Thursday, October 8, 2009

Ireland, day 1 (Dublin)

Random sculpture on the streetI know I've been back for a while already, but I'd still like to do a few entries covering my trip to Ireland. It's taken me a while to get all of my pictures organized, and to sort through some of the good and bad ones. I still haven't edited the majority of them to the point where I'm completely satisfied, but they're perfectly good to put on here.

I'm not sure how I'm going to do this - I might do one blog entry for each day that I was in Ireland, since we went to a few places every day and of course I have a lot of pictures of each. That way I can include everything and still hopefully keep the posts to a reasonable length. And it won't take me as long to write in smaller chunks, so I'll finally be able to get these published instead of taking forever trying to write about an entire week's trip at once. So here goes...

The night before I left I got some sleep, but not much between being excited, and being paranoid that I would sleep in and forget something in the morning. I went to work for three hours, which surprisingly flew by as I tried to frantically clear everything out before I left. Then my mom picked me up and drove me to the airport. My flight to Boston was uneventful, though I had to rush to figure out where I was going and get through security and everything again. But I made it without too many problems. I wanted to sleep on the flight to Dublin, but I was way too excited, and there was someone two rows in front of me who was snoring - at least I think that's what it was, as it kind of sounded like a dying duck.

We came into Dublin just at sunrise - I would have killed for my camera at that
point, it was spectacular. Stupid rules about not having electronics turned on while landing a plane! Customs were so easy it was a joke that I'd been worried about getting through. Then I had to wait forever for my suitcase. I think I was one of the last three people to get my bag; was definitely starting to worry that it hadn't made the switch in Boston! Finally it got there though, and I went to meet Jade (who also probably wondered wtf I was doing in baggage claim for an hour, lol). I changed into fresh clothes, we dragged my stuff out to her car, and then caught a bus into downtown Dublin.

We got into the city early, probably around 7:30am. We wandered around the city all day, seeing as much as possible. I was jet lagged and probably half delirious (with multiple videos to prove it!) but still had a blast, and we still got to see a lot of things. We went to breakfast and then over to Saint Stephen's Green. Aft
er some adventures in trying to change my money to Euros, we went to Trinity College, and saw the Book of Kells. Sadly the staff were quite strict on their no photos or videos policy, so while it was amazing, I couldn't actually get any pictures inside.

We wandered around a bit after that. We did some shopping, hit Forbidden Planet (a comic type store) and some bookstores, though I didn't buy anything. Books are a lot more expensive over there! Then we also took a bus tour, where you paid one price and got to ride the buses all day, and they went around to about 25 different city landmarks. We went to (in no particular order): Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the Molly Malone statue (which Jade groped...apparently this brings you good luck?), and probably others that I'm just not thinking of right now.

We also went through the Guinness storehouse, and did the full tour. It was really cool - they had some of the history of the company and described the process they use to make the beer. They also have a waterfall inside the storehouse, and a bar on the top floor (the Gravity Bar) which has all glass walls so you're able to see spectacular views of the entire city. And of course we got our free beers at the end, which may not have been the best idea after work, 12 hours of traveling, jumping 5 time zones, and then running around Dublin all day. I very nearly fell asleep on the bus back into the town for a late lunch. Actually I'm pretty sure I did doze a few times!

We met up with Jade's friend Galen (who was awesome) at Captain America's to eat. At that point I was completely
wrecked, though it was probably only 4pm. And my feet were KILLING me. So we headed back to the airport to get Jade's car and drive back to her house. I probably fell asleep four or five times while talking, but woke up more once we got to the house (and I downed some Red Bull). Met Jade's parents and younger brother Sean, and just took it easy the rest of the evening. Went to bed fairly early to try and get over the jet lag, and so we could get an early start the next day.

That's about it for my first day. It was a fantastic start to the trip -
of course, Ireland welcomed me with cold, windy, rainy, miserable weather, but it was still a great day. I got to see so many amazing things even though we were only there for the better part of one day.

Wow, and I wanted to do one entry per day in an attempt to keep the posts small? Looks like I'm going to have trouble with that one! I'll stick with it for now - I'll post the second day soon. The last couple days of the trip may need a couple of entries, just because of the number of gorgeous pictures I took, but we'll see when I get there!

Also, for the life of me I can't figure out how to caption photos using Blogger. So for now I'm just going to list what they all are at the end of every entry. If I ever figure it out I'll come back and edit captions in later, but for now at least you will all know what the pictures are actually of.

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1. Random sculpture on a corner in Dublin
2. Trinity College
3. Saint Patrick's Cathedral
4. Jade groping Molly Malone
5. Me, drinking my free Guinness in the Gravity Bar - Dublin behind me
6. Waterfall in the Guinness Storehouse

6 comments:

Christian said...

God that's so cool! Sounds like you had an awesome first day! Only Jade would grope a statue XD. Free beer just for walking? Jealous...

They NEED to create a beer waterfall NOW. Kthxbai

<333

Anonymous said...

Had to talk about the groping...
It was the worst Grope EVER. Her boobs were hard and she was unresponsive... ¬_¬

Denise said...

Chris, we should make the waterfall at your house run with beer! :D

Jade, maybe you were doing it wrong. >_>

<3

Niall said...

Awesome detailed blog entry :) By the sound of things, you did more in your first day than a lot of people do in a whole week of a holiday XD

The pictures are awesome! And I like that one of you with the beer. I told you that you were a drunkard :D

<3

Denise said...

Just because I was drinking at 2pm after no sleep for nearly 2 days and 12+ hours of traveling that does not make me a drunkard. >_>

Niall said...

Sure it does :D

x