DUBLIN!! Day 2

Day 2 was spent just wandering all over Dublin. We were going to try and make it out to some countryside, but that didn't work out. So instead we all headed off to breakfast and coffee. We went to see Dublin Castle first, which was kinda disappointing. It was in the middle of the city and had a huge parking lot around it. We really didn't even go inside. The outside was pretty and it had a free Revenue Museum. There were all kinds of accounting ledgers inside, and everyone was saying "Wow, Liz you must love this!" It was pretty funny. They also had a bunch of examples of confiscated contraband items and even a toilet that they used to check if you had swallowed baggies of drugs...yeeeah. It was quite amusing :)

Dublin Castle

Museum of Revenue!? I'm SO there.

Mark and the contraband toilet.

We also saw the castle "garden" which was more like a big grass field with winding little paths that were about half a foot wide. So of course we just zoomed around it and pushed each other around king-of-the-path style. Next door was the Beatty Library which had a really great exhibit on various world religions. It had everything from Islam to Buddhism to Christianity to Hinduism. It was conspicuously missing Judaism though. But there were lots of old manuscripts and religious texts from each one. I liked it a lot.

the "Garden"

Mark and I

We ended up walking some more and ran across Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral. They were both spectacular, but we couldn't get into either one of them. Christ Church was really overpriced and St. Patrick's was closed :( But the outsides were beautiful! I also loved seeing some of the cute city apartments with colorful doors. I would want to have a bright blue one I think :)

Christ Church Cathedral

St. Patrick's Cathedral. Sadly it was under construction.

Ireland has the cutest doors!

Our next stop was the National Museum. By far my favorite part were the Bog Bodies on display. I think they had 4 or 5 bodies from all over Ireland and parts of Northern Europe. They were all preserved by the bogs and most of them still had skin and hair that was incredibly intact. Morbid, I know. But it was so cool! Although after about an hour of our 2 hour budgeted museum time Myles and I were bored out of our minds (I mean you can really only take so many displays of Viking fish hooks) so we skipped out and went to lunch.

Over lunch we conspired to make our next stop the Guinness Storehouse. So we all trooped all the way over town. It took nearly half and hour. But we finally made it only to find ourselves in 30 minute long line, Disneyland Style. 10 Euros later we made it in and it was actually pretty neat. They take you through the brewing process and let you see and even taste some of the ingredients (roasted barley, hops, water, and yeast). It was really funny because the "master brewer" would appear on a tv screen, tell you about what you were looking at and then give you a minute to make your way to the next screen and he pretends like he's "walking" there. It was a little cheesy, but hell, we get free beer at the end. The building is pretty funny too, it's shaped like a Guinness glass. Anyways, my favorite part was at the top at the "Gravity Bar" where they pour you a pint and you can see all of Dublin. It's nearly the tallest building in the entire city and this bar floor is made nearly entirely out of glass! And just to make the experience extra worth it, we took the Guinness glasses and smuggled them home with us. When we got outside, high fives were definitely exchanged :)

Guiness Factory!

Free pint?! HIGH FIVE!

Lots of bottles

Testing out the barley.

Water: A very important component as we learned.

Even more kegs

The view from the Gravity Bar.

We were basically starving by this point so we quickly found a cute little pub, got some Irish food that I don't remember, I had a second pint of Guinness and was definitely feeling pretty good. We ate, drank, and were merry all the way back to our hostel. We came back to a bunch of noisy boisterous 18 year old British guys who were already drunk (it was only 6 o clockish). We just kind of hung out and laughed to ourselves over them.

Later a bunch of us went out to Temple Bar, which is the pub district of Dublin. It was insanely fun! It was typical Ireland: drunk people passed out in the street, public urination, men fighting and breaking up fights...you know, the usual. There were just tons of people everywhere whooping and hollering and it was just so much fun. It felt like we were at some crazy festival. There were a bunch of Bachelor/Bachelorette parties and "hen" parties were women in their 40s-50s dress up in crazy costumes or colored wigs or matching shirts and go out together. It was really funny, we tried to get Mark or Myles to hit on them. No luck though. Mark did try to drink a beer in the street, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal. Oh well. Not everywhere can be as cool as Austria. The only bad part of the night was the price of alcohol. Beer was at least 4 Euro and cocktails were at least 7 Euro.

Outside Temple Bar area.

And of course, ended the night with some Twisty Fries.