Dublin/Birthday Weekend!

So the weekend of my birthday (last weekend) we decided to take a quick trip up to Dublin. Spain (that's the short way we use when referring to the Spanish kids) was already planning a trip up there, but they were staying until Tuesday, so we took the bus with them then broke off. I was traveling/staying with Laura, Jenna, Kelly, and Mrijan. We booked a hostel and caught an 8 am bus on Saturday and we were off!

So, we get there and our hostel wont let us check in until 2, so we decided to go out and get some food. We ended up finding a fish and chips place. I had a fish sandwich because I wasn't particularly hungry.

This was Kelly's first time with fish and chips.

As well as Laura's.

Mrijan skipped the fish and went straight to the chips.

Jenna didnt want her picture taken. It was also her first time with fish and chips. When they all told me this I couldn't believe it.


We found this park while we were wandering. It was some sort of memorial to those who gave their lives for the cause of Irish freedom.


This is inside of our room at the hostel. We got a 6 person mixed room, so it was the 5 of us, then this other guy (James I think), but he was only there for a few hours because he had a super early flight.

Our bathroom.

Mrijan chillin on his bed.


We realized the name after it was already booked...

So, after we got settled at the hostel we made our way to the Guinness Storehouse!

We had to wait in line to get in and there were tvs everywhere...it was like Disneyland for adults.

They even had a super intense gift shop.

Then we finally started our self-guided tour. This is barley.

Waterfall!

Toni (we met up with part of Spain) being silly.

Barley after it's been roasted. It tastes kind of like burnt toast and coffee beans.


About halfway through they give you little mini samples of it mid-brew.

Jenna had a few too many samples...

The kegs that we see all over town piled outside of the pubs.

This was just randomly on one of the beams.

This was in this huge advertisement section.

Old Guinness adds.

At the very top you go up to the Gravity Bar and you get a "free" pint. This looks like it should be an ad for Guinness...except for Alberto's head in the background.

It was soooo hot up there. There were insane amounts of people in the bar. You could barely walk around.

Flatmates picture!

The Gravity Bar has a 360 view of the city, though we were there on a kind of crummy day. Still amazing though.

Outside of Guinness. This is where all the taxis were...and the horse-drawn carriages...

Inside of Trinity College (Kelly has an old family friend who goes to Trinity so he gave us a quick tour).

This is a can crusher.

At the hostel before going out for the night. The girl next to me on the right is Heather. She's from Canada.

These people are mostly Australians, with a couple of Canadians thrown in. The one holding the Bulmers bottle is Cory.

At midnight when I turned 20! We were at this pub called Doyle's. They didnt like our noise makers so we left pretty fast.

And we went and got ice cream instead!!!


The next morning we went out for an Irish breakfast!


Outside of the restaurant there was a Native American band playing...it was really weird.





All along the main street they had these super weird screens that just showed people "walking." There were probably 4 in all, 2 men, 2 women, all walking the same direction. It was so weird...

When we got home that night Laura baked me a birthday cake (soooooo good).


After the cake we watched The Clinic, an Irish show kind of like Grey's, though totally different, that we have gotten hooked on.

So, that was just a bit of our fun little trip to Dublin. In the next few days I'll work on posting just random Ireland pictures (mostly Cork) that I have.

On Thursday we are having a huge birthday bash to celebrate my birthday as well as Jenna and Joe's birthdays, which are on Friday. So far we have invited 33 people and at last count 21 are definitely coming. It will be a really fun night. We are going to decorate the living room and buy party hats and the birthday people are apparently getting tiaras (and yes, that includes Joe). I cant wait! It should be super drama filled (as always), but it will also be soooo much fun!