Friday morning, I met Meg and we headed to the Granada bus station, where pretty much 20-30 other people from our program all were! Everything went smoothly for our bus and then plane right to Dublin (except for poor McShnally who missed the first bus and had to sprint through the airport to barely make the flight right after that. We all cheered for him when we saw him walk on the plane!).
About 7 of us checked in at our hostel around 4 ish that day ( at Barnacle, right in the heart of Temple Bar!) and as we walked up the stairs toward the common room, we heard loud talking/yelling coming from that room. Right then, we knew that was our friends and that we were in for quite the weekend!
Within minutes of getting to the hostel! After an absurd amount of screaming after us finally being united. I hadn't seen Callie, Natalie, and Christine (except for just a few minutes) in forever! :)
Andrea, Meg, and I settled into our [EXTREMELY small] rooms and changed into our Unofficial gear! We quickly grabbed some food and then bought alcohol and then started all pregaming together. Because I mean honestly, compared to everyone else back in Champaign, since it was already like 5 pm, we were WAY behind schedule!
Almost the whole group!
Mike came too!!
The first night was quite the interesting night.. Not really what we expected! We all pregamed together in the kitchen, and it was really loud/a lot of fun. Last minute, we decided that we would go on the pub crawl ran by the hostel.. Big mistake. We payed 12 euro for it, and all they gave us was one beer in the beginning, and one "shot" at each bar after that (but in reality, a tiny shot glass of sprite with a few drops of alcohol). Lauren, Meg, Matt, Ryan, Callie and I got pretty bored pretty quickly after just two bars, so we decided to act like we forgot our coat at the hostel, drink as much as we wanted there, and then meet up with the pub crawl for the final club (because we could get in for free if we were with the pub crawl). As it turns out, it was the best decision we could have made! We played some drinking games back at the hostel, had a good time, then around 1 am, ran over to Club Dandelion. We danced around and had a good time there until about 3am! We were the only ones from the pub crawl that actually made it there haha. Goes to show you how "great" of a pub crawl it was..
Raging at Club Dandelion! People definitely came up to ask and asked us about our ridiculous shirts.. Happy Unofficial everyone!
Saw this on the way home from the club. Kind of ironic having these two right next to each other, huh? Haha
The next day, everyone woke up early to catch breakfast at 9am, and then most of us headed over to the free walking tour at 11am. The walking tour, as usual, was really great. And we also loved our tourguide!
One side of the Royal Palace (original one was burnt down a long time ago)
With my love! So pretty.
All famous artists from Dublin!
Trinity College! So pretty. Supposedly, you can't walk under that big thing in the middle, or else it's bad luck and you won't graduate! No student does it! Another interesting thing, behind that statue and at the main entrance, one of the founders (at least I THINK he was a founder) of the university is buried underground, right under the entrance. This is because before women were allowed to go to the school, one firm belief of this man and one of his quotes he said was: "Women will attend Trinity College over my dead body." Years later, he died and requested that he be buried somewhere within the grounds, so everyone found it appropriate that this be where he was buried. Good choice, in my opinion.
A symbol of Ireland's suffering, particularly during the Irish Potato Famine.
Gorgeous park right in the heart of Dublin. Can't remember the name of it! Actual battles once took place here.. hard to believe that!
After the walking tour, a bunch of us headed over to the Guiness Brewery. It was really cool seeing where it all actually began!
Right outside the factory.
Ingredients!
Really cool.
Yep, we were ACTUALLY there. Nbd.
Love it.
They have Gravity Bar at the top floor of the factory where you get a free pint! And you also get to see a beautiful view of Dublin!
A little cloudy, but cool nonetheless!
Once we left the factory, Callie, Andrea, Mike, Jeri and I went and got some delicious pizza, went to the store, then chilled at the hostel for a little bit. When the rest of the group got back, Meg, Andrea, and I checked in to our other hostel for the second night: Abigail's. It was just a few blocks from Barnacle's, and we had to stay there because Barnacle's didn't have two nights available since we waited so last minute. It wasn't a problem at all! Abigail's was actually pretty nice; it was more spacious and had better food. Anyways, we got ready and then headed back to Barnacle's for the pregame! We had a nice, loud pregame and then we all head out to the bars in a huge group. First, we went to this pub called "Fitzgerald's" that we were told was a LOT of fun the night before, but this day it actually seemed kind of dead. So instead, we headed over to a different pub that was actually a huge success! I can't remember the name of the bar, but it was so much fun and had about 5 floors. They played fun, old American music and we all danced and just had fun the whole night! And played an interesting game of dodge the creepers.. but it all added up to a really great night!
Wish I could remember the name of it!
We ended the night with some absolutely delicious shwarmas and then everybody headed back to their hostels around 4am. The next morning, a lot of our huge group headed home, but some of us still didn't have our flight back til Monday. Andrea, Meg, and I ate a massive breakfast at Abigail's, then checked out and left our bags in the baggage room back at Barnacle, where we met up with Callie, Natalie, and Jeri. We decided we'd spend the day at one of Dublin's suburbs, Dun Laoghaire (and no, I'm STILL not sure how to pronounce that). The town was about a 35 minute bus ride away, and it was an absolutely adorable area!
Right along the coast!
Pretty coastline. Hard to capture it all in one pic!
Cutest little market EVER, selling everything that sounded absolutely delicious.. So tempting!
We left the suburbs after a couple hours and did a little bit of souvenir shopping, then went for dinner at Leo Burdock's, a very famous fish and chips place in Dublin! It was absolutely DELICIOUS. And that's an understatement.
Leo's!
Huge list of famous people that have eaten there.
Yum!
And to finish off, a picture of Temple Bar, the bar the entire area was named after! The cultural center of Dublin (AND the most fun area).
After our meal, we headed back to the hostel (into the common room, the only place we could stay since we were actually checked out). We actually struggled a little bit around this time because we were ready to go to our friend Chad's place (where we were staying for the night) but since we have cell phones from different countries, we couldn't call each other. So basically, we were waiting for him to answer on facebook. Then the internet stopped working at the hostel, so we were all kind of frustrated and tired at the time. Callie and Jeri left around then, so me, Andrea, Natalie, and Meg went to a Mcdonald's where we knew they had free wifi. Here, we got online and Chad answered, so we decided to head over!
Hilarious side note about our journey to Chad's: As we were waiting for our bus, Meg and I ran into a convenience store to get some candy bars. I bought mine, and Meg was next in line. She was going to buy 3 because there was some type of discount. The man at the counter CLEARLY did not speak much English at all. He looked at her, and said a few things Meg didn't really understand. Then, he took the candy bars from her hand, put them behind the counter and said to her, "Sorry, we're out of stock." Meg was SO confused that she just walked away dumbfounded, as I died laughing by the entrance. I mean, come on, if you're going to lie to her, at least come up with something better than THAT!
Then, on the way to Chad's, we were all sitting on the bus and Natalie was going to tell us when to get off because she had been there earlier that weekend. The bus ride was talking longer than she thought, so we double checked with the bus driver to ask when we would hit UCD (The University College of Dublin... Yeah, that's ACTUALLY the name of it) and he told us we already passed it. So we hopped off the bus, and were going to get back on at the next stop across the street and head back in the other direction. As we're walking, we saw the bus just a block away down at the light, so we had to BOOK IT with our huge bags over to the stop! I find it to be absolutely hilarious every time we find ourselves running frantically with our huge bags like idiots! Reminded me so much of Budapest! So, of course, we made it just in time and hopped on the bus!
We got to Chad's shortly after that, socialized with him for a bit, and then were absolutely EXHAUSTED, so we knocked out on his couches pretty quickly. We woke up really early the next morning and took our flight back with Danielle, Lauren, and Caroline with no problems! Got back mid-afternoon on Monday, and it felt SO good to be back in Granada!
I'm excited because I'm going to be in Granada all week, and I'm staying here for the whole weekend, too! I miss going out/staying in Granada. Aside from a possible day trip to Cordoba, it's going to feel good to be home for more than 4 days in a row! Hopefully, I'll have a good Granada entry sometime within the next week or two. Then, after that, Barcelona!
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