Dublin 2009

So we made it back from Dublin, yay! It was a really fun weekend with great weather and even greater memories. We started off on Friday visiting a history museum which was really interesting and then grabbed some food and headed off to the hostel. Right across from our hostel they were shooting a movie and we got to watch right out of our window. They had lots of lights and huge fog machines that filled the whole street with fog and rain, it was really cool. There was five of us girls that went on the trip and when we got the hostel we discovered we had an extra roommate...Nick, he was from Austraila, although currently living in London, stayed in our room with us and he was a lot of fun, very outgoing and sociable. Pretty chill night, we hung out at the hostel and then went to bed early because we knew we would have a big day the next day.

Saturday (Happy Valentine's Day!) we woke up early and started out for our tour of the Jameson Distillery in Dublin. We received a guided tour and then got to taste test some of their whiskey. It was an awesome tour and we learned a lot about how to make whiskey and the history of John Jameson. The motto for John Jameson was "sine metu" which means 'without fear' in Latin. After the Jameson tour we walked to the Guinness storehouse for a tour of their factory. The Guinness factory was huge! There was so many people and it was like nine floors (a little bit of something on each floor to tour) that we had to go up and then on the top there was the 'Gravity Bar' which had 360 degree windows that overlooked the whole city of Dublin, it was a really neat place. We also got complimentary pints there as well. Since it was Valentine's Day we went back to the hostel, got dressed up and went out for dinner to celebrate our trip. We then met up with Steve, who was one of the guys we met in the Aran Islands, and he took us out to The Porter House pub for some pints and live music. We were exhausted and crashed as soon as we got back.

Sunday we woke up really early (not my favorite thing to do...) and started walking around the city looking at the historic sites to see. We stopped at Christ Church, Dublin Castle, Trinity College and some other monuments and churchs. We ended our trip with a stop the Dublin Zoo. It was the perfect day, lots of sunshine and warmth, and we loved seeing all the animals and the little kids running around so excited. I haven't been to a zoo since I was a little girl so it was cool to do something that brought all of us back to our childhood and to do something that wasn't educational but just for fun.

I was really tired when we got back but all of us girls had fun and made some really neat memories. The weather is really warming up here and there have been a couple days where we have been walking around in T-shirts. School is going well, looks like my finals won't be until the end of May so I will probably be home right around June 1st or so. I hope that maybe we can coordinate something so I can see everyone when I get home and share all my awesome memories with all of you! Hope everyone is having a great time in their parts of the world! xoxo from Ireland

-abby