L'ete a Paris: Slainte ta Dooblin!

On our second day in Dublin we went on a historical walking tour of the city, which was free! It was a great way to explore Dublin for the first time. Our tour guide was very passionate and extremely knowledgeable of the city so it was a great learning experience as well. We saw the town hall, the old castle, the national museum and library. We also got to walk through Trinity College and learned that the Library there was the one used in the filming of the Star Wars movies for the Jedi library, interesting. After the tour we went to a pub called O'Neill’s for a discounted lunch. I had the Guinness and Beef stew which was incredible! So many veggies piled high on top of it too. By this point it had become pretty obvious that the Irish serve two kinds of potatoes with most of their meals. The famine is over! :) Then we decided to walk around and do some shopping! I ended up walking into this shop where they could look up your family name and you could read about its history. Apparently the Kemp name was originally associated with the Vikings from Normandy. Who knew? Pretty awesome stuff though! I bought the best souvenirs for people and it made me excited to get home so I can hand them out! Haha

Then we went back to the hostel for a bit and cleaned up before going out! We were determined to make it to the Temple Bar! We decided to go back to Fitz’s (our nickname for it) for dinner since we knew it was delicious and well-priced. We all ended up ordering the same thing, this delicious garlic cheesy baguette with a salad. Absolutely amazing, as all Irish food is! Then we went back downstairs to finish our Bulmers Irish cider and listen to some of the live band that was playing. There was a group of Irish guys that ended up next to us that we started talking to. One of them kept grabbing my hand and making me twirl around, not really sure what that was all about haha. Then they all started to get a little too friendly so we decided it was time to leave! We finally made it to the Temple Bar!

The bouncer at the door let us skip the line and just walk right in because we were all around the age of 20- he said if we were between 18 and 25 to just go in because they needed to keep with the age ratio. Too funny really. As soon as we walked in the band started to play the song Galway girl, it was absolutely perfect. If you have seen PS I love you it’s the song that Jerry is playing when Holly walks into the pub where his band is performing. It’s a song about an American girl in Ireland, perfect song for the occasion! Then we went to the bar! The girls all made me go up and ask the bar tender what a good Irish shot was. They said I was best suited to do it because of the red hair, “use your Irish charm! ” All the guys we met there always seemed fascinated by the fact that I had red hair and freckles. One guy asked me what post card I was from. Haha I have no clue why! Anyways he suggested a baby Guinness and so I ordered six for all of us! It was 5,80 euro a shot! Crazy expensive, but so delicious! It was Kahlua on the bottom with baileys on top so it looked like the foam head on the dark Guinness. So yummy! Everyone laughed at us when we cheers’d and yelled because apparently that is only an American thing to do. At one point in the night a group of guys came up to us and said “so your from America huh,” because we had all just yelled haha too funny.

We didn’t stay too long because it was so crowded but we had our shot and heard our song and were satisfied with that. We started wondering further down the street and ran into Atle, our Norwegian friend, from the night before! He was with a group of German girls that he had met but he ditched them to come walk around with us! Muahah. J He was the cutest thing ever, he pretty much played the role of big brother for us. Several times he warded off a group of guys who had drunk too much. It was just so nice to not have to worry about any drunk guys bothering us because Atle was watching out for us! Such a sweetheart! We all just walked around from pub to pub listening to the music and taking it all in. Then we found this little disco place with the disco balls, shag carpets, light up floors and everything. We were really excited until we saw the vending machine for sex toys in the bathroom and the creepy middle – aged men sitting along with wall by the dance floor. We hurried out of there pretty quickly haha. It was such a great night and we were sad to leave Atle but we were exhausted to we were back at the Generator by 12:30 I think.

The last day we just walked around and got the last of our souvenirs. Including my official claddagh ring, finally! J Then we walked by St. Patrick’s Cathedral and tried to go to the museum but it didn’t open until 3 which was too late for us. We found a little pub to have one last Irish cooked meal, and I had to finish with more fish and chips. So good over there! By that point we were all exhausted so we just hung out in the lobby at the Generator hostel for an hour until it was time to head to the airport. My sunburn was killing me by this point and wearing that heavy backpack on my shoulders was a miserable experience but I survived! Hah. We took the 4pm bus to the Dublin airport, a plane to Beauvais airport, the bus to Porte Maillot, the metro back to the hostel area, and finally arrived back at our rooms at 12:45 am. Exhausted but we had to unpack and repack for our 9am departure time to Belgium the next morning! Crazy times over here but I wouldn’t settle for anything less. It was an amazing three days in Ireland and I cannot wait to go back some day to explore the country further!