Dublin

Since April started I haven’t really had a chance to catch my breath, I’ve been so busy. The first weekend of April took me to Dublin, Ireland with three Catalans, a Spaniard and an American. We’d done some trip planning thanks to a very detailed and humourous powerpoint presentation from Alfonso the day before, and we had a great weekend ahead of us.

We arrived that late on the first night and arrived at our hostel by taxi easily enough. We were tired and ready to head to bed. Unfortunately it would be a while before that would happen: Upon our arrival we were told that there were two hostels on the same street with the same owner, and we were booked to stay in the other one. So we walked down the street a block or two to check in to the other hostel. At the other hostel, there had been a mix-up with the booking that meant we would have to switch rooms after the first night. Then, when we tried to pay for our rooms, it turned out the machine would not accept any of our cards except for Jeff’s. So we had to walk back to the first hostel to try their machines. They didn’t work either. The six of us did some calculations and managed to work it out with a bit of cash. By this point we were tired and frustrated. We expressed this to the man at the first hostel, who told us the man at the second hostel would give us free breakfast. But when we asked the man at the second hostel about the free breakfast, he got angry. No free breakfast for us. After all that, we finally checked into our room, which wasn't really the nicest we'd seen. Nevertheless, we just wanted to rest up and get ready for the next day.

The first day didn’t start out very promising either. We woke up, got ready, and stepped out of the hostel, ready to start the day. The second I stepped out the door, something wet landed on the back of my head. A pigeon decided to welcome me to Dublin with a little present. I was disgusted to say the least. Luckily, Alfonso came to my rescue and got as much of it out as he could. Nevertheless, I spent the entire day with bird poop in my hair which wasn’t the greatest. Luckily, the day got much better from there.

We spent the day on a bus tour of the stunning Wicklow Mountains. We started off with a quick tour around some important spots in Dublin, including a bay which probably has a name, and if it does, I don’t know what it is. But it was pretty anyway.

That bay with a name

We saw many other beautiful sights, including Lough Tay (Tea Lake) and the Guinness Estate, as well as some pretty waterfalls.

Lough Tay

Then we made it into the valley, where we saw the remains of a medieval monastic settlement and then took a walk through the woods to yet another beautiful lake (Ireland seems to be full of those).

The next day, we did a free walking tour of the city. 

Trinity College

We spent a lot of time outside that day, visiting the park at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the outside of Dublin Castle and another park whose name I do not know.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We also stopped by Trinity Library to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room, which is full of old books.

That night we moved to a different room in the hostel, which was even sketchier than the first. I’d rather not go into detail about the showers, but let’s just say I might have been better off just not showering. But it was worth it, because we made a new friend there: Juanjo, who, like Blanca and Aida, is from Barcelona, and therefore speaks Catalan as well (and Júlia does too of course). He joined us for dinner as well as a night out to Temple Bar, an area of Dublin full of pubs, cobbled streets and live music.

The next morning, the six of us and our new friend returned to St Patrick’s Cathedral for late morning mass. That way we could get in and have a look around for free. They also served refreshments afterwards, and since we were kind of on a budget, I took advantage of the opportunity by helping myself to four cookies and a juice box. Hopefully no one noticed.

St Patrick's

Next we headed to the Guinness Storehouse, where we learned how Guinness is made (I only remember three out of the four key ingredients), got free samples, and saw Dublin from the top floor.

We walked around the city a bit more and then headed to the airport. Everything was fine with our flight until after we had landed. We had booked the flight knowing we would have lots of time to catch the last train to Preston. But the plane sat there waiting for about a half an hour before letting us off. By the time we disembarked, we only had ten minutes to catch the last train. So we all ran for it. I was the first off and so I ran ahead of the rest, but anyone who knows me and who knows how convoluted Manchester Airport is can guess how long that lasted. One by one, we reached the train station all out of breath, only to find that trains weren’t even running. Then we found out we would have to take a bus to Manchester Piccadilly and catch a train from there. So we ran to the bus. Then when we got to Manchester Piccadilly, we ran to the train, only to find that we had plenty of time before our train left. Needless to say, I fulfilled that week’s exercise quota in one night. Although the trip began and ended with a bit of stress, it turned out to be a fantastic weekend consisting of the girls giving poor Jeffie a rough time, Alfonso getting lost, and lots of sandwiches. A weekend that wonderful just makes me want to go back. And one day I will.