DUBLIN!!

I spent this past weekend in Dublin!! It was incredible, I still can't believe that I was there. My homeland! Here's just a few pictures, well actually, a lot of pictures.

We left our dorms at 6am (yikes) took a train to Bratislava and flew from there to Ireland.

RyanAir: Cheap for a reason.

We got so lost trying to find our dorm in Dublin, but eventually we found a very nice Irish man who literally walked us to the door! It is so weird to be able to speak English and be generally understood. And to meet FRIENDLY locals. The Viennese are a lot of things, but friendly really isn't one of them. Haha. But yeah, it took a while to get used to all of the English being spoken around me, I always wanted to turn and be like "I speak English too!"

Map of Dublin with some of the sights.

Anyways, after we found our hostel we set out to search Dublin for things to do. We ended up crossing the River Liffey and finding Trinity College. It was so beautiful but just packed with tourists. I felt bad for the students, they were definitely outnumbered at least 10 to 1. We got to see the Book of Kells too! It was beautiful. It is a manuscript from the 800's with the first 4 books of the Gospel written in Latin and decorated.

Book of Kells!

The entire Book is like this, it's absolutely amazing.

Trinity College Campus

We then went for a little stroll down Grafton Street, which is a large pedestrian street with lots of expensive stores and cute little coffee shops and restaurants. It was also really crowded. It was like walking down 5th Avenue in New York. I also liked how we saw kegs just lying everywhere! Anyways, we stopped and got some coffee, got pretty loopy because we were now all caffeinated and hadn't gotten more than 4ish hours of sleep. A pretty interesting combination in my opinion :)

Grafton Street

From right to left: Me, Mark, Winona, Sarah, and Sofie

It was so crowded--we literally had to fight our way everywhere.

The River Liffey

Kegs!

Grafton Street

Sugar packet mustache

Of course on our first night out we had to go and get some Guinness. I was really looking forward to it because, of course, I'm Irish and I have to have Guinness. I'm not gonna lie, it was a little difficult to get through the first pint since I'm not much of a beer drinker. The second pint was considerably easier.

My first pint of Guinness ever!

It's actually my favorite beer now

Polishing it off



I left the pub feeling considerably better and went out to my favorite international destination: McDonalds. It's pretty funny to see what they serve in each country on their "Dollar Menu." Ireland definitely takes the cake with Twisty Fries. They were delicious and only a Euro!

After twisty fries we went back to the hostel for some sleep. Unfortunately two French guys were in our 20 person room (!!) and were super drunk and obnoxious. But it was pretty fun anyways :) They kept waking me up and saying "What is your name! Wake up wake up, you should come out!" And when I would turn over to sleep, they would bop me on the head and yell "Wake up wake up American girl!" I think one was named something like Pierrerik or something, but we just called them French Guy 1 and French Guy 2.

So that was pretty much day 1! More to come :)