The Four Leaf Chronicles: A Day in Dublin

Yesterday, on Saturday the 7th, I traveled to Dublin for the day with a group of my international friends. We planned to visit the Guinness brewery, but only half of us made it there; the rest of us spent the day exploring the city, and I was happy to be in the latter group.

At 7 this morning I rolled out of bed, quickly got ready to leave, and met a group outside Mount Charles who had walked over from Elms. Together we continued on towards the city center, arriving at the bus station at 8:30 or so, buying round trip tickets to Dublin for about fifteen pounds each.

The bus left at 9, and we spent about two and a half hours on the ride to Dublin. I tried to catch up on a little sleep, but didn't manage to snooze for very long. The countryside was scattered with snow, and the sun was bright on the horizon. Someone had scraped off part of an N in the "Emergency Exit" sticker on the bus window,

making it read "Emerge Icy Exit" instead, which made me giggle... At one point everyone's mobile phones rang with the same text message, alerting us to the rates for the area we had just entered. We must have crossed an invisible border into the Republic, which surprised me--I thought surely we would have to flash our passports at some point along the journey, but we never did. I suppose we were all illegal immigrants for a day. :O

After getting off the bus, we gathered around a huge metallic spire, which must be visible from miles around. From there, the 20 or so of us split into a few smaller groups to explore and grab some lunch before meeting back up to go to the Guinness brewery.

I enjoyed some of the interesting buildings, including an old church which had been turned into a tourist center (where we got some maps of the city), and the street musicians such as a man playing an accordion and a woman playing her harp. I ended up eating lunch at a coffee shop near the Temple Bar district, where I met up with five or six others from the original large group.

While we were eating lunch (most of them ate breakfast food actually) the others met back up at the spire and went to the brewery. The rest of us stayed in town and explored the city. We saw some human statues, a few more street musicians, and lots of people wearing either French or Irish colors to support their team in the rugby match tonight.

I shopped around and bought an expensive hat (20 euros!), explored a lovely green park with Arne, and then met back up with the others to watch the rugby match in a pub where I also ate some dinner. The food was restaurant-quality, more than I expected from just a pub--I had penne pasta with roast chicken and bacon in some sort of cheese/alfredo sauce which was AMAZING!

Rugby was interesting. It was like some strange mix of American football and soccer. It didn't take me long to figure out the basic strategies and rules, but overall the game wasn't terribly exciting for me. Arne confessed he likes American football better. (So do I!)

After the game, we walked around for a bit and ended up in another pub where most of us congregated. It was a small basement room which we pretty much took over, chillin' and sipping some Smithwick's.

We left in small groups, depending on how tired we were. I left with a group hoping to catch the 11pm bus, but we missed it and spent an hour in a hostel waiting for the next one. Arne and Adam played chess, and the others read some books from the shelves, but I was happy just sitting on my bum.

The bus ride was long, and we didn't get back home until about 2:30 in the morning... Luckily I didn't have to get up for anything. I slept til noon.

And that, my friends, is my tale of Dublin.

Cheers.