Dublin, Ireland
We got up at 5:00 am, skipped showers and left the hostel at 5:30 am, caught a bus to the Edinburgh airport and arrived there at 6:00 am. We were glad we made it there fast without any problems! Our flight was not until 8:00 am, so we had lots of time to kill. I spent the time writing in my journal and catching up from the trip.
We arrived in Dublin around 9:00 am. We would spend the day and night in Ireland, and then we would head back to London the next afternoon. It would be a short trip, but we really wanted to see Ireland, and it was cheap to travel from Scotland to Ireland. When we landed, we took a bus to O'Connell St. and walked to our hostel, the Rainbow Hostel.
At the hostel, they didn't have Leigh Ann's name registered for 2 beds, even though she had pre-booked them and paid a deposit! This was the first thing during the whole trip that hadn't gone smoothly. The girl at the desk said it would be O.K. and she would put us in a room for that night. However, it was only 10:00 am at the time and the rooms wouldn't be ready until later, so we stored our things in the luggage room and left to explore Dublin. We had gotten a map from the airport so we could figure out where we were going right away.
The first thing we did was eat lunch at a little cafe. We ordered tortellini and soup and it was delicious! Then we walked to Christ Church Cathedral and explored the inside of it as well.
The side of the church was under construction:
We decided to walk to Dublin Castle next. We got there, but then we couldn't figure out how to get in! A modern building was connected to it, and what looked like the main entrance was locked. We walked around to the side and found an unlocked entrance, although it only led us to a small chapel. We sat down inside and looked around for awhile, then we looked at the gift shop, and lastly we explored the large garden outside. We didn't get to see any more of the inside of the castle, but we were O.K with that since we had limited time and limited money (since there was probably an admission fee). We were happy that we had now seen Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, and Dublin Castle!
Pretty ivy that we saw on our walk to the castle:
An American flag! It felt really weird to see this:
The organ in the chapel:
There were these weird baby heads coming out of the ceiling that we had to take a picture of, haha:
The garden:
Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. When we got there, we saw that there was an Evensong service at 5:30 pm tonight and decided it would be fun to go!
We still had a few hours until the service, so we went to the Old Jameson Distillery and paid €7 for a tour. The tour was really interesting, and it basically explained how their whiskey is made, including a video presentation and demonstrations. There was even a free tasting at the end! In the gift shop, I bought whisky fudge and dark chocolate truffles laced with whisky. :)
After the tour, we had the perfect amount of time to walk back to St. Patrick's Cathedral in time for the Evensong service. We joked about going straight to the church from the whisky distillery :). The service lasted about 45 minutes. There was a boys' choir which was pretty good, and we had to kneel at certain parts which is always different, but we did enjoy the service.
Then it was time for dinner. After checking out several menus of restaurants (they kept being too expensive!), we settled on O'Shea's Merchant. Leigh Ann got a traditional Irish lamb stew, and I got chicken stuffed with salmon and spinach. Both dishes were really good! We each ate half of our food and then switched plates and ate the rest of the other food. Well, the waitress saw this and ended up charging us an extra €2.40 for splitting our meals! This didn't make any sense because we individually ordered complete meals. Oh well, we decided not to fight it. It was 7:30 pm when we got our food, and we wanted to make dinner last until 9:00 pm because live music was supposed to be playing across the street then at The Brazen Head (the oldest pub in Ireland)! We stayed and talked the whole time and made the meal last. We then went across the street expecting live music; however, it was extremely crowded and we didn't hear/see music, so we just walked back to the hostel.
It was pretty scary walking back to our hostel. All of the pubs were overflowing with drunk people and they were stumbling out into the streets. People were everywhere and there was loud music playing from all directions! Our hostel just happened to be right in the middle of all this craziness, in the middle of the city. We pushed through crowds of people, made it inside the Rainbow Hostel, and asked the guy at the front desk about our rooming situation. Well, they had accidentally put our names in a room that was already full, so they had to try to find another place for us! We were so tired and just wanted a place to sleep - the fact that there was no room didn't help us feel any better. The guy at the front desk said he thought he could find us a place to sleep, and he asked us to follow him.
We followed him through several doors and hallways, past all the rooms that looked like bedrooms. Where was he taking us? Finally we came to this small room that was crowded with beds and mattresses. He told us we could sleep in here, so we set down our stuff on 2 vacant beds. We examined the beds and they were disgusting! This had to be a room not really cleaned/prepared for guests - possibly an overflow room, which is what we were at this point. There were stains on the mattresses/blankets/pillows, and there were also hairs clinging to their surfaces. Leigh Ann and I decided to put an old t-shirt over each of our pillows so our faces wouldn't have to touch them! Her sheet also had a gigantic hole in it! I didn't even want to touch the blanket, so I just laid on top of the bed with no blanket, and it was so hard for me to go to sleep.
We were smiling in these pictures because we didn't know what was coming....
In the middle of the night, 3 guys and 1 girl stumbled in the room drunk and looked for empty beds. Since it was dark in the room, they couldn't see which beds were vacant....so they decided to feel around and see if there was a person in each bed!!! I woke up, terrified, to a guy's hands touching me (and I had no blanket)! He quickly realized a person was there, apologized, and moved on. After that, I couldn't go to sleep. The new people kept talking to each other, and after they fell asleep, one of the guys snored extremely loud which woke other people up too (including Leigh Ann). The rest of the night was long and miserable, basically a series of short naps. The morning could not come fast enough.
We arrived in Dublin around 9:00 am. We would spend the day and night in Ireland, and then we would head back to London the next afternoon. It would be a short trip, but we really wanted to see Ireland, and it was cheap to travel from Scotland to Ireland. When we landed, we took a bus to O'Connell St. and walked to our hostel, the Rainbow Hostel.
At the hostel, they didn't have Leigh Ann's name registered for 2 beds, even though she had pre-booked them and paid a deposit! This was the first thing during the whole trip that hadn't gone smoothly. The girl at the desk said it would be O.K. and she would put us in a room for that night. However, it was only 10:00 am at the time and the rooms wouldn't be ready until later, so we stored our things in the luggage room and left to explore Dublin. We had gotten a map from the airport so we could figure out where we were going right away.
The first thing we did was eat lunch at a little cafe. We ordered tortellini and soup and it was delicious! Then we walked to Christ Church Cathedral and explored the inside of it as well.
The side of the church was under construction:
We decided to walk to Dublin Castle next. We got there, but then we couldn't figure out how to get in! A modern building was connected to it, and what looked like the main entrance was locked. We walked around to the side and found an unlocked entrance, although it only led us to a small chapel. We sat down inside and looked around for awhile, then we looked at the gift shop, and lastly we explored the large garden outside. We didn't get to see any more of the inside of the castle, but we were O.K with that since we had limited time and limited money (since there was probably an admission fee). We were happy that we had now seen Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, and Dublin Castle!
Pretty ivy that we saw on our walk to the castle:
An American flag! It felt really weird to see this:
The organ in the chapel:
There were these weird baby heads coming out of the ceiling that we had to take a picture of, haha:
The garden:
Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. When we got there, we saw that there was an Evensong service at 5:30 pm tonight and decided it would be fun to go!
We still had a few hours until the service, so we went to the Old Jameson Distillery and paid €7 for a tour. The tour was really interesting, and it basically explained how their whiskey is made, including a video presentation and demonstrations. There was even a free tasting at the end! In the gift shop, I bought whisky fudge and dark chocolate truffles laced with whisky. :)
After the tour, we had the perfect amount of time to walk back to St. Patrick's Cathedral in time for the Evensong service. We joked about going straight to the church from the whisky distillery :). The service lasted about 45 minutes. There was a boys' choir which was pretty good, and we had to kneel at certain parts which is always different, but we did enjoy the service.
Then it was time for dinner. After checking out several menus of restaurants (they kept being too expensive!), we settled on O'Shea's Merchant. Leigh Ann got a traditional Irish lamb stew, and I got chicken stuffed with salmon and spinach. Both dishes were really good! We each ate half of our food and then switched plates and ate the rest of the other food. Well, the waitress saw this and ended up charging us an extra €2.40 for splitting our meals! This didn't make any sense because we individually ordered complete meals. Oh well, we decided not to fight it. It was 7:30 pm when we got our food, and we wanted to make dinner last until 9:00 pm because live music was supposed to be playing across the street then at The Brazen Head (the oldest pub in Ireland)! We stayed and talked the whole time and made the meal last. We then went across the street expecting live music; however, it was extremely crowded and we didn't hear/see music, so we just walked back to the hostel.
It was pretty scary walking back to our hostel. All of the pubs were overflowing with drunk people and they were stumbling out into the streets. People were everywhere and there was loud music playing from all directions! Our hostel just happened to be right in the middle of all this craziness, in the middle of the city. We pushed through crowds of people, made it inside the Rainbow Hostel, and asked the guy at the front desk about our rooming situation. Well, they had accidentally put our names in a room that was already full, so they had to try to find another place for us! We were so tired and just wanted a place to sleep - the fact that there was no room didn't help us feel any better. The guy at the front desk said he thought he could find us a place to sleep, and he asked us to follow him.
We followed him through several doors and hallways, past all the rooms that looked like bedrooms. Where was he taking us? Finally we came to this small room that was crowded with beds and mattresses. He told us we could sleep in here, so we set down our stuff on 2 vacant beds. We examined the beds and they were disgusting! This had to be a room not really cleaned/prepared for guests - possibly an overflow room, which is what we were at this point. There were stains on the mattresses/blankets/pillows, and there were also hairs clinging to their surfaces. Leigh Ann and I decided to put an old t-shirt over each of our pillows so our faces wouldn't have to touch them! Her sheet also had a gigantic hole in it! I didn't even want to touch the blanket, so I just laid on top of the bed with no blanket, and it was so hard for me to go to sleep.
We were smiling in these pictures because we didn't know what was coming....
In the middle of the night, 3 guys and 1 girl stumbled in the room drunk and looked for empty beds. Since it was dark in the room, they couldn't see which beds were vacant....so they decided to feel around and see if there was a person in each bed!!! I woke up, terrified, to a guy's hands touching me (and I had no blanket)! He quickly realized a person was there, apologized, and moved on. After that, I couldn't go to sleep. The new people kept talking to each other, and after they fell asleep, one of the guys snored extremely loud which woke other people up too (including Leigh Ann). The rest of the night was long and miserable, basically a series of short naps. The morning could not come fast enough.
posted by Lisa @ 11:00 PM
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