Dublin, Ireland

Obviously, this is a long entry. I'll come back in a few days and add pictures.


Where: Dublin, Ireland
When: November 13 - 15
Who: Me, Jessye, Amanda, Michelle, Chiara, Max
How: Trains and a Ferry

Day One

8:00 am - In the morning we walked forty minutes to the train station and I went to pick up the tickets. Unfortunately we each had three tickets for the trip over and the trip back, which meant there were thirty-six tickets to print off, and we had underestimated the time it would take for us to walk to the train station. We missed our first train, which messed up the entire schedule and we took like six trains and were running on and off them for a few hours until we got to Holyhead, Wales which is where our ferry was supposed to leave from. When we got there, we ran from the train station to the ferry station and were two minutes late for the ferry. The ferry only runs twice a day, so we had to wait three and a half hours until the next one. In the meantime, we decided to explore the town.

2 pm - First we went to "Bargains Galore," which was basically a store full of old crap. It was all dusty and dirty and, if it could be, rusty. We enjoyed this very much. We also went to a thrift store and tried on strange clothes (I tried on an intense, sequin-covered shirt). After some more shopping, we were hungry so we decided to find some food. By now it was around four in the afternoon on a Saturday afternoon, so we figured there would be lots of places open. No such luck. We passed four or five closed food places where we found something that was open and ordered a pizza. (Question: why does everything over here close so early? Everything in Cheltenham closes at 5 pm, except for pubs. Also Burger King, which is open late for the clubbers and which hires a BOUNCER. Yes, a Burger King bouncer exists.)

5:30 pm - We went back to the ferry station and ate our pizza, and then eventually we headed over to a bus that took us to our ferry. The ferry was actually a lot nicer than we thought it would be. As I am prone to motion sickness, I hunkered down, turned up my ipod, put on my face mask, and slept the entire ride over. One of my comrades ended up getting sick and throwing up in the bathroom, which was unfortunate.

8:00 pm- When we got to Ireland, we had to take a bus into the city. Then we were supposed to take another bus to our hostel, but we couldn't find the bus. I whipped open the map portion of my Ireland For Dummies book that I found in my dorm room when I got here, and saw that we could just walk to the hostel and save ourselves the cost of a bus. It took us a while, but we finally got there. For some reason, most of the streets weren't listed on the map, and the ones that were listed were slightly different. We stayed in Avalon House hostel, a chain of hostels which can be found all over Europe. It had free internet, free breakfast, a pool table, a ping pong table, television, and Michelle got us a 10% discount.

10:00 pm- At this point, we were getting hungry, so after settling into our room, we went out in search of dinner. We found a pub called The Hairy Lemon. I got the Traditional Lamb Stew for dinner and Jessye and I shared Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert. The atmosphere in the pub was great, and we were amused to hear that the music choices consisted entirely of American hits from the 70's and 80's.

11:30 pm - We headed back to our hostel with full bellies and went right to sleep. The six of us were in a twelve person mixed dorm that had a cool spiral staircase to the next floor (we were six of the eight people downstairs). It smelled like feet and unwashed people, but you get used to that after the first few minutes.


Day Two

We were excited for Sunday because the whole day was planned for us. We were taking a tour called The Wicklow Mountains Adventure, from 9 to 5. We had learned our lesson from Saturday, because on Sunday we woke up at 8 or so and had our free breakfast before leaving at 8:50. After Michelle kindly got directions to our pickup location, we set off to St. Stephen's Green. The pickup location was a bit vague, and then our bus was late so for a while we thought it wasn't coming at all and we got nervous. Then it came, and off we went!

The tour first took us an hour away into the countryside, where we saw where scenes from PS I Love You and Braveheart were filmed. We also saw a house that's used by famous people when they want to escape from things and go to Ireland (used by Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods, our tour guide informed us). In addition, we saw the water that's used to make Guinness and we stopped at a bunch of scenic mountain and cliff areas. We took a tour of a monastery and of Avoca Hand Weavers. We stopped in the late afternoon to eat at a restaurant called Fitzgerald's. Ironically, the only music played was Johnny Cash (the whole hour we were there, only Johnny Cash! Ridiculous).

The great thing about this tour is that it gave us the chance to see the beautiful countryside in addition to the city. As I've heard from other people, every picture looked like it should've been in a postcard. If you know anything about Ireland, these are the official titles of where we went, according to the website: "Glendalough, Glenmacnass Waterfall, Sally Gap, Avoca Hand Weavers, Military Road & PS I LOVE YOU Film Locations."

7:00pm - We got back and decided to go to the newly opened (this year) Leprechaun Museum. This can accurately be described as a "hoot." Our tour guide, Mark, was hilarious and made it a fun time. My favorite room of the museum was the one in which WE were the little people- we sat on giant chairs (which we were told not to do) and warmed our hands at a giant (fake) fireplace. (Yes, I'm usually one of the "little people," but not to this extent.) We were the last people doing the tour, and at the end Mark recommended that we go to The Church for dinner. We agreed, and were quite pleased with it.

9:00pm-While it was difficult to find somewhere to sit at first, in the end it was worth it. I'm looking at the website now, and apparently it's quite popular: "Known simply as The Church, we are Dublin's most unique establishment. With five distinct settings on four levels, The Church has wowed visitors from all over the globe since opening." It is described as a cafe, bar, restaurant, club, and a tourist attraction. While we were eating, live music began. It sounded pretty Irish to me.

10:00pm- We walked back to our hostel from the restaurant, which took us almost an hour because I took us in the wrong direction for a while. Eventually we got back and Jessye and I played ping pong for a while. Then me, Amanda, Michelle, and Chiara decided to go hang out in a fun pub/club. Unfortunately it was a bit sketchier than we thought it would be, so we took our time looking around and eventually found a place with live jazz music. We got back to the hostel and were in bed before midnight.

Day Three

8:00am- We woke up and got ready and left by 9 again. First we headed to the famous Guinness Museum. It took us an hour to walk there, and in the end we decided we didn't want to spend the time and money on the tour, and just took pictures.

10:30: We walked back along the river and did some shopping on our walk to the bus station. I was specifically looking for a store I had been wanting to go to, Forbidden Planet. It's described as a "Cult Entertainment Megastore" and it is INCREDIBLE. I had found it online somehow, and they're in major cities in the UK and Europe, and there is only one in the US (in NYC). So I finally found it and it was everything I dreamed: three floors of nerdy goodness. I finally decided to buy a shirt to commemorate Ireland and my time there (it was not Irish at all, but it was my souvenir). Unfortunately the smallest size was a men's large. (I have since bought thread and am planning on attempting to alter the shirt to fit me.) We stopped in a touristy shop, and a grocery store for some snacks, then continued our walk to the bus station.

11:30am - When we got there at 11:30, we were told there was a bus at 1:15 that would take us to our ferry. After eating our snacks, we looked at the map and decided we could walk to the ferry dock before the bus would come. (Why didn't they have more buses going there? It mystified me.) The walk along the river was really picturesque, and I was glad we had decided to walk. After forty minutes, we started seeing the ferries. Then a taxi van pulled up beside us and the driver told us that it would take us around forty minutes to walk there, and that was if we were walking quickly. He said he would take us there for three euro each, and we thought about it then agreed. After the drive, we realized we may have not made it for our ferry and were grateful that he had stopped (he said he had just dropped people off and turned around just so he could drive us).

1:30pm - We got our tickets checked and went to wait for our ferry.

2:15pm - We got on our ferry. This time I went out on the deck and took pictures with everyone and said goodbye to Ireland as the sun set.

5:30pm - We were about to get off the ferry when I thought, "We'll probably need our passports to get back into England." And I discovered my passport was gone.

For the next four hours or so, we hopped from train to train and I called the hostel to recover my passport (I was about 85% sure that that's where I lost it.) They did not find my passport. We got back to Cheltenham at like 9 something and walked the forty-five minutes to our dorm and had dinner together, exhausted.



Two days later, I was on the phone with the hostel and while I was on the phone, someone brought my passport to the front desk. So all's well with that.

Ireland was probably my favorite trip so far. Everyone was friendly, the country was beautiful, the city had a lot going on, the food was good, and although many things could've gone wrong, it all turned out okay. Michelle and I were the ones who did most of the map navigating (although Amanda and Michelle were the ones to take us to the Leprechaun Museum) so I'm feeling like a confident traveler now. Michelle and I are going to Spain next weekend, so I think we'll be pretty successful with that.