Dublin

I spent this past weekend (March 11-13) in Dublin, Ireland with Lauren, Megan, Jordan, and Allie!  Lauren and I got a late departure from Cardiff because unfortunately, we have physics lab until 5 pm every Friday.  So we left Cardiff at 5:15, got to Bristol, England at 6:30, and made it to the Bristol airport with some time to spare before our flight left at 8:30.  After a long evening of buses, planes, and walking, Lauren and I met up with Megan, Jordan, and Allie in our hostel by 11:30. 

Welcome to Dublin!

We dropped our bags off and decided to head out to get a late night snack--ice cream, of course.  At midnight we celebrated Megan's 21st birthday!!!

12:00, officially March 12, Megan's birthday! Jumping with some new friends

Unfortunately, the low of the trip came next.  When Lauren, Allie, and I were walking back to the hostel, a man came up behind us and ripped Allie's purse off of her and sprinted away.  Poor Allie lost her camera, phone, credit cards, IDs, etc :( This was quite a scary experience.

Saturday morning, got an early start to our day.  After breakfast at the hostel, we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, a very historic illuminated manuscript of the Gospels (of course, this is the first thing Megan, the English major, wanted to do on her birthday).

Trinity College

We then wandered through Dublin, making stops at St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch Cathedral, both of which were beautiful (although we didn't go inside either because of the fee).  We were very lucky with our weather--weather.com predicted cloudy with a 70% chance of rain but it was all blue skies!

Lauren and I outside St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Next stop was the Guinness factory--definitely one of the highlights of the trip!  The exhibit was HUGE and included 7 floors that chronicled the process of beermaking and the history of Guinness.  It was really well done and included a pint on the top floor in a 360° all-glass room that overlooked Dublin.

The 5 of us with samples in the tasting room.

We were so hungry at this point and found a pub for an Irish feast.  We ate far more fish and chips, bread, soup, and potatoes than 5 girls ever should but we were ravenous.  Stuffed and tired, we went back to the hostel to crash for a few hours and get ready for our night.  That night we signed up for a "The Official Backpacker's Pub Crawl".  It started at 8 and we, along with 20 other kids our age, were led to 5 pubs and a club.  It was really fun and a great way to celebrate Megan's birthday!

Crawling in the pubs.

Megan, Allie, and Jordan left pretty early Sunday morning to continue on their travels (it is their spring break) so Lauren and I had all day to explore Dublin more before our flight home that night.  We had beautiful weather yet again and packed a lot into our remaining time: lots of souvenir shopping, Dublin Castle, the Chester Beatty Library (where they have the earliest copies of St. Paul's letters and Revelation!), a great cafe lunch, the Dublin National Archaeological Museum, and a delicious coffee/dessert cafe break.

Dublin Castle with the blue skies

Dublin Castle courtyard area.

Our flight left Dublin at 8 so after another long series of buses, planes, and trains, we made it back to Cardiff by 1.  First weekend overseas trip=success.