I can’t remember where I left off, but Alie and I are currently on our plane to AMSTERDAM wooo! We made a few scheduling errors, which I will discuss shortly- but it’s been an adventure, to say the leastJ
On Saturday night, we took the LUAS into Dublin to experience a weekend night in Dublin- we were going to leave in the afternoon for Galway, but decided it’d be nice to stay in a home for one more night, than going to a hostel and being tired for the night. So, we took a train into Dublin, and headed for the Guinness factory to do a tour.
The Guinness storehouse is SO COOL. The architecture and design of the building were awesome, and we learned more about Guinness beer and brewing than I think I’ll ever need to know. At the 7th floor, the Gravity Bar, Alie and I got our free pints of Guinness… and managed to sip on them for maybe 5 minutes before we couldn’t handle it anymore. The view was amazing though, and we got a 360 degree view of Dublin- albeit in the rain.
Afterwards, we aimlessly wandered around, looking for fun and adventure, without much luck at all. Then, we saw a large group of people standing outside of Trinity College- and decided to go check it out. It turned out to be the line for a pub crawl- which we decided we might as well try. We were a bit hesitant to pay the 10 euros each though- and when it came our time to sign up/pay, the guy had run out of wristbands. He told us just to follow along anyway, and we ended up being able to do the entire thing for freeJ We got free drinks and met tons of cool people- some Australians, some Americans, and lots of Canadians. It was a BLAST, but we had to leave early to go meet up with the Maxwells, who were just down the street and kindly agreed to give us a ride home.
The next morning, we woke up nice and early, packed our bags, and headed to the DART, to a bus, which would take us 4 hours to travel clear across Ireland to Galway. We slept and read the entire time, and it wasn’t too horrid of a trip. However, halfway through, Alie woke up from her nap, gasped, and opened her calendar book, with a look of sheer horror on her face. I had no idea what was going on, but she finally pointed out that our flight was scheduled to leave from Dublin on MONDAY at 11:45 AM, not Tuesday, as we both had thought. It was currently Sunday, at about 1 in the afternoon, and we were heading clear across the country. We realized that we would have less than 12 hours in Galway before having to trek back across the country to Dublin Airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam. Cest la vie.
We got to Galway, trudged down the road to our hostel, and changed superfast in order to explore as much as possible. We managed to see St. Nicholas Cathedral, the Spanish Arches, the river, the sea, swans, a canoe polo game, and most of the center of the city. It was SO much cooler/cuter than Dublin, with little stone winding streets, open-air markets, street performers, and fresh ocean air. We loved the place, and decided it was worth our ridiculous journey to get to see.
We got yummy crepes from this cute couple who use all natural ingredients they get/grow themselves, and sat and people watched. We then made the dangerous error of deciding to look inside Penney’s- a super popular store here- after seeing hundreds of people carrying bags. Penney’s is basically Forever 21 on steroids, but cheaper. After spending a little over an hour, we departed- only after I bought 4 headbands and 4 scarves :/. Oops. But, my total price was 19.50 euros- not bad at all. We got coffee, wandered by the sea, then changed and got ready for our final night out in Ireland. We went to a cute little pub to write postcards, and bought our very first drinks for ourselves- coffee & BaileysJ- and sat and enjoyed the cute Irish music. Then, these two guys ambled over, asked if they could write something is Gaelic on a postcard- and the rest is history. We went to another pub, where all the locals were celebrating a “football” match, and it was like a crazy frat party full of Irish jigs and tons of Guinness. We made friends, left, got bombarded by people with stamps that promised they would get us into the best nightclubs ever, we went into one, it was empty, then I got exhausted and we headed back home. We had to awkwardly pack in the pitch dark with 6 random strangers sleeping at 1:30 AM (almost impossible), and I ended up just sleeping in the same clothes I wore on our Glendalough bike ride, I wore into Greystones for a day, I wore on our bus trip into Galway, and are probably the grossest things ever. Tis the life of a poor college student traveler, I suppose (I’m currently still wearing the same clothes on the plane.. I might be the grossest person ever right now).
We’re about to land- hello Amsterdam!
PS: Final Irish Ginger Tally: 298!
pictures will come soon:)
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