Dubliners Day 2

Meg and I started the day early by walking around the city before our walking tour. Before leaving, we ate (free!) breakfast at the hostel and really got a sense of what staying in a hostel is like. It’s definitely different than anything that I’ve experienced before, but it is a really cool communal feeling. Everyone washes his/her own dishes after eating and just coexists in the same common space. I could imagine that it would be a pretty cool way to live for a while and you could meet some interesting people, traveling from hostel to hostel. While walking around the downtown area, I continued to fall in love with Dublin because of all the cool restaurants, shops and buildings.

At 11:00, Meg and I started our 3 hour walking tour. We got to see so many of the Dublin hot spots including the City Hall, the Dublin Castle, Dublin gardens, the birthplace of Jonathan Swift, Temple Bar area (which is NOT named after the bar, but rather the land that was there beforehand), the music wall of fame that pays tribute to the Irish music stars, Trinity College, Dublin Parliament building, and finally Merrion Square (a pretty park). The tour was filled with historical information and was a great way to hear cool stories about the city and see all the major sites. I didn’t know much Irish history beforehand, but now I realize how filled with uprising, rebellion and fighting for freedom it was. We also learned that the colorful doors of Dublin were originally painted for men to be able to identify their own houses when they were drunk and that now, Guinness finances the repainting of the doors every 5 years to perpetuate the association of the Irish and drinking so that the rest of the world will believe that Guinness is good beer.

After the tour, Meg and I did a brief run through of the Dublin National Gallery. It was very similar to the London National Gallery, but it was still cool to see all of the paintings and critique them, putting into use everything I’ve learned from my art class.


In search of food, Meg and I walked down Temple Bar and settled for some gelato. It was so rich and delicious and hit the spot. We then went on our second tour of the day at Trinity College. We learned that one of the provosts said that “Girls will enter this school over my dead body,” after which he soon died, and soon after girls were allowed admittance. We also learned that one of the dormitories only houses students fluent in Irish and who regularly speak the language. At the end of the tour, we got to see the Trinity Library, (where the library scene in Harry Potter was filmed!) and the Book of Kells-the oldest illustrated Bible in existence. The dyes used for the book come from stones in Afghanistan and pregnant beetles in India, among other obscure and exotic elements.

We went back to the hostel after the tour to get ready for the night and then went to Fitsimons Bar for dinner. It was a very nice dinner of soup, salad and soda bread and Ken got a platter of potatoes-a necessity since we were in Ireland.

Dinner took us right up to the starting time of our pub crawl, beginning at the Purty Kitchen. We preceded to go to 4 other pubs before ending up at a night club. The best drink on the crawl was the strawberry beer (you should try making this dad! It was REALLY strawberry flavored), and we also met a group of students from Michigan State studying in Cambridge as well. Each pub definitely had a distinct feel to it, and it was cool to experience all the different ones. The pub crawl was a great way to meet some people and be social. It was definitely one of the most fun things of the trip.