FEBRUARY 4 - 6, 2011
Well. To sum it up: Dublin. Was. Awesome.
But first, a quick recap of Friday: nothing happened - I had lectures all day, punctuated by more nothing. Done.
Annnnyway, back to Dublin. I'll start off with the beginning of the trip: it kind of sucked in the sense that the original plan was a 6:30am flight and it changed three times until we actually didn't get out of London Heathrow until 9:30am.
Aer Lingus, a good ol' Irish airline
A beautiful skyline on the way across the channel
The Irish coast!! Me homeland!
When we landed, I was completely excited: so much to see and do - and we were already behind the original schedule because of the flight change! The only thing to lessen my spirits - the rain. It almost didn't stop for the entire time we were there. But that's alright, nothing's better than a nice Irish rain!
We caught the bus for a long ride down to Dublin city center (about 40 minutes, the airport's up north). Then we found our awesome hostel, right across the street from Trinity College and only a 5 minute walk to Temple Bar:
The Times Hostel, College Street.
Our room! A private with bunkbeds and a queen for the three of us - pretty good deal!
After we dropped our bags off at the hostel (check-in wasn't until 4), we grabbed a quick lunch at a cheap place in Temple Bar that had a pretty good chicken sandwich and gave us a TON of chips (fries). Literally. I walked around with a huge brown bag of chips for what felt like the next hour. As we persevered through the rain, we saw some of the sights before the walking tour started:
The House of Lords
Cool building #1. There were just soo many cool buildings!
I think this was one of the Irish National Bank buildings. I just liked the golden globe thing out front.
On the streets of Dublin
Temple Bar!
A neat place in Temple Bar highlighting all the famous Irish musicians
Dublin Castle!
From the courtyard in Dublin Castle
After finishing my giant bag of chips, Elana and I met up with Camille for the free walking tour and saw the rest of the Dublin sights:
Dublin Castle from Dubh Linn (pronounced like "Dove Lin" in Irish). It's where Dublin gets its name and means "Dark Pool".
Dubh Linn Garden. That grassy area is where there used to be a harbor, and the water gave the town its name. Viewed from overhead, the crisscrosses form a Celtic Knot!
Apparently, this is where Jonathan Swift (writer of Gulliver's Travels, among other things) used to live
Christ Church Cathedral
.. and again
.. and again! This place was huge.
Some neat Dublin houses
Another view of Christ Church Cathedral
.. and another!
Another cool building
The river Liffey! Looking towards central Dublin
.. and looking away from Dublin city center
The Ha'Penny Bridge
Looking across the river
Looking towards O'Connell Street, a pretty popular shopping/fun area. That's the Spire of Dublin breaching the clouds. Pretty neat, although a little ridiculous when you look at it as a major unnecessary expenditure during their current economic crisis.
More of modern Dublin
.. and more
.. and more!
A statue outside the House of Lords
The House of Lords
Trinity College
Inside the Trinity College main courtyard
.. and again!
The Trinity College entrance
More Trinity College. It's a pretty place
The Leinster House, I think. I don't remember what it was
National Museum
A closer view of Leinster
The National Library, and I think that's the National Museum behind it.
A statue in front of Leinster
One of the entrances to St. Stephen's Green, a beautiful park south of the city center
St. Stephen's Green
A memorial to the families of the Great Potato Famine
Looking across the pond towards more of St. Stephen's Green
.. and more, from a cute little gazebo
Trinity College Park (I think) as we walked back from the tour. Through a chain-link fence, whoops.
After the tour, we hung around for a bit at the hostel and dried off. As much as we wanted to have a traditional Irish dinner, the couple places we tried were either expensive or were out of what we wanted.
I forget what this pub was called, but it was really cool - but they had run out of sandwiches..
Looking down the River Liffey at night. Really pretty
Dublin at night
We decided that we might as well go for cheap vs. expensive, since we planned on pub-crawling that night, so we found a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet (since nothing says 'Dublin' like Chinese food) then we went looking for pubs! We started out in Temple Bar..
The Purty Kitchen
First Guinness of the trip. Soo good.
They had a live band that did covers (The Killers, The Strokes, etc.) but their lead singer wasn't that great. We had a couple pints then headed to the next place.
The Stags Head. My favorite of the night
The downstairs bar
The live trad (traditional Irish) band. Fan. Tas. Tic.
They played all the great Irish classics: "Dublin In The Rare Old Times", "Molly Malone", "Whiskey In The Jar" (my personal favorite, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoiF7Qket_k), etc. They were really good, and the atmosphere was just amazing - everyone in the whole place was singing and dancing along, the Guinness was flowing like wine and I tried a local similar beer called Smithwicks ('Smithicks' with the accent) that was like a little less-dark Guinness but was still very good. We hung there for a long time and completely enjoyed it, but then we decided to eventually move on to the next pub. We checked out one called The Globe, but they were playing like club music, so we passed.
Sweeney's
Their live band was like an Irish version of The Hives - more punk and throaty lyrics, but they were pretty good and entertaining.
Thought about stopping here on the way home, but opted for the cheaper Apache Pizza instead. Apparently, I run a pretty expensive burger joint..
After that, we pretty much called it a night. Went back to the hostel and caught some shut-eye so we could wake up early and see some things on Sunday. As bad as I felt about taking the queen bed, and giving the girls the bunks (hey, that's what they told me to do!), the extra space was definitely comfortable. First great night in Dublin, hopefully many more to come in the future.
--
Woke up around 8:30am, showered and dressed. Went down to the kitchen for the free breakfast, which was awesome - I basically ate as much as I could in preparation for the day: 4 slices of toast with butter and jam, 2 bananas, a bowl of cereal, a peanut butter sandwich, and a couple pancakes. That's what I call breakfast! I wasn't planning on eating lunch, so I needed to start off the day with a big breakfast. After everyone was up and ready to go, we went out into a light morning Irish drizzle and made our way to St. Patrick's Cathedral en route to the Guinness Storehouse.
Good morning Dublin!
Random poster on the side of some building. Awesome.
St. Patrick's Cathedral
The cool little area around the cathedral
Very neat building. The fountain was pretty, but it was really windy and the water was just flying everywhere
The spire
More outside the cathedral
The cathedral walls
We would have gone inside, but they were closed for the next hour or so. Plus I think it cost something to get in, so I don't know if we would have payed. It was still a very cool building from the outside. Anyway, we continued on our walk to the Guinness Storehouse.
Christ Church Cathedral from a different angle
Huge building. Love the architecture
A place called The Four Courts
Another pretty look down the River Liffey
Yet another view of the cathedral
Another cool building
One of the bridges. Neat architecture
The Guinness Factory
The entrance to the Guinness Factory
St. James' Gate!
Neat old cars outside the storehouse
Very cool
Inside the Storehouse. Those windows were actually screens where they played projections of workers walking outside the factory. It was pretty cool
An old punch clock for the workers
Old key hooks
Now that's what I call a collection.
Beautiful.
I want this statue in my room
"There is beer and there is Guinness." Words to live by.
So much barley
Ingredient #1
Ingredient #2
Ingredient #3
The secret yeast formula!
Neat seal on the safe
Very cool waterfall
From behind
Ingredient #4
"A porter brewer buys none but the best, as none else will answer."
Arthur Guinness' chair and some documents
"Ingredient #5"
One of the old machines
Roasted barley, I think.
An old copper lid
A 600 barrel-capacity copper which holds..
Yup, that's 172,800 pints. Now that's a lot of Guinness
Free Guinness samples!
Kegs
Yeast collectors
A miniature of the factory, adjacent storehouse, and surrounding area
An old Guinness train car
A Guinness shipping boat model
Old Guinness boat memorabilia
A Guinness barrel
Another factory machine
Loved this section with all of the old and new advertisements
So many different kinds
The Guinness Harp (Guinness' symbol), adopted from the Brian Boru Harp
First published Guinness advertisement
Love it
I want this for my room
More bottles
Favorite poster
Black Velvet = champagne + Guinness. Interesting
Then we reached the Gravity Bar, the observation deck high up on the 7th floor, and looked out over Dublin in all directions:
Looking towards the ocean to the east
So pretty with the mountains in the distance to the south
The Spire of Dublin in the distance
Enjoying a Guinness high above Dublin
Aviva (Landsdowne) Rugby Football Stadium, I think.
A ferris wheel on a pier, the ocean on the horizon
A lone ship out on the sea
Now THAT'S how you pour a Guinness
There you go!
After the Guinness Storehouse, we continued walking west towards Kilmainham Gaol, an old Irish prison.
A pretty walkway heading to the Irish Museum of Modern Art
The entrance to the jail
One of the hallways in the older section of the prison, cells on the left
Creepy. I wonder if this place is haunted!
The cell of Joseph Plunkett, an Irish nationalist during the late 1800s, who was married at age 28 to his sweetheart in the prison chapel only hours before his execution by firing squad
Looking down through the grates at more cell hallways
More cells. During the Irish Potato Famine, the gaol (jail) was actually a better place to stay than outside, due to the availability of food and shelter. Interesting.
The newer portion of the prison - pretty neat place
Outside in the 'recreation' area where prisoners walked around in circles for exercise. Kids as young as 5 were imprisoned here for crimes such as stealing food
The execution area for firing squads
The walls. Kilmainham Gaol, sometimes referred to as 'The Irish Bastille', played a pretty big role in Irish history as it held a great number of famous Irish nationalists during several rebellions
From there, I decided to take my time and walk back towards the center of Dublin:
A neat old church
Any relation to my Kennedy's back home?! Miss you guys, glad Dan's back safe from Afghanistan
Another cool building
From the front. Massive
I think this was a statue of Daniel O'Connell, an early 19th- Century nationalist leader for whom the street is named
Looking up O'Connell Street and the Spire of Dublin
The City Hall
Don't remember what this was.. I think a shopping complex..?
Another cool building that I don't remember the name of. Whoops
Looking down Grafton Street, a busy area for shoppers and diners
'Molly Malone'
"In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!
A-live a-live O! A-live a-live O!
Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdxLxnhGnvo)
Love it. It's 'the unofficial anthem of Dublin City'
We stopped here for dinner before catching a bus to the airport
One last nighttime look at Dublin City, before hopping on the bus and making our way home.
No problems with the 10pm flight home, even though it was cheap Ryan Air. Got into London Stansted (a smaller, cheap international flight hub a ways north of London) around 11:30pm and ran to catch the train towards London. The only problem came from when we stopped for out connection at Liverpool Street Station - there was no train to Waterloo from there at that time for some reason. We were pretty close to home (a little north of St. Paul's Cathedral), but figured we'd just take the night bus (not the Harry Potter one, sadly!) from there and eventually got home.
Turned on the Superbowl as soon as I got into my apartment, and was a little disheartened that the Steelers were so behind in the third quarter. I watched as we mounted a comeback, but then decided to give it up as a bad job and head to bed after our final drive failed. Bummer. Oh well.. we've still got the Pens - even without Crosby AND Malkin for the time being.. also a bummer..
With 9am lecture and an afternoon abstract algebra quiz to look forward to, I hit the sack. Had a fantastic time in Dublin and would certainly love to go back.
T'won't be me last trip to me 'omeland, that's fer sure!
--
Great music for the plane to Dublin:
Flogging Molly - "The Rare Old Times"
I could've chosen any Flogging Molly song, but their cover of a classic Irish song is just awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX6y8z16BEo
Favorite Irish pub music:
The Dubliners - "Whiskey In The Jar"
Listen to that while drinking a pint of Guinness. Heavenly.
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Whew, that was a big update! I've fallen behind a whole week?! Geez, I'll fix that right tomorrow. I've got some homework to do for now..
Cheers! (or as they say in Irish, 'Slainte' (pronounced like slon-cha)!)
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