Ireland! Well, Dublin Specifically!

Alright, Here is the rest of the blog post as promised. 

Dublin...Tuesday/Wednesday
now, what to say about Dublin...

Dublin was a really nice city as far as things to do and see but it was probably my least favorite part of the trip just because it lacked a lot of the Irish charm I saw in the other places we went.  I guess to a certain extent, all the big cities start to feel the same after a while, I mean they all have their Catherdral, their castle, and their museums.

Our tour guide on the free walking tour of Dublin we took was a tall red head, goofy sort of guy but he was entertaining and kept things interesting on the tour.  His name was Garvan or something throaty sounding in Gaelic.  He took us past Dublin City hall, Dublin Castle, Temple Bar, Christ´s Church, O´Connell´s Bridge, the Sphire, Trinity College and St. Stephen´s Green just to mention the main highlights. 

After the tour concluded (at which point it had started raining and snowing) we looped back arond and went to the Museum of History where we went inside to hide from the Rain/Snow and also to look at the Bog People that everyone kept talking about.  The bog people are remains that were found in a Bog outside of Galway.  These bodies were so well preserved there was a homicide investigation opened up because they thought that these people had died fairly recently until they found out that these bodies were actually hundreds of years old and so now they sit in a museum instead.  They believe that these people were thrown into the bog after being religiously sacrificed (so you know they died back in the days of pagan Ireland).  You could still see the hair on the head of one of the bodies and another one had manicured nails.  It was kinda weird because much of their skin still remained - it just looked really leathery.  Okay, so in all honesty, the story of the bog people was neat but the remains were a little disgusting to look at and we did not feel the need to stay there for long!  We came, we saw, we left! 

After this, we headed a few blocks down from the Museum and made our way back to the library at Trinity College where the Book of Kells is housed.  The Book of Kells is the oldest bible they have that is decorated using Celtic art.  Although the book of Kells was impressive in and of itself, I was more intrigued by the exhibit as a whole because it gave you a glipse at the materials used to create the book and the processes that would have been used to create these images and writings.  They have analyzed the inks used on the pages and found that some of the inks trace their origins to far places like Afghanistan... Can you imagine how much this book must have cost to make back in its day?  I watched a short video on how they decorated the first letter of the Page and I was amazed to see how tedious the process is...you definitely have to have a great deal of patience and good attention to detail to create these images.  It was also really neat that the exhibit explained some of the symbols used throughout the book. 

Next, we decided to WALK (dumb idea...it was still wet and rainy outside though it let up some...but then came back while we were still out.) down to go tour this Jail that everyone told us we had to do because, although the jail itself isn´t really anything important to see, the volunteers do a good job of explaining the Revolutions that took place in Ireland while the Jail was in operation because the jailed housed many of the people who partook in the 1916 Easter rising and were later executed for their actions against the British Rule in Ireland.  I think I would have enjoyed the tour more if it wouldn´t have taken us over an hour to walk down to it (ended up being about 3 miles from the city center...and it was not directly across from the Guiness factory like we were promised).  We were cold, wet, hungry (hadn´t ate since breakfast) and pretty tired by the time we got down there and it was even worse after the tour was over because the jail was pretty chilly inside.  Of course our guide I think though it was quite warm...he was wearing wool socks with sandals. Luckily, we were able to find a bus that took us back to the area around our hostel and we were able to change clothes and then finally grab some supper!  We were so hungry we ate at the first place we found...which happened to be overpriced Chinese food....When in Ireland - eat chinese!  After supper, we made a quick detour into a grocery store to buy some hot chocolate and cookies, and then went back to the hostel.  It ended up being a pretty good end to an okay day!  Early in the day we had talked about going out that night...but by the end of the day we were too tired and were more concerned about getting some sleep before leaving for the Airport at 5am the following morning.

Wednesday - Time to go back to Madrid.

5 am came early then expected (doesn´t that always happen that way?) but that could have just been because neither Lauren nor I switched our phones to Ireland time (1 hour behind Madrid) so when we set our alarms to go off at 5 we had actually set them for 4...oops!  We took a taxi to the airport since it would have cost us the same amount to take the bus and we weren´t in the mood to risk trying to find the bus!  We made it through security without any trouble so we had a little bit of down time before boarding our flight.  For all of our worries always about missing a flight, we certainly get rewarded a lot with delays in the airports.  We boarded our flight a half hour late and then ended up sitting on the plane for another hour and a half before we finally took off.  We would come to find out that we weren´t the only flight to be delayed that day - and we were actually quite lucky to get back to Madrid only about 2 hours late - some of our other friends weren´t so lucky and had to take alternative routes home.  All because the French Airtraffic controllers decided to go on strike which meant that all the airlines had trouble getting their clearance to fly through French airs.  Our friend libby got stuck in Paris and had to take a bus and a different airline to get home!  She finally made it back safe though. 
When we finally landed in madrid, we were more than enthused to get off that plane!  Had a funny incident at the Passport Check at Barajas.  The customs official took my passport, looked at the picture page and started to hand me a immigrations form - in which I had to explain to him that I had just been visiting Ireland and I wasn´t coming in to the country for the first time.  So, then he flipped through my book and found my visa this time as well as my Madrid and Ireland stamps.  Then the questions began: Do I speak Spanish? - no, What am I studying? - Accounting at an American school in Madrid (in english!).  He finally stamped my passport and then as he was handing it back to me he told me that I need to learn Spanish.... HA!  He´s telling me!  It was really quite funny! 

The rest of the day was spent unpacking and studying for my IB and Marketing midterms I had on Thursday so nothing worth Blogging about. 


Alright! Done Blogging the Ireland trip!  Actually I am not done because I am sure you are all dying to see the photos for those of you who haven´t seen them on Facebook yet!  I am working on that!