"Your friend is asleep, I think he needs a Guinness"

I'm quite aware that I've been putting off the Ireland blog post for a while, but here it is nonetheless.

On Friday the 13th, the last day in the last week of tutorials, Kellie, Caitie, Kenzie, Lauren, Alexia, Sean, and I headed to Gatwick to catch a 13:45 plane to Dublin. Lauren's friend Matt, who's studying abroad in Alba, Italy this semester and came to Oxford a week or two prior to this trip, joined up with us in the airport after a journey considerably longer than ours. From there we caught the Airlink bus to the central train station to catch the train to Galway. It ended up being a bit more expensive than we thought since in order to get a student discount for the train in Ireland you have to have an Irish Student Rail Card as opposed to any student ID, but it is what it is. The train ride to Galway (and then back to Dublin) was great: rolling green countryside, flocks of sheep, little stone walls. We got to Galway around 19:30 or so and found our hostel, just a quick walk from the station. The hostel was GREAT and exactly what I've always wanted from a hostel experience, but I'll give that it's own paragraph.

We checked into the hostel and waited for Alexia's friend Kiera (who's in Galway for the semester) to come meet up with us. From there, we walked around a bit and ended up getting fish and chips--my first!--at a bumpin' place called McDonough's. I'm not big on fish so I didn't think that part was so hot but the chips were great; everyone else thought the opposite. From there we headed to a pub named The King's Head for a few pints. Once we got there we found out there was going to be live music at 22:00! So we decided to wait and hear a few songs...except that by 22:45 they had just started sound checking, so we dipped. After that we headed to another bar called The Living Room which was a bit more upscale and we accidentally ended up in the "VIP" section which got us a few weird looks so we didn't stay long. It rained a bit for the half hour or so that we were there but that's all the rain we got the whole weekend! Which my seminar professor assured me upon our return was quite the anomaly. After the rain subsided (after only 10 minutes) we headed back to the hostel, met some of our Austrailian roommates, and went to bed.

We got up in the morning for breakfast, ie toast and OJ (although we did capitalize and made PB&J sandwiches for the afternoon) and headed out to walk around, accompanied by two of our new Australian friends Brent and Alana! We'd actually met them the previous night but we were all about to go to bed anyway. We walked all over the town and it's markets and down to the coast!


We walked around for quite a while until 16:30 or so when we made our way to the grocery store to get supplies for familly dinner in Ireland! Our hostel had a great kitchen and, as much as I like eating out, cooking for ourselves was a good way to chill out and save money simultaneously. After dinner we hung out with people in the hostels common room and pregamed a bit, after which we went to a bar named Quay's (pronounced "keys") which was GREAT. There was a short bar right as you walk in and almost immediately a set of stairs down to another bar and what would've been a dance floor had it not been so packed, and then another set of stairs up to yet another bar. On a few different occasions people heard us talking while ordering drinks and bought us drinks simply because we were American and they wanted to talk to us! And it wasn't just guys buying girls drinks either, although a guy or two was quite taken with Lauren's beautiful teeth. They all were just excited to talk to an American, saying how much they'd like to visit and how they don't necessarily get a lot of us in Galway since most people want to go to Dublin. Basically, it was just a great day and subsequent night out.

The next day we walked around a bit more and hung out at the hostel before a supermarket lunch on the train back. When we got to Ireland we met up with Chris, another guy from St. Mary's who was in my seminar. He had been in Barcelona a few days prior and had arrived in Dublin that morning, and was basically a godsend since he found our hostels (two separate ones, since Caitie and Lauren came back on Tuesday rather than Monday) and helped us get there. We wanted to do another family dinner but our hostel was tight on security so not all of us would've been allowed past the reception, so we decided on Eddie Rocket's who claim Johnny Rocket's as their "American cousin". We were all pretty pooped after that so we all headed towards our respective lodgings (Chris was also in his own hostel). Those of us in Globetrotters met a few Americans from Virginia Tech there on spring break. They were nice enough meeting them at the time, but the girls were royal douche bags the next morning. To be fair they did warn us they had to leave the hostel by 06:30, but they didn't make much effort to be quiet.

After quickly getting ready, we finally got our full Irish breakfast. We then checked out and very nearly ran to meet up with everyone else at Trinity College. We walked around the college which was beautiful but didn't go into any of the buildings, notably the Book of Kells exhibit since it cost 10 euro! From there we walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which we also did not go into for monetary reasons, but we did enjoy the archictecture from the garden. Then it was across the city (and through various other gardens) to the Guinness Factory! We ended up waiting outside for almost an hour for Scott, another American we met in Galway who's in Dublin for the year. Although I'd been to a brewery before *wink wink* I still had a great time and thought the tour was really well done.

One thing the Guinness Factory had that the Heineken Brewery did not was a section on coopers and the business of cask making...specifically for Guinness, of course. Another highlight was the Perfect Pint bar, where they teach you how to pull the perfect pint of Guinness! You must of course tilt the glass (coughLaurencough) and pull the tap towards you, until the foam reaches halfway up the harp logo. It then has to sit for two minutes, after which you top the pint off by pushing the tap away from you. The difference in the two is that when pulling it towards you, it releases nitrogen and oxygen into the stout whereas it's just Guinness when you push it away. Voila!

From there the only place left to go was the Gravity Bar! Dublin must have laws severely limiting the height of it's buildings, and the bar on top of the Guinness Factory is one of the highest points in the city! You could see literally everything. I really wish I could've gone on St. Patrick's Day, since the factory was going to have bars set up on all seven floors of the Factory. But alas, my last seminar was on St. Patty's so we had to make our way back to the airport. Kellie, Kenzie, Alexia, Sean, and I said a cheery bye to Lauren, Caitie, Matt, and Scott and got on the bus back to the airport.

My last seminar meeting went well and I got good feedback (although no grade...) on my paper, but now integral is well underway! It's not a horrid schedule, really: a 09:30-10:30 and an 11:00-12:00 lecture Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and all day field trips on Wednesdays. Yesterday we went to Hampton Court Palace which was cool (I have yet to upload pictures) since it's part Tudor and part baroque but I've had enough early modern-19th century buildings to last me a while. Kellie's mom also got here yesterday and is here until Tuesday, so we've been going out during the day and then to dinner. Tomorrow we're going to the Mini Cooper factory and London this weekend! I'm not looking forward to the integral exam, but my post-semester travels are just around the corner.