In Dublin's Fair City...

So it has again been a pretty long time since I have blogged and I am about to leave for my second 1 week break and figured I would try to catch up on the last one week break I had off and the weekends in between.

We left snowy London and surprisingly made it out on time without any hiccups at the airport. We landed in Dublin that evening, it had been snowing there too so unfortunately all we saw from the plane was a white city vs. the green hills we were expecting. We caught a train to Killarney, which is a small town on the western part of the country.

We got in the train station late at night and had trouble finding the hostel. We immediately noticed the amazing hospitality of the Irish because the several people who we stopped to ask for directions each did the best they could to help us out, even if they didn't really know what they were talking about either.

We checked in to Neptune's hostel and asked the very kind woman at the front desk what there was to do in Killarney, she suggested a shop where we could rent bicycles and we made plans to explore the Irish countryside the next day.

We rented bikes the next morning and attempted to follow the suggested route of the owner, but he didn't know any street names and just gave us landmarks to try and follow. Needless to say we got lost several times, but the whole point of the day was to explore the countryside and that is definitely what we did. We made it to Ross Castle and rode through a golf course along Muckross lake. The green countryside and the views of the lake were just as I pictured Ireland to be. It started to get chilly so we rode back to the town and warmed up with some Irish Coffee and Guinness Stew.

The town is sort of sleepy in the wintertime, and we decided to take advantage of being in an English speaking country and went to the local movie theater. Sarah, Amanda and I went to Slumdog Millionare. I was excited because I had just purchased “Q&A” which was the inspirations for the movie. I loved the movie, and the book was great too...but if you read and watch...don't expect them to be similar. The movie is very loosely based on the book.

The next morning we ate a “Traditional” Irish breakfast at a cafe near the hostel, packed up and left for Dublin. We arrived in the rain and took a taxi from the train station to the hotel. We were all very excited to be staying in a hotel for the next two nights. Amanda and I shared a room with our own bathroom. We freshened up a bit as we drank tea and watched some TV in English. All of the European countries have MTV, whose trashy reality shows give a great impression as to how real Americans lead their lives, no wonder all the Europeans think we are so crazy.

The weather cleared up a bit so we decided to explore our part of town. We were in a fabulous location, right near St. Steven's Green and the Borough St. shopping district. We ate noodles and soup at Wagamama's Asian cuisine restaurant, most of us were starting to get a little sick and worn out so the soup was a nice temporary remedy.

I came down with a fever that night and wasn't feeling very well the rest of our time in Dublin, but I pushed through it because I didn't want to miss anything. We woke up early the next morning and bought tickets for the Hop-on-hop-off (HoHo) bus tour. We listened to the commentary and rode it to Christ Church where we learned about its unique history and toured the crypts below it.

We jumped back on the bus and rode it to the Guinness Storehouse. We learned about the production of beer and the qualities that make Guinness unique. The tour included a pint at the Gravity Bar with a panoramic view of the city. We relaxed for a little while before facing the cold outside to wait for the bus. We rode and listed to the history of Dublin as the bus followed its touristy route back to Temple Bar. We ate dinner at the Bear and Castle pub and walked around for a bit. My fever was starting to make me feel really tired so we went back to the hotel and called it a very early night.

After about 12 hours of sleep I was feeling much better the next morning. We packed our things, put them in the hotel's luggage storage and explored the city by foot. We stopped in the shops on Burough street and picked up some Irish Rugby shirts, the French/Irish rugby match was later that day and we wanted to make sure everyone knew who we were supporting. We walked by the Liffey river and through Temple Bar, making our way to the National Museum of Archeology. The bog body exhibit displayed men who had been preserved for hundreds of years in the rich Irish soil. Everything was still in tact, you could see the pore in their skin, their fingernails and the wrinkles on their hands. It was amazing.

We continued exploring the streets of Dublin and stopped at Burdock's Chipper for some real, newspaper wrapped fish and chips. Yummy! We ate them on the steps of the city hall, which attracted a bunch of pigeons who were bugging us for our leftovers.

We made our way back to Temple Bar for the start of the Rugby match. The pubs were packed and it was very exciting. We met some nice Irish women who explained the game to us and we drank Guinness and Jameson as we cheered Ireland on. We stayed at the pub until midnight, made our way back to the hotel to grab our things and go to the airport. Our flight was at 8 the next morning, so we decided to arrive the night before, save on a night in the hotel and sleep in the airport. I fell asleep on a couch near Starbucks. We checked in to RyanAir at 6 and were on our way back to Lugano!

We had to catch a train from Milan. I used the hole in the ground toilet at the station and somehow broke the lock when I shut the door. I got stuck and had to get the police to let me out. It was simultaneously the scariest and funniest moment of the trip. We made it safely back to the Montarina after that little hiccup. It felt nice to be “home” after a whole week of traveling!