Weekend in Dublin: I'm on a Boat Take 2

To start out, the most random fact I learned this week:

Because every swan in England is property of the queen, killing a swan can (in some cases) get you more prison time in the UK than killing another person.

Weird, huh?

ANYWAY, this past weekend a big group of nine of us went to Dublin. It was SO MUCH FUN, and arguably the best trip we've done thus far.

We left Oxford at 6:30 PM on Thursday, after which we took four different trains, waited for two hours in Holyhead (the far tip of Wales) in the middle of the night, then took a ferry (which turned out to be a cruise ship) to Dublin and arrived just before 6 AM. It was tiring to say the least, but we had a lot of fun together and it was great to have two and a half full days in Ireland. What we didn't know when we made our reservations was that this was the weekend U2 was playing in Dublin, which means that the city was CRAZY with tourists and natives alike. It was great.

First we went to Trinity College, the university at the center of the city, and a few of us paid to see the Book of Kells. Although mighty expensive, it was definitely worth it! The Book was absolutely beautiful, and we also got to see one of the reading rooms of the College, which was very the-library-in-Beauty-and-the-Beast-esque. After Trinity we still had some time to kill, so we went to the National Museum, where we saw some really interesting stuff. They had some incredible examples of Celtic metalwork, but they also had objects recovered off of the "bog bodies" (cool but gross) and Celtic cursing stones, which were apparently used all the way up to World War II when the Irish were attempting to curse Adolf Hitler.

Everyone who we asked about Dublin recommended that we leave the city to see the countryside for at least one day, and we chose Friday so we could sleep on the bus to and from our destination. We ended up choosing Glendalough (pronounced glen-dah-lock) on a recommendation from Kathryn's dad. It's a beautiful little national park situated between two lakes and a bunch of cliffs, and at the bottom of the valley there are ruins from the monastery which was once located there. We spent the whole day wandering around, and we saw all the waterfalls and lakes and mountains and ruins. After a quick lunch in the park, we got on the bus back to Dublin, passed out asleep again, and got back in time to check into our hostel and head to a pub for dinner. We were all so tired by the time we finished dinner that we just headed back to our room after that and passed out asleep.

Saturday morning we got up (rather more refreshed than when we went to sleep) and went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was the most eclectic cathedral I've been to yet--it had a lot of historical artifacts on display throughout the building, and the walls were just covered in random and slightly mismatched memorials to famous figures of Irish history. The funniest part was that they had a gift shop RIGHT IN THE NAVE OF THE CATHEDRAL, where I actually bought a shot glass. In a church. It was just too good a comedic opportunity to pass up.

After St. Patrick's we did another one of the Sandeman's free tours, which was even better than the one we did in Amsterdam. Our tour guide was much more dynamic and engaging, and it was just a great time. He opened the tour by covering 11,000 years of history in ten minutes, which was impressive. Apparently only 5% of the population of Ireland are redheads... who knew?

After the tour ended we grabbed a quick pub lunch then walked to the Guinness Storehouse, Ireland's largest visitor attraction (over 1 million visitors per year). It was a very strange experience--think Disney does beer. It was definitely a major tourist attraction, but it was fun anyway. I now understand how Guinness is made, learned that the Guinness Book of Records was originally created to solve disputes in pubs in Ireland and England, and got a free pint in the "Gravity Bar" at the top of the building which has 360-degree views of the entire city of Dublin.

After meeting up with Dustin and Andrea at the hostel (they decided to take a day trip to the cliffs on the western side of the country), we had a great Italian dinner in Temple Bar, the area of Dublin known for its clubs and pubs (ironically not named after temples or bars). Everyone else went to bed right after that, but I wasn't sleepy yet so I stayed up with a few guys staying at our hostel in the pub behind the building. I met people from the US, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Finland, and Tunisia (he was really impressed that I knew where Tunisia was--thank you Sporcle map quiz), and we just had a really great time talking and getting to know each other. One of the guys from California had been traveling for approximately the last DECADE and had been to 62 countries! They all made me feel really boring :-)

It turns out that nothing is really open in Dublin on Sunday mornings, so we basically just did some touristy shopping and then got on the metro to go to Dun Laoire to catch our boat. On the way back we took a high speed catamaran ( you have no idea how many times I've heard "high speed catamaran" in the last three days), which was sweet! It only took 2 hours to cross the Irish Sea, and the boat had a food court and a bar and a coffee shop and a store and even a play area for kids! Admittedly, I was asleep for much of the journey, but it was fun nevertheless. Four trains later, we got back to Oxford, grabbed a quick bite, and went to bed.

Time is totally flying right now... I'm heading home in less than two weeks! As happy as I'll be see my family and to go back to school, this summer really has been completely amazing and I'll definitely be sad to leave Europe.

Anyway, enough of that... here are pictures of Ireland for those who are interested: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017718&id=1326450024&l=49b9bf8e1c

Dara