Above is the last sentence of an Irish blessing my mom sent me via text message before leaving London on our six day adventure through Dublin and Belfast. Thanks, Mom. I think it worked. :)
As a sidenote, pictures will be in another post as blogger gets on my nerves when it comes to placing photos within text. Okay.
You could easily call this our most anticipated adventure yet, as Eric, Adriane, Nadine, and I had made these plans to go to Ireland in November of last semester. Good thing, too, because we got spaces in hostels and cheap airfare that we probably wouldn't have had we waited till studying abroad, since St. Patrick's Day is obviously a huge tourist event for Ireland and Dublin in particular. Even though we had known about this trip for the longest amount of time, the actual day of traveling to Dublin (Tuesday the 16th) was fairly stressful because it was the closest I'd ever cut it as far as flights were concerned - Nadine and I both had separate troubles on the London Underground getting to Gatwick airport, and Nadine literally arrived ten minutes before we were told the "gates would close on us" - they didn't even end up boarding people until 20 minutes after that time, but boy was I nervous waiting for her to get through security.
We successfully arrived at the Dublin Airport and waited for Eric and Adriane's flight from Edinburgh, and once the gang was assembled the four of us traveled to our youth hostel together. It was nighttime, but that proved to not be an issue. After arriving we decided to go to a nearby pub, where we ordered our first drinks while in Dublin - which was to be the last for most of us, as prices in Dublin are super expensive! And although we later found people to be very friendly in Ireland, Eric accidentally offended the bartender of the pub that first night by asking him what kind of cider he would recommend. The bartender's response? "I don't drink cider." Classic.
The hostel we stayed in is attached to an old church where they served free breakfast every morning, which was a good way to start off the day for three mornings straight. Our first full day was St. Patrick's Day itself, so we got an early start to the day so we could get good seats for the festival parade on O'Connell Street. The parade lasted for roughly a billion years and went from cool to interesting to really wack during that time frame, but I guess all of that goes to show the Irish know how to throw a party. After the parade we found Nadine's friend who is studying abroad in Limerick, and hung out for a while before going our separate ways in search of food. Eric, Adriane, Nadine, and I found a wonderful food place called Beshoff's (also on O'Connell Street), where we went again the following day because the quality of the food was great and the price was not jaw-dropping. We followed this amazing discovery by going to the Guinness Factory, where we took a tour of the storehouse and learned how to make our own perfect pint of Guinness. The Guinness Factory has seven stories, the top of which is called the Gravity Bar and affords a great view of the city of Dublin, with quotes from some great books by Irish writers involving the city: The Dubliners,Ulysses, The Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, among others (they're really proud of James Joyce in Dublin). Once we exhausted all that the Guinness Factory had to offer, we took a horse-drawn carriage ride back to the famous Temple Bar District and (after visiting our hostel to get ready) went to an Irish pub to end St. Patrick's Day on a high note. Gogarty's was the name of the pub, and while it was crowded just like everywhere else, it had some native Irishmen playing covers of great rock songs that got us excited to move to the music! Adriane was the only one of us to purchase a drink, and she almost got a heart attack when she found out how much it had cost her - consequently I don't think she drank for the rest of the time we were in Ireland haha.
The next day we got up to catch the free walking tour through the city of Dublin, but Nadine wasn't feeling well so she stayed in the hostel. The tour took us three hours and we came back with lunch for Nadine (from Beshoff's of course), but she wasn't in the hostel. We looked for her on our hall, in the bathrooms, in the lobby, she wasn't anywhere. So we left her her food and a map telling her where to catch up with us once she got back, thinking she had walked to the pharmacy nearby. Apparently she was in the Church area charging her phone (our room didn't have any outlets - annoying), and we had literally missed her by five to ten minutes, because she came back to the room almost as soon as we had left. It was a bummer, but it ended up being a good thing because she got hit with another wave of sickness after we would have met up with her. Before we went back to retrieve Nadine for a quiet night walking around in Dublin, Eric, Adriane, and I went to the National Library of Ireland where they had an exhibit on William Butler Yeats as well as the geneology center. I'm Irish on my mother's side, so I would have been tempted to go in and search for Carroll, my ancestor's last name, but it closed before we could get to it. I consoled myself by walking around St. Stephen's Green with Eric and Adriane, where the shades of green and daffodils were magnificent. Really truly, Dublin is a beautiful city. We went to another park where an Oscar Wilde monument is and took pictures with it where I almost got my camera robbed by two nice old ladies, one of which had absent mindedly put it in her left pocket and started walking off. She was so embarrassed when we caught up to her! We walked by Oscar Wilde's house on our way to meet up with Nadine and walk around the city at night. Dublin is by far one of my favorite cities that I've traveled to so far - reminded me of London in the sense that it has the city life while also being the site for great literary history. And Adriane would probably remind me that it was just as expensive as London, too.
The next day puts us to Friday, where the four of us took a bus to Belfast to continue the rest of our journey. Although Nadine and I were reluctant to leave the cute cash teller at the bus station behind, I think it's safe to say that this was the most interesting bus ride any of us had ever taken, not only because of the beautiful Irish countryside we travelled through, but also because of our company. Eric's neighbor was a big burly Irishman who kept on pestering him with videos on his phone when it was extremely obvious that all Eric wanted to do was read his Harry Potter book. Throughout the roughly three hour bus ride I would look over and see Eric politely responding to his neighbor and be grateful that I didn't have to put up with any invasive Irishmen... WELL God must have heard that and thought he would have some fun, because Adriane, Nadine, and I got the full experience towards the end of the bus ride. Except instead of a middle-aged intimidating Irishman, our source of annoyance sprung from the five year old Irishboy sitting in front of us. I'm not sure exactly when the change took place, but the last hour or so of the bus ride caused this boy to go from polite and obedient child to verbally aggressive admirer of American women. He called us "hot" and "sexy" while telling us that he wanted to kiss us (but I like to think he only directed the offer of marriage towards me). At one point his mother got so upset with him she spanked him and yelled, "Knock it off! You're five!" and even that was not enough to calm him down. We saw him once again after we had left the bus and were heading off to our hostel, and he made sure to stand by the door and point to each of us girls individually, saying with his little Irish lisp, "Thexy! Thexy! Thexy!" I don't know WHERE this child picked up these words since he's only five, but it made for a very welcoming entrance into Belfast.
Compared to Dublin, Belfast was not as much of a favorite for me personally. Although I didn't get the impression that there was as much to DO as other places I've visited so far, Belfast as a city has a lot of weight culturally, since it in many ways is still suffering from Protestant-Catholic conflict dating from centuries past. We took a "black taxi" tour of the murals throughout the city, which gave a pretty clear picture of the difficult relationship betwen the two factions. We also walked around a bit and explored all the city had to offer - a beautiful city hall, the fame of being the construction site for the Titanic (good one, Belfast), and some great shopping, too. Halway through our stint in Belfast I learned it is also known for being the birthplace of C.S. Lewis, which made me like the city more. Superficial? Possibly. Lame? Absolutely.
Belfast had some great surprises in store for us, however. The food was great and much cheaper than in Dublin. We found a great cupcake shop in the main hub of the city and tried Bailey's with coffee alongside variously decorated cupcakes, which was definitely a highlight. The main thing we did in Belfast was take pictures, and since there was not that much to take pictures of, we turned to ourselves for entertainment. We did some "photoshoots" at dinner and such and made complete fools of ourselves in the process. You can look to facebook for those. I'm sorry to keep this short but Italy and Greece are on the horizon and I really have to get ready for those. If there's anything I forgot or if you need to see pictures here as well as facebook I will try to do that once I return from the grand tour! Love you all, hope you had great spring breaks and Easters!
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