It was Monday September 8th when we headed from the Edinburgh airport to Dublin, Ireland. We got to Edinburgh airport for our flight which was around 1230pm, and I immediately was treated like I had crack on me, or had a solid plan to hijack a plane. I was taken aside for a full body scan, and my carry on bag had a "suspicious" item in it, which meant I went for double scanning. Apparently it was my baby wipes that were really a huge problem. I was full bodied checked and they were very thorough ensuring I had nothing in my underwear waist band.... seriously. But after my crazy security experience, we waited forever to get onto out RyanAir flight and finally made it Dublin in the later afternoon! RyanAir is not the classiest flight we've been on... thats for sure. I wish we took a picture of the bright yellow colours of the seats and overhead luggage storage. From the airport, we grabbed a bus to city Centre to our hotel!
When we went to check into our hotel in Dublin, the clerk at the desk gave us keys to a room, which we went into and saw other peoples belongings in the room. SO bad!! Lucky for those people, I felt like we were infringing on their privacy and left the room quickly, but other people... in Dublin... could've been bad! So we went back and got the keys to our real room... just up 4 massive flights of stairs through 4 corridors including the one Aleksy is in here... jp and down some more stairs then we arrived to our hotel room. Sucks carrying luggage through the entire hotel... sucks!
Once we dropped our luggage, we grabbed our trusty city map (cant leave the hotel without one!) and started our Dublin exploring!
The walk from our hotel to the main strip for restaurants and pubs was an interesting walk. We saw that in Dublin, there are many abandoned store fronts. We had to cross the water to get to Temple Bar (the main touristy strip), and along the way, there were locations that we found ourselves feeling a little uncomfortable with the graffiti on the abandoned storefronts, and minimal people around. it was quite bizarre... thousands of people on the street of Temple Bar, and everywhere else.. vacant.
We did eat in Temple Bar our first night in Dublin. There was a lot of advertising outside on the street for the tourists... everyone wanting the tourists to go to their restaurant where they all serve food for double the price because its temple bar. We found this place and I had a irish beef stew with mashed and Aleksy had a shephards pie. It was quite delic I remember, but it was so pricey!
After our crazy priced supper in Temple Bar, we took a little walking tour of Dublin along the water at night. It was really pretty along the river of the city centre, this was our route back to the hotel from Temple Bar.. but to leave the direct route... not recommended...
Walking along the water at night... really nice!
After dinner at Temple Bar, we made one last stop at the bar that was right down the street from our hotel. We saw some advertising outside of the bar earlier when walking, and we thought drinks were gonna be really cheap at this bar (compared to Temple Bar). When we got to the bar and asked about the amazing deals posted in the windows (2 euros for beers?!), the bartender looked at us funny and said that was for take away.... embarrassing!! Apparently, in Dublin you get your pint at the bar, and when you're ready to go home, you take a 6 pack to go!
We both grabbed our first pints of Guinness at this bar though... and used our euros from our friends for our drinks. This is the envelope from Nicole from our shower! We also got euros from Chels and Warren for our wedding!
So we learned that the bar by our hotel was not cheap and not cool... and we're pretty cool so we decided to head back into Temple Bar where we assumed everyone in Dublin was having drinks. This bar, the Temple Bar was pretty packed inside, and there were benches alongside the outside of the bar, where Aleksy is sitting! While sitting outside having our beverages, there was a homeless man who approached us to ask for money... he was pretty persistent, and the bouncers of the bar tried to get him to leave the customers alone, but he kept coming back. Aleksy and I were not that disturbed by the guy, but the bouncer seemed more disturbed than us and ended up pushing the homeless man so he almost fell over... we thought it really crossed the boundary of disrespect and gave us an ugly taste of some of the people in Ireland.
But nonetheless, we still enjoyed the rest of our beer/cider outside before calling it a night.
The next morning, I 100% made it my mission to find a breakfast place where I could get an Irish coffee. I didn't know exactly what was in one, but I knew I wanted one. And we found a good little restaurant near the hotel that did breakfast on O'Connell St (one of the main strips in Dublin for shopping, touristy things). Aleksy got himself an Irish breakfast with a beer (because of course they served at that 1030am hour and there were like 5 men drinking at the bar already... you know... on a Tuesday). I had a cider and an IRISH COFFEE with my breakfast!! When I took a sip, I realized immediately.. Irish coffee = whisky + coffee... holy potent. I left breakfast with a buzz... seriously.
While sitting outside enjoying our breakfast and cold beverages (what a great combo), there was a spontaneous parade that went right by us... random!! We watched it go by from our outside seats where we were having breakfast and this little lady in the picture was the cutest thing of life. She was so excited about this parade and managed to score a free Ireland flag AND a free soccer ball.... she was smiling ear to ear... she was with a tour bus, and we know that she had an awesome morning!
After breakfast, we headed to the Jameson distillery for a tour! This is just outside the distillery. The tour was kinda like going through a museum of how they make whisky with a bit of history about this particular distillery that no longer makes whisky. It was interesting, but would have been a little cooler if the equipment was actually used to make whisky and we could see.
After the tour, we each had one drink of Jameson (included in the tour): Aleksy's straight, and mine mixed with ginger ale.
This was our only full day in Dublin, so we had to squeeze in as many things as we could! Right after the tour of Jameson, we headed to the old Kilmainham Gaol (prison) for a tour. This one was really cool! We learned that this prison is from the 1800s and public hangings used to occur inside and outside the jail walls. There were lots of well known Irish activists that served time here, and children as well. Each of these doors is an individual cell and we were able to go into several of them along the tour. The jail was closed for use in the beginning of the 1900s, and there was a period where it was grown over and the public raised money to restore it. This part in the picture has been used for lots of movies too!
After touring a Gaol, I really wanted to try to make it to the Guinness Store house for either a tour, or even just to look around and by a souvenir... we heard from a couple from Chicago we met on the Jameson tour that there was a good view from the top of the Guinness Storehouse. But we got there right as it closed (around 5/6pm), so we didn't get to go in!! Boooo!! But we got a couple pictures of the Guinness brewery.. and we did get to have a couple pints of the stuff at the local pubs.
During our trip, we became kind of castle snobs of sorts. You see... we saw lots of castles, so when some weren't as nice as others... we noticed. Ha!
We took a quick peak through Dublin Castle, and noticed that it wasn't quite like the Edinburgh castle and there were parts that looked nothing more special than a regular business building. This part here though shows some of the origins, and the nice part about Dublin Castle was that it wasn't completely blocked off to tourists. Without paying the castle entrance fee, we could still get into the court area and walk around a bit!
Not far from the castle, we walked to the Trinity College, which is a university from the 1600s in the heart of Dublin. There was this really cool library that we wanted to look at in the university, but it was closed too (this is what happens when you try to pack in too much in a day... multiple closures). But we walked through the university, admiring some of the old architecture like this arch.
We also heard lots of people "without accents" who speak like us at the university! Or as the Irish believe it, those who do have accents....
Back to Temple bar! You know... the only safe place to eat and drink in Dublin...
We grabbed a pint... and when the man that is also captured in this photo on the right began playing live music, we said for sure we would stay for 2 pints at the pub.. But then after finishing our 1... we left. We seemed to not stay for any more than one drink at any pub when we went for drinks... maybe we're not as cool as we lead on.
But you know.. we hadn't had supper yet so we needed to get some take away fish & chips! We saw this place on O'Connell St. which seemed like a happening fish & chip joint and thought we would save some money and not eat at a restaurant that night. Take away supper & drinks!
We ate back at our hotel and called it a night because we knew the next day was busy.... we got to pick our car up from the Dublin airport and head to Killarney!
Next post of the Honeymoon: Killarney, Ireland, one of the most scenic, beautiful placed I've been!
No comments:
Post a Comment