Travel Blog: Dublin, Ireland

Getting to Ireland, was not enjoyable. I was flying with the European discount airline Ryanair, a notoriously terrible airline that loves to fly incredibly early. This particular flight wasnt that early, leaving at 9:30am, but what made this a huge pain, was that ryanair doesnt fly out of centrally located airports sometimes and this time, i had to travel to Beauvais, 50km outside the city. In order to get there, i had to take a 35minute metro ride at 5:30am to this park, find the bus that for 10€ would drive me to the Beauvais airport 2 hiurs before my flight inorder to get through the terrible Ryanair security and get to my gate on time to make my flight.

Fast forward to 10:30am Dublin time- I made it! Im exhausted, but I made it.

I met a few american girls at my hostel in Madrid who were on break from their semester abroad in Dublin. We hit it off and they invited me to come visit them in Ireland. Of course I was going to take them up on their offer. Ireland is suppsed to be amazing and not only that, but it is filled with redheads, making it literally the only place on earth I am not a huge freak for having redhair. After time in Spain, I welcomed the opportunity to not be stared at.

Mary met me on her campus, University College Dublin (UCD) and we set off for her on campus apartment and hung out for a little while- I got to do Laundry for the first time in weeks- I was a happy girl. :) Later, we took the bus from campus into the center of Dublin and walked around. Dublin is such a cute city. All the people are so friendly and cheerful which is so different from Spain where people on the street, if they are not staring at you for being incredibly redheaded, they dont make eye contact with you and they most certainly dont smile or strike up a conversation with you. Mary took me to this amazing store called Avoca. it was like Twigs and Teacups meets Martha Stewart meets designer clothing meets The Village Bakery meets Play It Again Sams. Needless to say, I was in love. Full on love. It was 5 stories of beautiful merchandise and food. The top and bottom floors we cafes, selling amazing deliciousnesss such as sandwiches, soups, scones, irish breakfasts and sparkling lemonade. Even their cappuccinos were beautiful made with a beautiful little design in the foam, mine was a smiling sunshine one day when I met up with an old college friend for brunch! I was in loooooove. And you know what, this is maybe the best part - THEY HAVE ONE UNITED STATES LOCATION, IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND!!!!!! Yes. I think I will be visiting their American location often.

Anyways, I had an amazing time in Dublin. I was there for 5 days, enjoying every minute of my stay. I had my very first pint if a true Irish Guiness, and let me tell you, its so different than the Guiness in the states. i had a delicious irish pastie, which is delicious (and also a tad surprising because the Irish are not known for their food). We slept on St. stephens Green, went to several real irish pubs, and went to a playoff rugby match. Now this rugby match changed my life. Well, it changed my perspective of what a man is. I know i have several male readers, and I will do my best not to insult your manhood, but rugby players are MEN. They are not these wimpy american football players with incrredible amounts of padding on and stopping every play to rest and regroup, no. These MEN are without padding, without all these timeouts, hitting each other, lifting each other up and tackling each other, running full speed and bleeding. It was intense. However, now I see that perhaps there has been a blend of intense manliness and increrdible stuidity. Maybe the word for these athletes is not manly, maybe its animal- these players are animals. Yes, i think im on to something... Anyways, leinster, the irish time won by a landslide and it was an incredible game which i got to witness from the third row.

I met a lot of Mary, Alice and Adriannas friends in Dublin. And we all got along really well and did a lot of hanging out with each other. One night we got together for a family dinner and made from scratch whole wheat banana pancakes with bacon and scrambled eggs- in salute to America. It was delicious! It made me pang for home a little bit.

Dublin was such a great time and experience, im in love with the city and could see myself living there if only the westher was a little better. I had great whether while i was there, very sunny and warm, but apparently its usually very very rainy and dreary, which would put a damper on my happiness for sure.