New Favorite European City: Dublin

If you are traveling from Cannes to Nice airport let me give you some advice: ALWAYS take the direct 15€ bus. Always. I'm not going to go into detail of what happened when we didn't: but just believe me.

Now: onto Ireland.

When I finally arrived in Dublin Friday afternoon I gathered my luggage, hopped in a cab and headed to the hotel to meet my parents. We stayed at the Raddison Blu Royal in downtown Dublin, quite a step up from the hostels I've been staying in recently. However, last Friday was Good Friday: want to guess what that means in Ireland? It means there is an alcohol ban all day. The pubs and the liquor stores are closed, alcohol sales are illegal, you aren’t even supposed to drink it. Lucky for us, we found away around it, kind of. If you are staying at a hotel and eat dinner at the hotel, during your meal you are allowed two drinks of wine or beer only. While it wasn't the crazy Irish pub experience we were hoping for on our first night; we were able to drink some Guinness our first day in Ireland, and the food in the hotel restaurant was really good as well: I had the fish and chips.

Saturday morning, after a delicious buffet breakfast at the hotel (best breakfast I've had since I've been in Europe) we decided one of the hop on hop off tour buses would be the best way for us to get around the city. The first time we got on the bus we decided we would ride the whole tour, get a feel for what we wanted to do and see the other sites from the bus. Something I realized very quickly: I'm going to have to make another trip to Dublin so I can see everything I want to. We were only there a day and a half before we headed west and it definitely was not enough time. Some of the places I wanted to see but didn't get the chance: Kilmainham Gaol, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Zoo, Natural History Museum, Phoenix Park and Dublin castle.

Now onto the places we did get to see. First, The National Leprechaun Museum. You don't get to see actual leprechaun's, a little disappointing, but it is still a fun place to stop in if you have the time. The Museum is actually all about Irish folklore, mythology and story telling. It is a guided tour led by one of their "storytellers" and includes running through a rainbow, climbing on oversized furniture and learning the truth about leprechaun's. A little tacky, but still enjoyable.

After a quick stop on the ha’penny bridge, which used to cost half a penny to cross, we headed to Trinity College. Mom and I took the tour of Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Trinity College is a really beautiful old school right in the middle of Dublin. I had actually looked at studying abroad there, but it wouldn't have helped my foreign language skills seeing as they all speak English. Some fun facts we learned:

- If you are a student who graduates you can get married in the chapel on campus absolutely free for up to 5 years after graduation. Many students take advantage of this and I am going to start looking for a recently graduated Trinity man the next time I step foot in Ireland.

- The dean who finally allowed women to be students was very reluctant and said "I sign this with my hand but not with my heart," and he died of a heart attack 1 month later.

- The books in their library are ordered by size, not by title or author. To get a book from there you have to put in a request and it will take the librarian a couple of days and then you are not allowed to take it out of the guarded reading room.

-Queen Victoria signed the Book of Kells when she was there. I guess you can do whatever you want when you are queen.

After our walking tour of Trinity we went into the Book of Kells exhibit. The book of Kells is a beautifully decorated copy of the four gospels, in Latin. It was produced in the early 9th century by the monks of Iona when they lived on the island of Iona off the coast of Scotland; or when they lived at Kells, where they moved after 806 AD. The book ended up at Trinity College in 1661 after it had been in hiding during the Cromwellian period. I was just expecting to see an old book: but the artwork in it is actually very impressive and beautiful. The Book is definitely something any art history major, or anyone studying art at all, should see if they are in Dublin.

Following Trinity College we hopped back on the bus to visit Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral. We didn't go into Christ Church Cathedral, we just walked around the outside, but it was humongous. I mentioned in my post about London that I had recently become obsessed with the show, The Tudors; well, this is where it was all filmed! Even though The Tudors was based in England, the show was filmed on location in Ireland and Christ Church Cathedral had a starring role. After taking some photos we headed down the block to the rival church, St. Patrick's Cathedral. We did actually go into St. Patrick's and read all about the history of the church, which I am not going to go into, and admired the stained glass and other decorations. One fun fact: the donation bin for the organ restoration is an old keg with "donations" written on it. That's Ireland for ya.

After doing our church duty we decided it was time for beer. The Guinness Storehouse was definitely one of my favorite things in Dublin. Some people say not to do it because it is just a bug tourist trap, which it is, but if you are in Dublin you absolutely need to go. It is 7 floors of all things Guinness. You start off learning about the barley, hops, yeast and water that go into making the stout. Throughout the rest of the levels you learn the history of the building and land, Arthur Guinness, the advertising campaigns, the storage of the beer: basically you learn everything you could possibly know about Guinness. There is also a sampling room, many bars throughout the building, pour your own Guinness stations and the Gravity Bar on the top floor over looking all of Dublin. The only bad thing I have to say is: don’t go the day after Good Friday, it was extremely busy and hard to move around in the Gravity Bar.

After dinner at a nice French/Irish restaurant, we headed to The Trinity Bar for a couple of drinks and to hear the live band play. Even though there had been the drinking ban the night before, many of the bartenders were very eager to tell us how hungover they still were…at 11pm.

Overall, Dublin was so so so so amazing and we returned again at the end of our trip, which I will talk about in another post. I absolutely have to go back because there is so much more that I want to do. I think some of the reasons I liked Dublin more than a lot of other European cities was because of the people, the history and the style of the city: the speaking of the English language didn't hurt either. 

Sunday morning we woke up early and picked up our rental car to head to the western side of the country. More posts about Cork, Dingle, Ennis and Connemara will be up in the next couple of days!!!