Monday, October 8, 2012

Luck of the Irish

Get your shamrocks ready- this past weekend we headed to Dubhlinn! While it was no Oktoberfest, we had a giant crew of 16 together this weekend and it was such a blast! Last week was Lyndsey's 21st birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY LYNDSEY!), so a lot of the Penn in Belgium crew came to Edinburgh for a few days before the weekend to celebrate. It was such a fun time and having everyone here made it a little bit easier to wake up at 6 am to book it to the airport for an 8 am flight...
*Public shoutout to Nad and Mae for wanting to hang out with me SO much that they appreciated my floor-turned-double-bed accomodations- loved the Belgian chocolates guys :)
River Liffey

We got to what is probably the largest airport I have EVER seen (aka to get from the terminal to passport control we had to go on NINE of those moving walkway thingys), made our way to our hostel, and hit the ground running. First things first was of course, food. We wandered over to Grafton Street, which is the main shopping area of the city (and super beautiful), and stopped at a restaurant to energzie for the day ahead- bagels of course. The end of Grafton Street runs into St. Stephen's Green, an amazingly pretty and- no surprise - green park that we frolicked through after brunch. So green that it's supposedly, like, illegal to step on the grass... Afterwards, we took a tour of the Dublin Castle and then St. Patrick's Cathedral. The city is small enough that everything is pretty much within walking distance, which was super nice. Walking around all day gave us a really good chance to see a lot of the city. We stumbled upon St. George Arcade, a canopied shopping market-type thing, and our luck (well, mostly March's...) discovered Froyo in Dublin. Winning in Dublin, day one. The dude at the counter let us guess how much ours each weighed and if we guessed it right, we could've gotten it for free. Sadly, none of us got it right. But the froyo was amazing so, still winning.

Exhausted, all of us headed back to the hostel to meet up with Becca, Lizzy, Ilana, and Jacob who arrived later in the day! We took a power rest/nap/chill session and then headed out to dinner at a tapas place back across the river in the most fun area of the city called Temple Bar. It felt like a BYO in downtown Philly, minus the BYO element, plus some Irish accents. Afterwards, we hit up a bunch of bars in Temple Bar (there is an ACTUAL Temple Bar too in Temple Bar)- SUCH a blast. The nightlife in Dublin is amazing. The city is so lively and everywhere you look there are tons of people and packed bars and everyone is just having so much fun- I loved it!




St. Stephen's Green
Cannes you guess the real statue?


St. Patrick's Cathedral


Day 2: I was struck with a cold and the unfortunate discovery that nasal spray in Ireland apparently depletes taste buds. After walking around the beautiful Trinity College campus, we sat down to a traditional Irish lunch at a local pub that supposedly had amazing stews and soda bread. I ordered it, only to find out I couldn't taste it- SUCH sad times. Apparently it was amazing though- wompppp. Later on, we took a tour of the Guinness Beer Factory which was awesome! With the ticket you get a free Guinness, which either fortunately or unfortunately (depending on who you ask) I also could not taste. Later in the night, we successfully found a restaurant that would fit us all for dinner - sans a Saturday night reservation - and turned it into a BYO Philly style. This time the actual BYOing occurred. The restaurant just was unaware of it. We finished off our final night in Temple Bar once again at a bar with live music, tons of people, and 5 euro mojitos/long island iced teas/strawberry daquiris(/potentially water- still not tasting a thing).

I woke up the next morning STILL unable to taste the mintiness of my toothpaste, but as luck of the Irish would have it, my taste buds returned at Sunday brunch with Tara to experience Irish steel cut oatmeal- nom nom nom. And then as luck would also have it, I broke a shotglass in a souvenier shop and it shattered all over the floor. A classiccccccc farewell to Ireland.

As much fun as we had, and as much stuff as we did there, I left Dublin without having had an Irish coffee or Irish car bomb, so I guess I can't reallllyyyyy say I conquered Dublin. Guess I'll have to go back someday- you with me Cat and Dan?

Until next time... Slainte! (and for those of you non-Gaelic speakers, Cheers!)


the crew takes Guinness
mmmm

Table for 13= success


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