship yards so we had to turn around.  Sadd.

We also stumbled across the store after which Bono got his nickname.

We didn't actually go inside the National Museum of Ireland but it was nice from the outside.

St. Patrick's Cathedral and surrounding green.  We didn't go inside.  We were running on Brendan's budget of zero Euros hah.

Food

The food was pretty good but incredibly expensive so we had to eat Quiznos twice.  But when we did go out it was pretty good!  We ate at Madigan's and La Pizza haha.  Both were good places.

Temple Bar on Temple Bar Street!  This was one of my favorite's of the whole trip.  They had live music (if you saw the video at the beginning of this) and the band covered Mumford and Son's!  That video is at the end.  The atmosphere in the bar was so great though and it was huge--about eight rooms I think.

            Brendan at Madigan's                    "Supermacs" or Quiznos and Papa Johns

We didn't eat at any of the O'Shea establishments but there were quite a few!


The Temple Bar!

Monday

We left the hostel Monday morning at 6am and I got back to Ramsay by noon.  Had lecture from 2-4pm and then the Christmas Ball at 6pm!  It was a crazy day.  I had a great time in Dublin though!  I hope to go back and visit the Cliffs of Moher or maybe Galway or Belfast sometime.  I could even spend another day or so in Dublin.  Thanks for reading!