"Dreaming of the Hills of Donegal"

Dublin was an excellent introduction to Ireland. My friends and I got to do all the fun touristy (and not-so-touristy) stuff in Dublin.

We walked around Trinity College Dublin, which is where a lot of famous literary men went to school, including Jonathon Swift (Gulliver's Travels and famous excrement poems), Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Grey), and Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot).

We went to the Irish writers museum, which was really interesting. At the time, I was reading James Joyce's The Dubliners  and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce is a very well-known Irish writer - Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake.

We also went to Kilmainham Jail, which is where a lot of the major political prisoners from the 1916 uprising were held (and many were executed here, too). It was interesting to hear more about the history of the Republic of Ireland.

What I am going to miss the most about Dublin, though, is the dark pubs with live Irish music. A couple of my favorite songs that several different bands played are Molly Malone and City of Chicago, which doesn't sound Irish, but it's about the people who immigrated to Chicago during the famine.




My friends and I celebrated my 21st birthday in the only way it should be celebrated - in an Irish fashion, of course. We toured the Guinness storehouse, which was funny because we saw where the water Guinness uses is from just a few days earlier (in Wicklow). Then we toured the Jameson Distillery (and I got to do the whiskey tasting - it's official Jameson is better than Scotch and Jack Daniels).

Dublin was so fun. I really enjoyed this city. And I will have to search for a dark pub with live music in America.

A Beautiful Start to the Emerald Isle

A couple friends and I decided to spend some time in Ireland. Lindsey and I flew out a few days before Mona, and the two of us were spending time in Dublin.

We had literally just checked into our hostel and decided to have lunch by the river. I was eating my sandwich when I hear this splash and look up.

Lindsey was covered in bird crap. Literally everywhere - on the apple she was eating, in her hair, on her coat, on the backpack. We both thought we were going to vomit. So we wiped it up with some tissue and went to McDonald's to wash it out. It was incredibly disturbing, and the smell was atrocious. Needless to say, I did not want that sandwich. I bought McFlurries because it was just that kind of day.

Then, we get back to the hostel and tell the woman at the front desk. She says, oh, you should buy a lottery ticket because that's supposed to be lucky.

We didn't feel very lucky, though. 

Lindsey and I did a day trip to Wicklow, where P.S. I Love You (which is a terrible movie) and Braveheart (which I have never seen) were filmed. 

It was beautiful. Everything was just amazing. And, we saw the river that Guinness gets its water supply from. 

A guy owns a private lake - affectionately nicknamed the Guinness Lake because it looks like a pint of Guinness.