When I came back from it, I had to start working hard on my French composition since I had to hand it in before 6 pm because I wouldn’t be able to hand it in on Friday since I was going to Dublin (and the building is locked after 6 pm, so you can’t get in if you try). I wrote and wrote until it was finished (luckily my 2 hour Marketing class was just a review class for the test I had already written, so I didn’t need to go to it), then I headed to my last class of the day. Once it was done, I ran around trying to figure out what format I was supposed to use for my bibliography, and rushed to print everything out. I ran to the French building, and even though it was clearly 5:57 or so, the building was already locked!!
I was pretty upset, because I had been running in order to get it done in time, so I stood there for a while banging on the door and hoping someone would answer it. Eventually my tutor (the crazy old man) showed up, and VERY reluctantly let me in (I had to beg and plead in order for him to let me go to the essay box to hand my assignment in!). Then I headed off to my friend’s flat to celebrate American Thanksgiving!
Between her flatmates and the extra people that got invited, we had 17 people for Thanksgiving dinner! It felt weird to be celebrating Thanksgiving so late in the year, but it was really nice to have so many people there (we had to borrow chairs and a table from my flat!), even if most of them don’t usually celebrate any Thanksgiving.
A photo my friend took of her house decorations!
The rest of the evening I just spent relaxing since I had such a busy day, and then I went to bed fairly early in order to get up early and pack, then catch the bus for Dublin!
Stef and I got our things together and headed off to be at the bus at 7:45 am sharp on Friday morning, just as they had asked us, and then we had a long day of travelling ahead. I slept for most of the bus ride, which took about 4hours to get to Holyhead (which is apparently in Wales, who knew we’d get to see Wales on our trip to Ireland?!), and then we got on the ferry to Dublin. It was a pretty nice ferry, but the group that I was with (my American friends, plus one girl from my school) pretty much all just ended up sleeping (there were just so many benches for people to sleep on that most of the people on the ferry were sleeping!).
We got to Dublin, and the bus driver (who was a little crazy and slightly creepy) took us to our hostel. That was when we found out that we would have to each pay a deposit for our beds of 20 Euros! The problem was not just that we had not been informed of this, but also that a lot of the 30ish students hadn’t had the chance to get any Euros yet! They ended up letting us authorize cards for the group of people we were sharing a room with, so I ended up paying the deposit for 11 people.
We headed to our 24 bed room (which was only going to have 12 people in it), and although it was a nice old room (interesting architecture), it was freezing! We put our stuff in there, tried to turn on all the radiators, and headed out into the chilly Dublin streets (there was snow!).
We found dinner at a place called Abrakebabra, and we all enjoyed what we had, then we kept exploring. 7 of us went to the Temple Bar area, and stopped in at The Temple Bar. It was a very interesting place, like a maze of smaller bars, and it was the first truly warm place we had been in ages. We stayed there for quite a while listening to the three person band that was playing, since they were pretty good, but when they took a break, I decided to head back to the hostel. I stopped on my way to get some food at a convenience store, and then I went home.
The room was so cold that night that pretty much everyone slept wearing their winter jackets, and since the showers all looked so sketchy (and we didn’t want to have to remove any layers to get in them, we pretty much all decided that we would wait until we got home to shower again.
View of part of the room from my bed.
The next morning we got up bright and early in order to take advantage of the free breakfast (toast with your choice of jam or butter + orange juice, milk, tea, coffee), and to get in as much sightseeing time as possible. No one had slept particularly well between the cold of the room and the terrible thunderstorm that had been going in the middle of the night.
6 of us girls started the day by trying to get a hold of some cold medication and some euros, and then we decided that we wanted to go to the castle. It wasn’t open when we got there, so we kept walking and found a Euro shop where everything was 2 euros or less. Then we headed off to Trinity College.
Walking down the street in Dublin.
Entrance to Trinity College.
We decided to take the guided tour, which ended up being really good because our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the college and he seemed like he truly found it all interesting as well (it probably helped that he was a PhD student there studying Irish History).
Trinity College grounds.
Snow in Ireland!
The infamous residence where a prank turned into a gunfight and someone ended up dead.
After the tour, we got to see the exhibit that they have about the Book of Kells (a fancy old illustrated thing from around 800 CE or so), and we got to see the Long Room, the biggest single chamber library room in the world? Maybe just in Western Europe. Anyway though, it was really beautiful, and all the old books were organized by size instead of topic or author!
Next - the rest of our time in Dublin.
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