Alright, I know I keep changing what my favorite city was, but after this weekend...Dublin actually is my favorite city and I don't think any other will even remotely be able to top it (even Rome this coming weekend!).
(All photo credit in this post is to Kendra, by the way. Thank God she had her camera since...I am still cameraless.)
Kendra and I went to Dublin on our own. Our flight left at about 6:50am on Friday morning, which meant that we had to be up at about 4:30 to get to the airport on time (it's convenient having an airport 20 minutes away). We got there and onto the plane with no issue, so all was well. Because any flight to Dublin directly from the airport closest (called Weeze, by the way, it's in Germany) was at a horrible time or cost entiiiiiiirely too much money, we had to take a plane from there to London and from London to Dublin. We touched down in London about 20 minutes early, but there was some other plane having some sort of equipment problem on the runway so we were stuck there for about another 10 minutes, and after unloading everything and finally getting off, we only ended up getting there about 5 minutes early. We got into the airport and to passport control (since we were technically going into the UK we had to go through security again and show our passports and all that). However, the guy at the passport gate thing was apparently having a shitty morning, because he gave us a hard time about getting into the country. He didn't believe that we were students when we couldn't produce a Netherlands ID card, even though we showed him our Boston IDs and our International Student ID cards. It wasn't fun. We had to show him all our other plane tickets and he looked at our passports for another 5 minutes and we were practically DYING because by then we only had another 40 minutes to get to our next flight, but he finally (begrudgingly) let us through. We ran through the airport and to security again and manage to get to the gate on time, and luckily enough our next flight was actually a bit delayed, so it worked out well.
We finally got to the Dublin airport at about 11 and took a 30-minute bus ride into the city, walked the 20 minutes to our hostel (which was literally right on the River Liffey, by the way (pictured above)), dropped all our stuff off, and set out.
The Clarence Hotel was also, awesomely enough, RIGHT down the street from our hostel, like a 5-minute walk away, right on the water just like our hostel was, and right near everything.
The Clarence Hotel is owned by U2.
Anyway, we walked a bit found a small cafe down the street and grabbed some food, which was SO GOOD and pretty cheap too, which was really nice. Then headed to the Guinness Storehouse to take a tour!
The Storehouse was set up really awesomely. It was sort of set up like a museum but wasn't stuffy like a normal museum would be, and it wasn't too crowded or anything at all and it was just really nice to walk around and see how beer is made and taste test some of the day's draught and whatnot. The coolest bit of the whole storehouse is that with your ticket you essentially buy a pint of Guinness, which you can get up on the 7th floor of the Storehouse...
Which overlooks all of Dublin. It was incredible, especially since we'd only been there for a few hours at this point. We sat up there drinking and enjoying the view for a while, mostly to let our feet rest since we'd already done a lot of walking, and also to just enjoy he gorgeous view and the beautiful weather outside.
After that, we headed back towards the hostel (passing this sign on the way), but went up a side street to see if we could find this church we'd heard about. The church supposedly has Bram Stoker's grave in it and also the organ that Handel used to compose Messiah. Alas, we couldn't find it. We did find some other suuuuuuuper pretty churches though, and since our hostel was apparently in the middle of everything (and the best hostel in the city too, supposedly - we had been recommended it by another group of people who went there from the castle a month-or-so ago) they were all right near it. We wandered into a huge cathedral and hung around in there for a bit taking pictures and enjoy it, and then headed back to the hostel to nap a bit before dinner since we'd been up for 12 hours already and it was only the late afternoon.
That night we went to Grafton Street to get dinner. Grafton Street is one of the most famous streets in Dublin, with a lot of shopping and restaurants and people and just things to do. They had all the Christmas decorations there too, which was beautiful, and we had been recommended to go check it out by Kim, a girl who Kendra met at our hostel in Brussels who she's kept in contact with and who lives in Dublin. We got some dinner and then just wandered around a bit more, enjoying the weather and the people and the energy of Dublin. We even saw a street band playing Irish music with a guitarist, bassist, drummer basically using a wooden box as his drums, and a flautist.
We passed this while walking and thought it was funny. We wandered a bit more after that, went into the Temple Bar area, went to the Temple Bar Pub, didn't buy anything since things were SO expensive, and just sat for a while and enjoyed the live music (two Irish guys playing a long acoustic set mix between 90s pop-rock and traditional Irish folk songs), checked out a bar recommended by Kim, and called it a night at a decent hour.
The next day we decided to take a tour of the countryside. The tour was about 25 euro each but it was literally 8 hours long, only consisted of 8 other people besides ourselves, and went up into the mountains that you'd otherwise need a car to get to (ie. no huge-ass bus tours were up there with us). So it was worth it.
On the way up into the mountains we drove along the coast, which was so beautiful. We passed Van Morisson, Bono, and Enyas houses too, which was really interesting (Enya lives in a freaking castle, it's huge, I swear).
Our first stop was on this cliff overlooking ...something. We weren't sure what, since the weather was terrible for the first half of the day and being so high up, we were basically in a cloud. We were outside for only about 5/10 minutes and by the time we got back to the van we were DRENCHED. Two girls on the tour actually fell over too, which kind of sucked, and when we did finally make it back Ed (our adorable 65-year-old tour guide/driver/awesome dude who treated us all like his granddaughters by the end of the day since it ended up being an all-girls tour (when he first realized this in the morning his reaction was basically "It's my lucky day!" which was hilarious coming from his white-haired self)) had tea, coffee, and cookies waiting for us.
It rained the entire morning we were in the mountains, but honestly, I wouldn't have had it any other way. The world is so beautiful when it rains and the Irish countryside is no different. We saw so many waterfalls and flowing rivers and streams because of it and it was just...too beautiful for words. Ed stopped whenever we asked him to or didn't when we didn't want him to and basically it was like having our grandpa or crazy uncle drive us around all day. Since the 10 of us were also stuck in the back of the van together all day also we all ended up sort of becoming friends, and I've added a few of them on facebook now. They were all SO nice. The four who I mostly talked to were Missy from California who's studying in London this semester, Annie from West Virginia who's studying in Barcelona this semester, and Maria & Jordan from Copenhagen who didn't speak English fluently but did pretty well for themselves and were continually referred to as the vikings by Ed (and later by me and the other girls on the tour). There were three girls from New York too (two from upstate and one from Babylon, of all places), and another Aussie working in Scotland for the year or something like that.
HOW COOL IS THAT. That valley was so huge, I don't think the picture really does it justice.
For lunch Ed drove us to this adorable tiny-ass town in the mountains called Wicklow, which literally had like...a few restaurants, a hotel, two gift shops, and that was it. Kendra, Missy, Annie and I all got lunch in a little cafe (which consisted of an incredibly tasty sandwich) and spent some time wandering into the shops. I asked the guy behind the counter at one point if he had any disposable cameras since the one I had with me was near done. He said he had some that had expired a little under two years ago and that I could chance using them if I'd like. I said sure, so he gave me two of them for free! I don't know if they'll actually develop properly, but I did take a ton of pictures on them so I sure hope they do!
After Wicklow, Ed drove us to Glendalough, which is Irish for the glen of two lakes (glen da lough, get it?), and used to be this amazing monastery that was attacked by vikings hundreds of years ago (this got many jokes thrown at the two Danish girls). It still has a lot of the old gravestones there and a lot of the old buildings and just was...so beautiful. Ed apparently had at one point in his life (after leaving the navy) studied to join the church, but eventually had abandoned that prospect, so the place seemed to mean a lot to him. He knew tons about its history and about the different kinds of gravestones there from the different time periods in Irish history and it was so cool to hear him talk about it all. We spent some time wandering around and even took a little 20-minute hike through the woods along the two lakes and had Ed meet us at the other side. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life, if not THE most beautiful place. I just could not believe that I was actually seeing this place. I could not believe that it existed. I could not believe that I was there experiencing it. I just couldn't fathom it.
After that, we drove back into Dublin. We stopped a few more times along the way but I don't want to overwhelm you with pictures and a lot of the other pictures I could post are just green fields and mountains and stuff (we saw a valley where parts of Braveheart were shot!). We got back to our hostel at around 6 and after resting for a bit went out to grab some dinner and went back into the Temple Bar/Grafton Street area to do a bit of last-minute souvenir shopping. We called it a night pretty early since we had to be up at 4 again to make our 7am flight, got to the airport with no issue, and got onto our flight with no problem at all. We flew AerLingus back since it was cheaper than flying RyanAir like we normally do and the flight was not even remotely completely booked, so neither Kendra nor I sat next to anyone and we got into the Dusseldorf Airport about 30 minutes early and the ride was so much smoother than the crappy scary RyanAir flights and...it was so nice. We both slept most of the way. We got to Dusseldorf at around 10am and from the Airport managed to take three trains to get back to Venlo in The Netherlands, took a bus back to the castle, and were back in our room (and napping, might I add) by 2pm.
All in all, this weekend was absolutely incredible. Ireland is easily the most perfect place I've ever been to and I can even imagine myself living there someday. I did not meet a single unpleasant person the whole trip. From our flight attendants to the people working in the hostel to just random people we met on the street who started conversations to people in bars to people in random shops we went into! Every single Irish person we met was just so...happy. And friendly. And nice. I've never met a collectively nicer group of people in my life. If I could be Irish, I would be. I am going back to Ireland someday. I have to.
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