Luck of the Irish

We left Sevilla early on Saturday morning. We had to be at the airport around 8AM and then it was off to Ireland on another crazy Ryan Air adventure. It brings new meaning to "flying on a wing and a prayer" because honestly most of the time I feel unsure of that fact that we will make it to our destination in one piece, but this blog is proof that we beat the odds at least a few times. After our 2 hour flight into Dublin we were in the land of green. It was so weird, EVERYONE was speaking ENGLISH!! I honestly had no idea what to think about that because it seems so weird that the general population would speak english!! After pickin up Esteban's bag from baggage claim we went to the information desk to find out the best way to get into the city center. We bought tickets for the regular city bus and then we were off. I believe most people underestimate the odd feeling of drivin on what I would consider the wrong side of the road. You also board on the opposite side of the bus too, which is just weird. It took us about 45 minutes on the bus to get to the city center, at which point we had to figure out where our apartment was. (Esteban found a company that rents apartments in Dublin and it was about as cheap as a hotel so we decided we would do that because we could cook for ourselves and save some €€€€) After a few wrong turns and some different sets of directions, we finally found the office for the company and got settled into the apartment. It was a two bedroom apartment with a nice living room, kitchen and one bath. I slept in the living room on the pull out couch. It was actually rather comfortable!! After getting settled in, we went out to explore a little of Dublin and to get some groceries for dinner. We went to the Botanical Gardens in Dublin which were incredibly beautiful, they are definitely a hidden gem in Dublin and if you are ever there you should go and check them out!! We didn't have a lot of time in the gardens because we got there kind of late in the afternoon so we didn't get to explore as much as we had wanted to but there were some gorgeous flowers and the Greenhouses were incredibly beautiful!! After the gardens, we decided that since we were in Ireland, we should definitely make some Mexican food haha. We found an open air market and bought some fresh veggies and such and then we headed to the supermarket for the rest of the food. We had guacamole, fajitas and some salad. It was pretty amazing, we also threw some cut fruit in a pot for a fruit salad and threw it in the freezer to get it nice and cold for dessert, the only problem was that we forgot it was in there til a good while after dinner, so we had more or less frozen fruit salad, but it was a lot of fun, cuz we all just picked it out of the pot at the same time. We hung out in the apartment and just enjoyed being able to hang out together inside and play some cards. We don't really get the chance to do that in Spain because we all have homestays and you really can't bring friends over. I think that is one thing I have really missed, being able to just have somewhere to hang out. After dinner we decided that we would go out for a little while and take in a little bit of the night life. It was cold and a little drizzly but we walked across the river Liffe and into the Temple Bar area. We walked around a little bit but honestly we were all exhausted, so our little outing only lasted for about 30 minutes before we all came back to the apartment and crashed. The next morning we rose bright and early because we were a taking a tour of the Wicklow Mountains which left at 9AM, which is early for those of us who are living the Spanish lifestyle. We got to the tour and met our tour guide/bus driver who was named Ita, which is not pronounced Ida, she was quite adamant about that fact. We started our Irish history lesson, as we drove through Dublin to pick people up from different locations. It was really interesting to learn about the Irish people and their roots. Their history is pretty interesting and it was definitely a highlight of my trip!! As we rode through the Irish countryside we learned all about the Irish, it was great. We stopped at the Irish Sea to take some pictures which was pretty cool. After that we rode around for a long while just taking in the scenery, or if your name is Christine, sleeping because history just does not interest you haha. We finally broke for lunch at the beggining of the Wicklow Mountains. After that we began moving through the Wicklow Mountains. We saw some pretty cool sites. We stopped at a few glacial lakes which were about 200ft down below us on the cliffs. We saw the tree under which Mel Gibson was married, which was just an interesting little bonus. The glacial lakes were pretty amazing and you could see how they had been carved out of the sides of the mountains and hills. After the glacial lakes we moved farther in and saw a really cool bog, I can honestly say I had never seen a bog before that. It was really cool and it was such a large expanse in the middle of the mountains. Honestly most of the trip was pretty surreal. We finally reached our destination, Glendalough. It was and Irish monastic settlement from about 800 years ago. It's where a lot of different manuscripts were copied by Irish monks with a lot of flourish and color. It was pretty cool to see the old remains of the chapel and the huge, 30 meter, tower which was built with a foundation, which was pretty impressive to me. We roamed throughout the settlement and made it all the way to the back, to the shore of a huge glacier lake. It was a beautiful scene. After taking a few pictures at the glacial lake, we found a cool tree with a huge droopy limb and of course we decided it would be a great place for another group picture!! What we didn't know was how funny watching Kali, Elisa and Christine climb onto the limb would be!! Honestly it looked like something out of the Three Stooges!! It was slapstick humor at its best!! We finally got everyone on the limb and some other tourists took the picture of us, which was nice of them!! After we dismounted they decided they liked the idea of this group picture so they thought they would make their own. This consisted of hoisting a rather pregnant woman and her sister up into the limb. After those to Esteban suggested that the mother of the pregnant woman get up on the limb also, now this woman was probably in her late 60s, aka this was probably a horrible idea!! So the two guys tried to toss her up on the limb like they had done with the other two woman, but she wasn't quite as limber and she couldn't stop laughing!! We also couldn't stop laughing because this plan made ours look well planned or something haha! After two failed attempts, Esteban, Christine and I all decided to help hoist her into the tree, which to all of our surprise actually happened!! The whole process had been one of the funniest moments of my life! The two guys climbed into the tree with them and then we took their group picture for them, I'm sure they are still laughing about that!! After that we hussled back to the bus to head back into Dublin. We were all pretty exhausted from the walking and such so we were glad to sit back down on the bus and to head back. When we got back we got off the bus but had a question for the guide. We wanted to know if she could recommend a pub with authentic Irish music and to our surprise, instead of giving us directions, she told us to get back on the tour bus. She drove us to this really neat bar, where a group of musicians were playing music. We sat and listened for a while and then we headed back for the apartment. Esteban and I went by the grocery story while the girls went back to the apartment to start on dinner. We brought the groceries back and started making pasta with a meat sauce, garlic bread, salad, and yet again some fruit salad. Dinner was pretty amazing and it was great to all work together and make dinner! We had a lot of fun just making dinner. After dinner we decided to play cards again, before we ate our frozen fruit salad concoction again. We had all intentions of going out after dinner, we were all worn out and so we just went to bed because we were getting up early the next morning. I feel like trips never really involve much rest, we always seem to be getting up early for something. We got up the next morning early to go to Trinity College and see the Book of Kells, which is the four Gospels, and was copied by the Irish monks and has all sorts of ornate lettering and caligraphy. They were pretty amazing!! After Trinity college we headed to take our free walking tour of Dublin. (This is a really neat new thing they are doing in a lot of major European cities. Normally a university student or young person leads the tour which is completely free of cost, but at the end they ask for tips. I would highly recommend it because you get a great tour and you just tip whatever you feel like it was worth to you). Our tour guide was a senior at Trinity College and he was really knowledgable about the Irish history and so yet again I was in heaven, but the girls didn't enjoy it quite as much. We went all over Dublin getting little history lessons on every major part of dublin!! After the tour we headed over to the Guiness factory to take the tour of the warehouse. It was really cool to see how the brewing process had changed over the years and to see how large the warehouse had been!! The view from the top was worth every penny!! You could see all of Dublin from up there!! After the tour we headed back to the apartment to hang out and take a siesta! After the siesta we headed out to get dinner because we thought we should eat out atleast once. Dinner was pretty good I got a cajun chicken wrap and the rest of the group either got soup or a burger. After dinner we walked around Dublin for a little while since it was our last nite there, then it was back to the apartment to get some sleep before we flew out before the sun came up the next day!! It was a great trip and I definitely want to go back some time and explore more of Ireland!! I would love to see more of the countryside and of course to see the Blarney Stone in Cork!!