First 48 hours

I’ve been in Ireland for 48 hours and what a whirlwind it’s been! Right now, our whole group has made it on the bus to Cork, and I finally have a free hour. Let’s skip back a few days.

When we arrived in Dublin, our whole group (20 of us including the direct enrolled students) caught a city bus to the hostel. None of us really knew what we were doing, so when we tried to get off the bus with all our luggage, two of us made it off before he shut the door and moved on. Ooops. Rochelle and I stood on the sidewalk with our huge bags and waved, flabbergasted, as the rest of our group continued on the bus. All we knew was that our hostel’s name was Barnacles and it was somewhere around the Temple Bar area. With a few wrong turns and a helpful store-lady with an Ipod GPS search, we made it to the hostel and found the rest of the group J After we had stored our bags at the hostel, around 11:00 am, we had 4 and a half hours to kill until we could actually get into our rooms. We walked around and found food and then just wandered. We honestly must have looked like the walking dead; we were so tired. When we could finally get to our rooms, we crashed for a few hours and it was glorious.

For our first night in Dublin, I ended up starting out with a pretty big group trying to find a cheap pub, but soon got really tired of the indecisiveness of the group. So Callie wanted to head to the Jameson district to find some authentic Irish pubs and I decided to go with her. Good decision J We got out of the touristy Temple Bar district and crossed the river, where we stopped at a pub that looked like it would have music, but actually had old guys watching football. We sat next to a guy named Damien who told us all about America’s best ales compared to Irish beers. I tried my first Guinness and could barely handle the first few sips so Callie finished that and I finished the last of hers. It was definitely a fun stop. Everyone was really nice and it was fun to talk to an Irishman. And their football cheering was just as you’d expect; big cheers and giving each other crap for betting on the wrong team. We moved on and found another type of pub that had records playing and fun graffiti on the walls. We didn’t meet any characters there, but they brewed their own beer, which was pretty cool. By then, we had wandered past the Jameson brewery, so we looked around the outside of that and wandered back along the river to our hostel. It was a really fun night and I’m glad we got to see a bit of the real Dublin, rather than just the tourist area.

Yesterday, two of us set alarms, but didn’t wake up until much later than intended because we forgot about the fact that our alarms were still on Iowa time… Oh well, we got some much needed sleep. So instead of the free breakfast from the hostel, we went to brunch at this little café. It was really good, especially since we hadn’t had a real meal since before our flights. And the tea was amazing. The rest of the day was just more walking around and a trip to the Guinness factory. The most amazing part about the Guinness factory, to me, was the sheer amount of everything there. So much beer and such quantities of each ingredient. They buy 2/3 of all the barley produced in Ireland! Even the original lease Arthur Guinness signed was 9000 years. Pretty ambitious. After the tour, we went to the top of the building and got a skyline view of Dublin and a free pint. I didn’t even attempt to drink one this time. Maybe I’ll acquire a taste for it…we’ll see.

Last night was New Year’s Eve in Dublin. So. Many. People. It was incredible. Again, we started off in a big group, this time with a few French people along for the ride. We were aiming for a pub that the guy at the phone store told us about but when we got there, it was full of people 20+ years older than u. So about half the group, including the French people, split off. The rest of us (6 girls) just headed to a nearby pub that looked promising. When we first went in around 9:00, there weren’t many people and it didn’t seem like we’d stay that long. We sat down for a bit, planning on continuing the search, but we ended up staying till midnight. It was really fun to people watch and I’m pretty sure some traveler girls were there. I’ve never seen girls so gaudily dressed; huge hair, pounds of makeup and tanning, super short dresses and huge sequinsy heels. They had great music playing in the pub. It wasn’t even that it was cool, new, irish music, but it was just such a random mix of mostly American music. Anything from Bohemian Rhapsody, to some Johnny Cash, and some DubStep. I’ve noticed that the music playing on the radio just seems so random to me, cuz there are a lot of really old songs and then there are songs from 5/10 years ago and there are really recent ones. I like it J Anyway, we stayed the whole night at The International Bar an got free champagne at midnight. We went back to the hostel soon after that and walked around Temple Bar, where it was still incredibly busy. Our hostel room window faces one of the streets on Temple Bar and we could hear people even at 4 in the morning. I had no problem sleeping, cuz I was just sooooo tired. I’ll definitely be taking a nap after this.

This morning, we got up and got ready to head to the bus station to catch the 10:00 bus, but we realized that one of our roommates wasn’t back. She was the one who was hanging out with the French guy last night, so we did all we could to find her when all we knew was his first name and the fact that he was staying in our hostel. We couldn’t find her, so our fraction of the group left a note on her bed and called a taxi so we didn’t have another bus mishap. As we were loading the taxi, we heard from the other group that she had been found. We felt much better, and headed on our way. We were early for the bus, which was great by me: better early than late. The rest of the group was on the way, but the bus pulled out before they all got there. But as we pulled out, we passed them all on the sidewalk outside and the bus driver pulled around the block and let them all load up their stuff and get on the bus. We were all surprised, cuz that probably would not have happened at home. So now we’re all on our way to Cork together J

So far, I’m exhausted, my feet hurt, and I’m tired of living out of a suitcase. But I’m also having a great time and am really excited to see Cork and get settled in our flat. I love being able to order a drink, and haven’t even been carded yet. I’ve gotten a bit used to all the people smoking on the street (which could be good or bad). I’ve appreciated the greenness, and been thrown off by the weather. I’ve met people from Ireland, France, Jordan, Italy, the US, and the Netherlands. I’ve gotten lost and successfully navigated a new city. I’ve done a lot in the past few days. I can’t imagine what else I’m going to get up to this semester! I’m sure this year will be an interesting one J

Happy New Year!

~Meg