Where were the damn leprechauns?

9/25/09

Because I’m a glutton for punishment (and it was the cheapest time available) we left for our flight to Dublin at four in the morning to go to the bus that would take us to easybus that went to the damn middle of nowhere airport. The Ryanair flight was surprisingly fine, they use the same Boeing jets as most services so I wasn’t terribly concerned. The flight attendants just had tackier outfits than normal, and we had to walk up steps to the plane. Maybe I was just bitter about the four in the morning thing. The flight took around an hour, and when we got off of the plane it was positively freezing with blue skies. Think October-ish weather in Philadelphia. Luckily I was wearing my North Face and not my usual skanky October wear (I live for Halloween) so it wasn’t that bad. A lot of girls on the trip had Irish backgrounds, so they were especially excited for this, and considering I am probably the furthest thing from Irish I was just thrilled to be in Colin Farrels homeland.

Our damn hostel wouldn’t allow us to check in until 2:30 so we paid the damn two euros to store our bags and went to go explore Dublin. I was rather surprised by how generally dirty and old looking it was. We walked down their main street and after the Russian head shop selling “snow” and other fine drugs that I’m sure weren’t laced with anything was a cute little breakfast place filled with cute old and tired Irish men. It may have been authentic, but nothing compares to the smiley face chocolate chip pancakes at Ihop. It looks so fucking happy, it’s almost morbid when you cut into it.

After the not so substantial meal and the Limited Edition European Cadbury’s Caramel Milkshake at McDonalds, we started to look around and in my opinion this was just a really poor version of London. Instead of Primark they had Penny’s, and they had a Marks and Spencers (with clover leaves all over the bag) and I saw girls walking around with Topshop and Zara. These were also the least fashionable people I had seen all summer, and their high end department store had crap clothes in the window with laughable displays. But maybe I’m just being a pretentious bitch, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. L wanted souvenirs so we stopped in a football store and I for the most obnoxious shop, and they pointed us in the direction of Carrols.
Considering there was a Carrols on every two blocks it wasn’t that hard. It sold a variety of T-shirts and anything associated with sheep, leprechauns, beer, or clover. Just to give you a clue about the atmosphere of the place, they played cheesy Irish music with interruptions every three minutes saying if you spend one hundred euros or more one would get this very CD that was playing, a fifteen euro value, for free. I think I was forced to go into that store on at least three different occasions for at least a half hour at a time so I’m not its biggest fan. We continued to wander and after nearly passing out in a bookstore went back to beg for the room key.

Lauren and I had come a day earlier than everyone else because we are ballers and don’t have class on Fridays, but there were five of us staying in a six person room. After secretly judging the rando filthy European backpackers lounging in the hostel (I’ve given up on the no-judgment rule, I have concluded that I am allowed to judge lack of hygiene) we were a little worried. Luckily it turned out to be an American girl who was our age, and her family friend had bailed and she was stuck in the hostel with the rest of us schmucks. We gratefully passed out for a few hours, grabbed dinner and pre-game materials at Tesco, and checked out the bar area we wanted to hit up that night. Aside from the random pubs, there are a few streets called the Temple Bar area that only consists of bars, restaurants, and drunk munchie food places. Not bad.

Lauren, Molly and I ended up going to three pubs that night and it was the expected Irish pub experience. Most of the pubs were really packed, and they were filled with a middle age crowd. Guinness was the cheapest thing they served, so Guinness was what I got. I have never really minded the taste, considering it has a tinge of coffee flavor and caffeine runs in my veins, but they get so heavy and I’m not a big girl. I just have a big… heart. A lot of the bigger pubs played American music and I felt like some of the Boston bars were more Irish than the ones we chose. Some did have live music in the corner or basement, with random blacked out people doing jigs. We went back to the hostel to greet the rest of the room who had just flown in and called it a night.

The next morning I woke up early as the hostel had promised a free continental breakfast. Normally this is my favorite part of vacation, which is kind of sad but you can’t really change one’s undying love for a breakfast buffet. It’s what dreams are made of, and maybe what Christmas feels like. What I came downstairs to were a couple of loaves of bread, two toasters, and little pats of butter and jam. Thank you Hostel Issacs, thank you. I grabbed some instant coffee (the necessary bane of my existence) and went back upstairs to the rest of Drexel who had just flown in and was sprawled out on the floor. A few hours later we bought tickets to take the tram to the Guinness storehouse, which was unfortunate because it seems no one pays for public transportation in Dublin. Maybe it’s because they spend all their money on beer, which I had just started to realize. I can’t really blame them, the pints aren’t cheap and the lowest of the low (Tesco liquor) was double what I pay in London for half the size. I’m certainly not a scientist, not even a contender, but I believe this all boils down to the laws of supply and demand.

The Guinness factory was pretty damn awesome from a design as well as a historical perspective. It was basically a museum about beer. They take you through the mechanics of making it, from the specific hops and barley, and the use of yeast in the fermentation process. I just thought the waterfall was pretty. There were historical sections about Arthur Guinness and examples of the family’s philanthropy (good peoples) and of course a taste testing section where I definitely didn’t take three or four samples. Continuing upstairs, they had an advertising section which was actually quite witty and had a lot of older examples of the Toucan and “My Goodness My Guinness!” slogans. There was also an instructional booth on how to pour Guinness (For the head to be right you need to wait two minutes for the beer to settle and then cap it off) as well as a bunch of Irish step dancers. At the very top of the storehouse was the Gravity Bar, where you turn in your ticket stub for a pint. It was all glass, and had a 360 degree view of Dublin.

That night we wandered as a group over to Temple Bar area, and everyone split up by accident but thankfully I was with the group that preferred bars over pubs. I can only take enough quaint. Molly bought us all car bombs, which I guess is equivalent to calling something “A Two Towers” in America, but the bartenders put up with it because they get paid thirty euros an hour. However, in another bar, Kelly was told to leave when she asked for one but ending up describing the drink in the next bar and the bartender was the one that called it by its name. Some random soccer hooligans kept buying Molly and I drinks and they explained that most Irish start out in a pub, go to a bar, and then head off to a club. They were also amused by Lee’s outfit, which was a collared shirt underneath a nice sweater. They asked if that was how Americans dressed, and I was proud to stand up for my country and answer with a resounding yes.

Downstairs we met the acquaintance of a diva trannie (Mom, this means transsexual) and she told me I looked Madonna fabulous. We spoke with her for a while and she said people treated her well in Dublin, but she got looks when she went out in London. I believe London is quite accepting, and I think it probably had something to do with her outfit choices. We got back quite late, but I still set my alarm for the damn breakfast.

After breakfast (I was the only one that got up for it) we all left for an all day bus tour of the Wicklow Mountains. It was definitely the highlight of the trip, and well worth the twenty-five Euros. The bus driver was quite witty, and she gave us a lecture on the history of Ireland while she drove us out among the rolling hills and bogs. I don’t think I will ever see something as beautiful as the Irish countryside. Miles upon miles of unending purple heather with green every where else. The weather was also poor, and the sky was gray and overcast with low clouds that just added to the romanticism of the trip. She let us out on a cliff overlooking a lake and one of the Guinness estates. This is where I took the above picture, and the area is indescribable. We broke for lunch and then were let out again in an old cemetery adjacent to a lake. Quite emo if one asks me, but there were some old celtic headstones and crumbling buildings that made for great pictures. We came back after an hour and were given a shot of Jameson upon coming back to the bus, which I promptly gave away. If freshman year taught me anything, it’s that whiskey is Satan’s piss.

After the tour we checked out Trinity College, and Saint Patricks Cathedral and went to fucking Carrols again. The night was quite fun, some previous study abroad students had found the bar where they had filmed the band scenes from PS. I Love You, and most of us had seen (and cried after) that damn movie so we didn’t mind that it was an extra fifteen minutes past Temple Bar. They did have live music, and later in the night played some good American music. It’s always nice to hear MGMT and Kings of Leon when not at Drexel. Unlike London, Dublin's pubs and bars did not play a wide variety of techno music. We got back at 3 and then woke up at 4:45 to catch the bus to the airport where I had my first and hopefully last Burger King breakfast. Luckily the plane landed on time and we arrived for our three hour class. After which we wrote essays for said class. Needless to say I’m a little tired but it was a good weekend.