Dublin

The real Trinity College... tell Lexi

Dublin: I stayed in the airport hotel since the hostel booking was messed up, but I was able to meet up with my friends Friday morning for our four hour walking tour… again completely free (plus tip of course) – but these tours are great! We learned pretty much the entire history of Ireland: the Irish rebel against the British, and the British defeat them, the Irish rebel, the British defeat them, the Irish rebel, and the British defeat them. Are you starting to get the picture? The Irish officially gained their independence from Britain in 1922 (well basically) and are now (pretty much) a free country. We also caught on, however, that the Irish are not very good at ruling themselves and like to drink lots of beer. Nor are they good at handling money, so the country is usually in a state of poverty and has been for most of its history. Our tour guide then took us to a great pub for lunch. I got the classic fish ‘n’ chips. We then walked to the Guinness Storehouse, took a tour of the brewery and enjoyed our free beers. I coincidently ran into another friend of mine from DIS there as well! DIS kids were all over Europe these past two weeks.

As we walked out of the Storehouse we saw a bunch of horse drawn buggies lined up across the street. We thought to ourselves, “perfect!” So we all jumped in the buggy and took it back to my friends’ hostel. We waved to everyone and got some good laughs.

 

We were exhausted so decided to rest for an hour or two and then headed to dinner at the Porterhouse Pub at Temple Bar – the famous street in Dublin. We arrived around 8:45 and found it was packed with lots of already drunk people. Coming from Barcelona, we were not used to this. In Barcelona the usual evening schedule goes like this: Sit down for dinner around 9:30 - 10and enjoy a drink or two with your meal, go back to your place around 11-12 for more drinks, then go to the clubs around 1:30 – 2, get home around 6. I have to say I couldn’t handle the second half of this, but I was getting used to eating around 9 or 10, so when we showed up at the pub and they almost denied us dinner because we got there at 8:45 I was not pleased. We did find a table, however, and had some great pub food and beer samples. I then headed back to my hotel around 11 to get some sleep before my 8 AM flight to Scotland.