Finally a Dublin Update

I keep putting off writing about Dublin because I know it's going to be a long one. Here goes:

I'll start with Ryanair, a budget European airline. Our flight out was supposed to be at 8pm or so, but we eventually got delayed to about 9pm. Once they called our gate (about 20 minutes before boarding, thanks Gatwick Airport), we hustled over there with everyone else, and found that they appeared to have no boarding procedure whatsoever. Honestly: we went down a long hallway, into a tiny room, and back in the same hallway in a huge clump. There were no lines, no announcements. Once we got past that, we got on the little shuttle and drove out to our plane. I am not kidding when I say we could have just run out on the tarmac to play chicken with the airplanes.

One on board, we realized that the plane itself was hilariously low-budget. The overhead compartments all had advertisements, they played radio ads over the PA system, and our seats were squished so close together there wasn't even any room for those little net pockets they keep the emergency info and a barf bag in on normal airlines, let alone reclining. In short, this was the airline equivalent of a city bus, except more crowded. We drove around the runway for about 30 minutes before we took off. The flight was short, and the landing was bumpy, but eventually we made it to Dublin and got a taxi back to our hostel.

We stayed at the Dublin International Youth Hostel, which was pretty clean, and safe. It was sort of old and creaky, but it was good enough for us to sleep in. The whole time we were there the three of us (Dorothy, BethAnn and I), had the whole room of ten beds to ourselves, which was lucky. The showers were a little dodgy--they had the kind of facets that automatically turn off, so you had to push down on it and stand in the freezing water for a while before it heated up. Breakfast was served in a converted chapel with the international hostel symbol on the stained glass window and confessionals for telephone booths. Overall, I was pretty happy with the place--it'll be interesting to be at a hostel for four nights in Copenhagen next week, so we might have a chance to meet some other travelers and make some new friends.

We did a lot of sightseeing on our first day. Dublin isn't very large, so two days there was about perfect. It definitely has a different feel from London--it's charming, but far less urban and sophisticated. We saw Dublin Castle, which had a really cool exhibit of ancient manuscripts from all the major religions of the world (we saw fragments of the gospel that were written in about 400AD). We took a quick walk though Trinity College, and then saw St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral, both of which gave me a chance to see some of the Gothic style that Norm's been lecturing us about.

One of the highlights of Dublin was the Guinness Storehouse. They had a fantastic facility set up with about seven different floors covering all the aspects of making beer (including, rather lamely, a socially-responsible "choice" floor. We skipped that). I never knew much about the process of making beer, and I thought it was all pretty interesting. The inside of the building has a huge atrium shaped like a giant pint glass, and when you get to the top you get a free (or rather, included) pint of Guinness in the Gravity Bar, which has windows all around and a 360° view of Dublin. I don't usually like dark, heavy beers, but I enjoyed my Guinness and ALMOST drank the whole thing.

Odd sidenote: when we were getting on the plane in London, I thought I recognized a guy who goes to USC. I wasn't sure, so I didn't say anything, but strangely enough he was at the Guinness Storehouse the same time we were and got in the elevator with us. I had to ask, and yes, he does to to USC. He didn't seem to remember me, and I only remembered him because he is COVERED in freckles. Weird.

Anyways, we went back to the hostel after that, and geared up to go out with the others girls from our program, who were also in Dublin. We were ready long before them, so we went out in search of a bar in the area around the Dublin Spire (which is pretty cool, btw). We finally got tired to walking around and settled on the next one we saw, called Madigan's. There were some very casually dressed people smoking outside, but when we tried to go in, the crotchety old guy at the door wouldn't have it. He decided none of us were old enough to be in a bar, even though BethAnn showed him her id, and that since Dorothy and I were wearing sneakers (which he called runners, and which everyone else outside was wearing) we couldn't come in. So we left and had a pint somewhere else. After that, we found the girls in the Temple Bar area, but decided to call it a night.

The next day, we kept it pretty low key: we went to the Street Artists Championship in St. Marion's Park and saw some absolutely incredible acrobatics--two guys who called themselves the English Gents did very proper things like reading the paper and drinking tea while standing directly on each other's heads and balancing one handed on top of one another. Of course, midway through the show they stripped down to union-jack shorts and socks with garters. Fantastic.

We also went to the National Gallery of Ireland, where I learned that I don't particularly care about Irish art. But it was a way to kill time, which we were in need of at this point, because we hadn't booked a hostel for that night. We were planning on staying out until we needed to go to the airport at 6ish in the morning. In case you were wondering how stupid that idea was, the answer is : Vastly. The problem wasn't so much staying up all night--it was finding something to do in the afternoon when we'd run out of ideas and wanted to go rest. We tried sitting in St. Stephen's Green and reading magazines, but it was too cold. We tried sitting in a bookstore, but it was too boring. Eventually we headed over the other girl's hostel and grabbed dinner at about 8pm, but it was a very long afternoon.

After dinner, we met up with about 13 or 14 Scottish guys our age who'd come to Dublin to celebrate a couple birthdays. They were all traditionally dressed in kilts, and made sure we all knew just how traditional--there was no end to the flashing that night.

So we all headed out to the Temple Bar area, and had a couple pints at a really noisy, crowded bar. The rest of the girls went home, and we followed the Scottish guys to a club up the street, which was quieter and a little less crowded. After a while though, I noticed that it was filled with much older men trying to hit on much younger women, and that the Scottish guys were more than a little obnoxious. We sat tired and blank-eyed upstairs for awhile before deciding to duck out, grab some food and our bags, and head for the airport. And darn, we couldn't find those boys on the way out. Gee.

Getting to the airport was pretty uneventful, although we were harassed a couple times by airport police for sleeping stretched out a bunch of chairs--at this point, it was about 4am Sunday and we'd all been up since 9am Saturday morning. BethAnn and I lost it--all we could do was laugh and read magazines...sleep was not coming. Eventually we got checked in a headed to our flight, and I started counting the steps until I could get to my bed in London. Take flight, get off plane, get on train back to central London, take tube, change lines twice, walk back to apartment, climb 3 flights of stairs, get in bed. Ugh.

Eventually we made it back, and I spent the rest of Sunday being utterly useless. But I got rested up, and the weekend was a huge success. I'm really glad I got a chance to go, and I'd do it again in a second--but from now on, I'm booking a bed for every night I go somewhere, no matter how early our flight is.