A few weeks ago we had our spring break so Alyssa, Mike and I chose to head out to the land of mussels, Guinness, and Bailey's Irish cream...Ireland! We stayed in Dublin but took a few trips outside of the city as well.
I'll start by saying that Dublin is much different than what I thought it would be. I heard that from other kids who have traveled there as well. It's a really beautiful city but it is just that, a city. So if you are expecting beautiful green hills and mountain peaks and all of that quintessential Irish scenery, then Dublin is not the first place I would go for that. With that said, there is so much that Dublin has to offer that we were never bored or wondering what to do. During the day we would sight see. St. Stephen's Green park was right near our hostel and I absolutely loved it. We visited there a couple times, even once to have a picnic. We also went into a couple of museums. The museum of archaeology and natural history was really cool. We also went into their library which had an excellent exhibit on the poet W.B. Yeats. Another one of my favorite places was the Dublin Writers Museum.
Wandering the beautiful city of Dublin is great but at the end of a long day of sight-seeing all you want is a Guinness. So many of our nights were spent in pubs in Dublin's social district, Temple Bar. There are some really great pubs there with live music and insanely expensive alcohol. Oh, and there is a great gelato place there...go figure! I will take this time to warn you: Guinness and drinking in general is a very important part of Irish culture and both things are going to come up several times in this post ;)
Speaking of Guinness, we visited the Guinness storehouse where we learned how it all started and, more importantly, got the best pint ever with a great view of Dublin at the Gravity Bar. It really does taste better in Ireland...they must sent all the sub-par batches over to America and England. Speaking of drinking, we took a tour of the Wicklow Mountain area on this really cheesy but really fun bus tour. It was super cold but so beautiful. We got to see some of that great Irish scenery...it was sort of misty as well which added to the beauty. We did this all while slamming down complementary shots of Jameson whiskey. Like I said, they love it! We also visited a lake nicknamed Guinness Lake. Why the nickname? Well, the lake is a really dark color (similar to that of Guinness) because of the Iron it contains. Actually the water from the Wicklow area is used to make Guinness for that very reason. Apparently some guy decided that the shape of the lake looked a little like a pint but something was missing. He had some fine, light-colored sand brought in and put at the top of the lake to make a little beach. So now when you look at the lake from above it looks like a pint of Guinness with a little foam on top! Our tour guide said that when it rains really hard, the sand makes the lake sort of cloudy so it looks like a pint of Guinness settling. Did I mention that Guinness and drinking are a popular topic of conversation?
To get out of the city once again and see some other areas of Dublin, we took a little day trip to a coastal town called Howth. It was such a great trip. We got great views of the sea. We had some excellent fish and chips from a place called Beshoff's. And we saw some sea lions!!! They were playing around in the harbor as we were sitting there eating our meal.
On the day we left we got in some more sight-seeing since our flight didn't leave until later in the evening. My favorite place was the Kilmainham Jail. It was such a great tour and we learned a lot about the famine and the jail itself. It was really worth the time. Shout out to Rick Steves for recommending it :)
That's about it for this post, I hope I captured the essence of Irish craic! (craic, pronounced crack but not at all affiliated with the drug...google it!)
Until next time,
Kelsey
