Adventures in Dublin!

We arrived in Dublin at 9 in the morning after a red eye from New York, a nice semi short 6 hour flight. We stayed at the Bunkhouse Hostel which was star or two above the New York Big Apple...the blankets didn´t stink! Hurray for bleach and comfortable firm mattresses. We spent the first day just walking around and getting a feel for the city. We walked along the river, and through the North end of town. After being in New York, Dublin seemed almost like a small town. I have decided that Dublin should be called "Little Poland",

Train station in Howth

I don´t think I have ever experienced so many Polish stores in any city other than Warsaw. Our first meal in Dublin was things we bought at the third Polish store we saw: Bigos, Bread, and of course sausage.

Our first european purchases... a polish store!

On the second day we got up early and took a bus to the Guiness ´storehouse´which is the original brewery for guiness. We both actually rather enjoyed the tour, which depending on how long you take to go through it could last for a few hours. Turns out they have a lease on the place for 9000 years. Its actually embedded into the floor!

9000 year lease on the property! Guiness brewery...

Ending of course with a few pints of beer, at the top, in the ´gravity lounge´. For those who have not tried it before, the beer that we get in N.America is called Draught. It´s the lightest of their beers. Try the Extra stout, or for those more adventerous the Foreign extra stout, which apparently is only sold in Africa and the carribean. Thanks for the tour Mr. Holowachuk!

guiness store

guiness! It is good for you!!

After the guiness storehouse, it was off to tour through the south side of the town. We stopped by the Trinity College (apparently the oldest still used university in Europe).

Guiness gravity bar, top of the guiness store

Here we saw the book of kells (a bible, and other ancient texts written from around 800AD) and the long library, which is a collection of old manuscripts. The tour is informative, but short. Its interesting to see how the texts were made and to actually see some of them up close. The attention to detail on the illustrations is rather amazing! We wandered then around St. Stephens greens, which is a quaint park with the typical group of people relaxing and feeding birds and such. We were off for another jaunt through the Temple Bar area, which is one of the most touristy areas of the city. We only managed to meander through the streets for about an hour before we moved along to other areas of the city.
I´m not sure what we expected from Ireland, but we didn´t get to see and or exprience the Irish culture very much. Dublin is a very touristy city, so we mainly got to experience other Tourists, Polish, Russian, French, German...everything but Irish. On our third day in Dublin we got a tip to go see a coastal town called Howth, which was only a half an hour train ride from Dublin. We´re so glad we went to see it because it gave us a better view of a town that wasn´t full of tourists and double decker tour busses. We hiked for half a day, enjoyed the coast and watched for sea lions that were supposed to be all over the beaches - we didn´t see any though.

A rest along the hike to howth, munchin on apples and carrots!

We lucked out an only got a little bit of rain. Almost all of our time in Ireland was spent either half soaked from the rain, waiting for the rain and wind to stop or trying to get dry. On the last night we (more so Chad) was feeling well enough to take in a traditional Irish pub. We stopped in for a few pints at ´The celt¨and were treated to some live music and a scene or two from the locals. It is rather interesting to see the pub filled with people, of all ages, all of whom are beyond friendly with one another. From Dublin it was on to Belfast! Thank-you Shane and Desirae for helping to sponsoring Ireland!!

a view looking back on Howth, at the beginning of the hike

Knicker box.... no explaination!

Adventures in Dublin!

Dublin, Ireland