Luck O' the Irish

"If you're lucky enough to be Irish, then you're lucky enough" - Traditional Saying

I loved this country. Maybe it was speaking my own language, or the friendly people, or the beautiful landscapes, or all of the above, but I adored it.

Two friends and I all had the same weekend free, so we decided to go to Dublin the weekend of November 22nd. It wasn't originally on my travel plan, but I kept hearing of people visiting and loving it so I had to go! I arrived late Thursday morning so I had some time to get to know the city on my own before my friends got in that evening, as I like to do. After checking into our hotel I made a beeline for one of the most famous fish 'n chips shops, Leo Burdocks. Even though I don't really like fish, it sure lived up to its reputation.

Yummy

 

After that I just did a lot of walking. Dublin is a pretty small city, a lot like Amsterdam, so I hit most of the big touristy spots in that first afternoon. I passed through the Temple Bar area on my way to Trinity College, where I saw an exhibit of the Book of Kells. Created around 800 AD by Celtic monks, it is a splendidly decorated version of the four gospels of the New Testament. After the book, the exhibit led into the Long Room of the library, a beautiful room that holds 200,000 of the country's oldest books.

 

 

Trinity College

 

The Old Library

A copy of Ireland's Declaration of Independence from England, written in 1921

 

From there I went to St. Stephen's Green, Dublin's largest and most famous park. After wandering for a bit by the duck ponds, I came across the Garden for the Blind, which I thought was a very cool idea. You could touch and smell all the plants and there were braille name plaques installed.

 

 

Garden for the Blind

 

From there I walked down to the River Liffey, which cuts the city in half, to see the Jeanie Johnston ship, the Famine Memorial, and the Custom House, all of which are memorials to the potato famine and the wave of emigration to America. Our hotel was off of Dublin's main street, O'Connell Street, so I also saw the General Post Office and the Spire of Dublin. They make a pretty big deal out of the post office on all the tourist maps and it's apparently because that's where the final rebellion that sparked the successful revolution began. The Spire is also an interesting monument; it was built in 2003 to commemorate the millennium and it is gigantic. There's also no explanation of what it is so I would've gone on thinking it was some huge modern lighthouse thing if I hadn't asked a cab driver.

 

The GPO and the Spire (also known as the Monument of Light. It is 400 ft. high)

 

On the way back to the hotel I passed a cobbler that promised while you wait service and since my boots have been falling apart I decided to try it out. The Irish cobbler was the nicest man and we had a great little chat while he fixed my boots. He was shocked that I'd never had fish and chips before and wanted to know what in the world we ate instead. I told him (jokingly) McDonalds and (very seriously) Mexican food, but he didn't know what Mexican food was even like! He promised to try to find it after I told him what he was missing out on.

 

Bangers and mash for dinner

 

A "Full Irish" breakfast. Overall good, but you really don't want to know what those discs on the right are. Google black and white pudding if you're curious.

 

We took a very early bus the next morning to Galway, on the West coast of Ireland. After checking into that hostel, we had breakfast and then got on a tour bus with a jolly Irishman named Paul who took us through the lovely countryside with stops at the Ballyalban Fairy Fort, the Poulnabrone Dolmen ancient burial tomb, and the Cliffs of Moher.

 

Fairy fort! Unfortunately it's just a really old castle. When Christianity was spread to Ireland it justified the pagan belief in magic by saying leprechauns and fairies were fallen angels who only fell halfway and ended up on Earth.

Poulnabrone Dolmen - Hollow of the Sorrows. Believed to be the burial site of 22 priests over a period of 600 years, it is more than 1,000 years older than the Pyramids.

 

There were lots of sheep and cows, but I didn't take any pictures of sheep, I don't know why.

 

702 feet high and covering 5 miles of coastline, the Cliffs of Moher were absolutely stunning

 

A fort on the cliffs. There used to be a fortress, but it was destroyed.

 

Cliff selfie, you're welcome Dad

 

When we returned to Galway we had Irish stew for dinner and explored the Christmas markets which had just opened that day. That night we found a bar that was playing awesome live music - that seemed to be a big thing in Ireland and we loved it!

 

On Saturday we had another early morning to get to back Dublin for a full day of sightseeing. I took Kelly and Emily everywhere I'd been on Thursday as well as to St. Patrick's Church (he's Ireland's patron saint). We then went on a tour of the Guinness factory, which was fun and we got a lesson in serving Guinness with a certificate saying we had mastered pouring the perfect pint.

 

I spilled mine...The guy laughed and said "there's always one" which should maybe be my life motto

 

We heard more great music at two places on Saturday night and then Emily had to leave on Sunday morning. Kelly and I were spending an extra night, so we went to Dublin's old jail, Kilmainham Gaol, built in 1796. The tour was freezing and pretty depressing, but interesting all the same. We spent the afternoon exploring Dublin's Christmas markets and ended up being surprised that evening by a Christmas festival on O'Connell Street; since it was November 24th the Lord Mayor and Santa were lighting up the big tree.



 

 

Nobody can get mad about it being too early because they don't have Thanksgiving over here

 

Overall Dublin reminded me a lot of home - not just the language, but the food was familiar and the people were so friendly. I made eye contact with a few people on the street and all of them smiled and asked how I was doing. Somebody bumped into me once and apologized and I nearly hugged him, I was so shocked after dealing with the Paris attitude for the past few months. I was surprised by a few things though:

 

Security cameras on public streets. Not everywhere, but definitely noticeable

Almost everything was in Gaelic and English, which was cool because I didn't know it was that widely used. My cobbler friend said he learned it in school and promptly forgot it, but many people speak it in the South and West.

The driving on the left wasn't actually a surprise, but I still almost got hit a few times, despite these helpful signs everywhere.