Dublin

A lot has happened since my last blog post, so let me start with a little bit about my trip to the fantastic city of Dublin, Ireland.

There are 3 girls from Beloit studying in my program: me, Jenn and Lori. None of us knew each other before we came on this trip which is kind of hard to believe because our school only has 1300 kids. It's been really great studying with them here, they are both wonderful girls and we will have lots of stories to relive together when we get back to Beloit in the fall.

Anyway, Lori and I found super cheap flights to Dublin a few weeks ago and booked this trip on a whim. We left early Friday morning to fly to Alicante, Spain for an 8 hour layover, and then continue on to Dublin. It was just going to be the 2 of us, but when we arrived at the Sevilla airport we met up with a kid from our program named Nick who happened to be on all of the same flights. Nick goes to Madison and is from Richfield, MN. We all sat together on the plane to Alicante and decided to make the most of our 8 hours there. We took the city bus from the airport to the beach, bringing all of our backpacks, coats, and scarves with. Alicante is a beautiful city on the coast with clear, bright blue Mediterranean water and lovely sand beaches. We spent the day lying in the sun on top of our winter coats which we certaintly didn't need until we reached Ireland, we discovered a plaza where a radio station was giving away free fruit and horchata (delish), explored an old church which is Nick's favorite thing in the entire world, poked around the government building for a while, toured the marina and ate delicious ice cream. We returned to the airport via the same bus, grabbed a bite to eat, had an in-depth discussion of Disney movies and boarded the plane for Dublin. All in all, one of the best layovers I've ever had. While we were boarding the plane we noticed some poor guy dressed up like a stewardess with an eyemask on and an ipod in his ears being led onto the plane by his friends. We're guessing a surprise bachelor, or stag, party? Either way he must have an incredible amount of trust in his friends to get on a plane with no idea where he was going.

Nick was flying to Dublin to spend the weekend with his cousin Chris who lives in Aylesbury, England just outside of London which was where Nick was born. We met up with Chris in the baggage claim at the Dublin airport and took a bus into the city center to find our respective hostels. Our room was really nice, we met some kids studying in London and then headed back out to meet up with Nick and Chris to explore the Temple Bar area of Dublin. The drinks were ridiculously expensive but there was live Irish music everywhere we went, and the streets were full of people having a good time. Everyone I met in Dublin was so nice, and I loved hearing Irish accents everywhere we went. Sometimes the accents were so thick I felt like they were speaking an entirely different language, both the Irish accents and Chris' British accent, but we all got fairly good at translating for each other over the weekend. I had my first (and only) Guinness which I very much enjoyed.

On our first day in Dublin we took a 3 hour walking tour of the city, which was great because we got to cover all of the big tourist attractions and decide which ones we wanted to go back to later. After the tour we took the Dart (Dublin's above ground metro) out to Howth, a small fishing village on the coast. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Howth is incredibly quaint and just quintessentially Irish. We saw a bunch of seals in the harbor begging for fish, climbed to the top of the nearest hill for a spectacular view of the city and found the ruins of an old church and cemetary to explore. I loved the cemetary, though it sounds a bit morbid, but it was so peaceful, ancient and beautiful in the setting sunlight. I wanted to spread my arms out and hold onto the moment forever, soak it up and bring it home with me. We ate dinner at a restaurant called the Bloody Stream (I know, how pleasant) which was named for a nearby stream that literally ran red with blood during one of the many battles for independence that Ireland fought. I had my very first plate of fish and chips, and it was superb. We returned to Dublin and found many more adventures to be had in the Irish pubs before we went to bed.

On Sunday we all signed up for an 8-hour van tour of the Irish countryside. Looking back, this was a great idea (planned by Lori, she should probably just be a professional travel agent at this point) because we got to see a different side of Ireland: green rolling hills, grazing sheep and beautiful mountain scenery. The tour took us to the place where PS I Love You was filmed. For those of you who have seen it, we saw the spot where Hillary Swank and Gerard Butler meet for the very first time in Wicklow Ntl Park next to the bridge. We stopped at a lot of places along the tour, including another old cemetary/church where we took a long hike through the woods to a series of lakes. Ireland is a beautiful country, everywhere I looked could have been a postcard picture. It felt so good to take a hike through the woods and actually experience nature which is something that Sevilla, being a big city, lacks. We returned to Dublin in time to eat dinner at The Celt which was a pub that came highly recommended to us from a variety of sources. We all ended up ordering the same traditional Irish stew and brown bread, very tastey.

The boys left for England on Monday morning so Lori and I had the whole day to ourselves. The weather had been perfect thus far, mild weather and sunshine every day. Monday was the first day of rain, but I suppose it wouldn't really be a trip to Ireland without it. We walked around the city some more, explored St. Patrick's Cathedral, found a bagel shop (very exciting, bagels don't exist in Sevilla) and then took the Dart in the other direction to another coastal town called Bray. Here we took the oceanside/cliff walk and walked up a bit of the mountain for a beautiful and foggy view of the coastline. We came back to Dublin for dinner and one more night on the town before leaving (in the middle of a snow flurry) the next morning.

We flew Ryanair for this trip, which is a bit of a blessing and a curse all rolled into one. The rates are ridiculously cheap, but the planes aren't the highest quality and their luggage restrictions are absolute. Lori and I entertained ourselves in the airport by watching people who clearly had not read the luggage requirements (one carry on, no personal items, all cameras, shopping bags, etc must fit into the carry on and the carry on has to fit into the little sizing bin) try to argue with the people at the gate or frantically try to rearrange enormous suitcases to fit. We arrived back in Sevilla Tuesday afternoon, on day 3 of Semana Santa. The city was absolutely transformed and the celebrations were in full swing. More about that in the next post.

In summary, I absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with Dublin, with Ireland. I would recommend this trip to anyone and everyone. I for one, will definitely going back. I've been so lucky, I've absolutely loved both places I've traveled outside of Spain: Lisbon and Dublin. Maybe I just love traveling?! I guess we shall see in the trips to come.

Miss and love you all!