March 12
On our way back to Bath from our Wales excursion, the 8 of us going to Ireland (Bailee, Lindsey, Katie H., Julian, Justin, Sarah M., Victoria and myself) got dropped off in Bristol because that is where our flight was out of. We spent a couple hours relaxing in a restaurant and headed to the airport. This was my first time flying RyanAir. Ryan Air is a suuupperrr cheap airline, and well, yes it was. Checking a bag does not come with your flight. You have to pay an extra 20 pounds (about $30) to check a bag. So when we got there, a few of us had to toss stuff that we could not bring on the airplane. I’ve never had to worry about that before. Going to a flight, last minute, I always remember things that I can’t bring on, and switch them to my checked baggage. But not here. Here, I had to throw away my little nail scissors (that I loved!) and my Cetaphil face cleanser and lotion. (I miss the lotion, my face is so dry now! And they don’t sell it here.. Dad, you’re bringing me some when you come.. by the way).
Anyway, the flight was super fast and we were soon in Ireland. We finally got into town at midnight, and after searching for our hostel for forever, it was 1 am, and too late to go out, especially after such a long day. Even on this first night of walking around the streets looking for our hostel, I noticed that there was an INSANE amount of tourists. Through out the weekend, I decided that there were more tourists in Dublin than Irish people!!
Friday the 13th (*Insert Halloween music here*) we got up and had breakfast at a bakery. It was a simple breakfast but I enjoyed it. The dessert I had with it was delicious!!
Next stop, we went to the Guinness Factory.
On the way, stopped for candy, of course..
Guinness Factory.
This place was huge! It was 7 stories. The ground floor had the gift shop, which was biggg. The second couple floors had information on how Guinness is made.
Guinness is made of 4 ingredients: Barley, Hops, Yeast and Water. This is barley:
A cool little fact about the yeast.. Yeast grows on its own. So the supply of yeast at the Guinness factory keeps multiplying, and they never have to buy more. They are using the SAME yeast since Arhtur Guinness started the company in 1759. Crazy huh! How’s that for a no-cost ingredient!
The next 1 or 2 floors had other Guinness info, like info on alcohol, history on the Guinness book of world records.. (Which I don’t know why, but I never put together before that it was made by the beer.) I guess the reason it started was to solve arguments and disputes in bars.
They also had the history of Guinness advertizing, which I love!! Their old advertisements were so awesome! One of the slogans was “My Goodness My Guinness!” and each ad that had that slogan would have a man running after his Guinness that was somehow getting away, like in an alligator’s mouth, or being stolen by a seal, or in the neck of an ostrich. I loved their ads so much; I bought a poster later of 9 different ads on the one poster.
This is some of their characters of the ads. (They had the same artist for all their ads. This guy was offered a job by Disney, or something, and turned it down to stay and do the Guinness ads.)
Back in the day, Guinness used to be recommended by doctors, so this ad worked well for them.
The last few stories were a restaurant, a bar area where people learn to pour their own Guinness, and the Gravity Bar on the 7th floor which was a full circle view of Dublin from the tallest place in the city.
I decided to have my one Guinness (that comes with the entry ticket) at the pour your own place. It was fun, although I’ve done it at Pete’s at home before. There is an art form to pouring Guinness!!
And here are some pics of the 7th floor Gravity Bar, with Dublin behind me:
After the self tour, (although I wish it was a guided tour, because I totally didn’t understand the brewing process by trying to read it myself, and skipping parts and going out of order.. ) I next spent a good amount of time (and money!) in the store! I figure, this is THE AUTHENTIC Guinness stuff, so I wanted it all! I got a shirt for me, a couple presents, that poster I mentioned earlier, a book on Guinness history, a Guinness chocolate bar (with Guinness in it!) and a present for my work at home, a Guinness bar mat.
Man, we spent 4 or 5 hours at the factory! Like I said, the place is quite huge. The shape of the whole thing is supposed to be a GIANT pint glass that if it were filled up, would hold14.3 million pints of Guinness.
After Guinness, we headed back to the hostel, stopping to get a pizza and crepes lunch and doing some tourist shopping on the way.
We got ready at the hostel for our Friday night. We shared our hostel room with some boys who are from New York and are studying in London. So, maybe now I have a place to stay in London while I am still here and in New York when I go back home!
We started our night at an Irish pub called O’Brien’s. almost no one bought drinks because everything was so expensive.
Ireland, by the way, was CRAZYYY expensive!! When I was going to leave for this study abroad, everyone was telling me how expensive it was going to be for me to live in England, but I got here and its no different than the US. You do the conversion of the money, and a sandwich, a loaf of bread, a drink, etc, is about the same. Then I get to Ireland, and that’s when it hit! Everything was ridiculous there! I am glad I am not living there for 3 months!
We didn’t stay at O’Brien’s long. We moved on to a very popular club called Fitzsimmons. This place was really fun. There was a cover band playing, and some people wanted dance music, so we paid 10 euros to get into the real club atmosphere downstairs. It was fun. We danced until they closed at 3 am. I had a couple drinks, including 2 Coronas, which I actually enjoyed after squeezing a lot of lime in it.. We didn’t get to sleep until 4 am.
Saturday morning we woke up at 10 or so. We had had the hostel booked for Thu and Fri nights, and a hotel for Saturday. So we packed up all our stuff, and Bailee and I left it in a storage room in the hostel. They told us we have to pick it up by 6 or they would charge us for it.
A few of us went to see if there were any tours still going so late in the morning. There were not really any, so we bought a day pass at the train station and decided to visit a couple places.
We went to a little fishing village called Howth and to a castle in a city called Malahide.
I really enjoyed this little trip. I was mad that it was the ONE DAY that I did not wear leggings under my pants, because we ended up going to the coast! The city looked like a mini San Francisco from its little cold fishing vide, but not busy like SF. It was very quiet, and almost nothing was open. Restaurants were all closed until dinnertime. We got ice cream, and then a couple of us got seafood chowder from a stand. My goodness it was DELICIOUS!!! I love clam chowder, but this one had calamari, and salmon in it as well. It was very good. (I was happy because the whole time we were walking around this town, I wanted seafood so bad. You can’t visit a beautiful fishing village and not have seafood!)
We then went to a city called Malahide, where we walked around searching for a castle. Bailee and I only had an hour in this city, to leave at a safe time to get our stuff by six. We walked around for ever looking for this castle. You might think, Castle.. tall, easy to spot.. NOT THIS ONE!! The search was worth it though for the long walk through this park/woods. Can you find me?
There I am!
When we finally found the castle.
There was a baby changing station in the bathroom at the Castle called:
The castle was pretty from the outside, but Bailee and I had no time to look inside, because we had to head back.
After waiting at the train station for 40 minutes, we got back late and had to RUN to the hostel. Of course, after running through downtown Dublin, the lady at the hostel did not care about the time we came. Ha.
Bailee next needed to make our way to our Hotel. It was a 40-minute bus ride away. That was a bummer, because having to go there killed a lot of time off our Saturday night. We took our sweet time and got ready for our Saturday night of St Patties weekend in Dublin!
We went back into town via taxi and first went to a pub the taxi driver, (a local) recommended. We walked into one door, and kept walking right out the other door. This was because, as soon as we walked in, we saw that we were NOT welcome. The whole “dressing up” for St. Patties thing is very much a touristy thing. The place was full of locals who shut up and watched us walk through and out. So we went into the Temple Bar area (the main bar area) that was, of course, LOADED with tourists. For SURE, more than Irish people. We went to a place called Party Kitchen. That was fun. It was a club/bar with a few couple stories. We did not stay there long though.
We ended up at Fitzsimons again like last night. It was a lot of fun and we again danced all night until it closed at 3.
On Sunday, we had no time to visit the city for the last time. We went straight to the airport from our hotel and flew home to Bristol and then a bus back to Bath.
Overall, the trip was fun. I feel like I didn’t get to see Dublin at all, though, which is a big bummer. I am happy to have done the Guinness tour, but I also wanted to see the Jameson Whiskey tour, which had to be scratched. Seeing Howth was really nice. It is the only time I felt like I really got to SEE Ireland, but like I said, Dublin was the main place I wanted to see, and although having spent 2 days there, I saw nothing.
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