we took the bus to the generator hostel where we were staying, conveniently located next door to the jameson distillery. so this is where my rant about bus2alps comes in, i'll keep it brief. so we did a bus2alps trip because it seemed reasonable to get hostel, tours of dublin and galway, guinness tour, and entrance to cliffs of moher included and it was for the most part a deal. but the second day in the generator, which was an abnormally nice hostel, they overbooked us and we had to move to the only place in dublin that had 56 beds available. you can imagine it wasn't ideal. that part was fine, the guides were nice and i won't complain about their problem solving skills, however, the whole thing was in general something we could have done better on our own. also, these tours are for people who have not the slightest idea what it means to be an adult and rely on bus2alps to hold their hands as they travel around europe. it was fine for one trip, but we actually met people who had done every trip they had taken with bus2alps. to give you an idea, when the hostels were changed there were a select few girls who cried and called their dads to book a hotel for them. i wish i was kidding. so in general, don't book them if you have the slightest clue how to take care of yourself. and that's the meanest thing i'll say about my entire trip abroad because i'm compensating for being mad at myself for not doing better research. moving on!
so we got settled in very quickly and were out the door within a half hour. we headed out to the temple bar area and basically went bar hopping searching for live music and friendly irishmen. there was no shortage of either. the irishmen were so friendly that i even got proposed to just walking by one of them at the first pub we walked into. i said yes, duh. we went to a variety of places including the temple bar itself where we met some random irish guys that ella proceeded to let write on her stomach "i <3 ... (insert graphic image here)" you get the idea. they were just great. or as they say in ireland, they were grand. it was also awesome, but not very surprising, the amount of names i recognized from people at home. i also assumed the alter ego of Jillian Kilpatrick for the weekend which was a hit with the locals. Kilpatrick is my mom's maiden name and for even some of my closest friends it might come as a shock that my real full name is Jillian and you've just never ever heard me refer to myself like so before. Sorry deRosas side of family, but it only seemed fitting for this one weekend to ditch our ounce of latin heritage and go with our real roots. So, Jillian Eileen Kilpatrick from Boston traipsed around dublin the rest of the night pretending to remember all of deirdre goulding's school of irish dance reels and jigs and really feeling quite at home. after lots of different bars, beers, locals, and music we decided to head home around 1ish knowing we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.
this was necessary because the cars were going the wrong way, miracle i didn't get hit by one
the river liffey, dublin
live music at gogarty's playing my new favorite song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az56T76krgc
the ha'penny bridge, cause it used to cost half a pence to cross it. those clever irish
speaking of guinness, after our lunch we met back up with the group, found out about the hostels, moved hostels by cab paid for by bus2alps and then cabbed to our tour at the guinness storehouse. the guinness storehouse was a staple to our time in dublin, we drank a hefty amount of guinness cause when in ireland do as the irish do. so guinness was actually created before the united states in 1750 by arthur guinness because there was no fresh drinking water in ireland and whiskey and gin etc were too harsh so he created guinness for people to live off of. hence, the drinking culture in ireland, it's actually a crucial part of their history believe it or not. we toured every floor, enjoyed our free sample(s) (oops were we supposed to take one?.... we took three), learned about the making, the history, the advertising, etc and then headed to the top floor for our free guinness at the gravity bar. did you know it takes 119.5 seconds to pour a perfect draft guinness? for those of you who have had to do it before you know what a pain in the ass it is to pour one but after watching them do it at the gravity bar (and every bar i ordered a guinness at) i think i can take my talents to the orleans inn this summer. the gravity bar had an unreal view of all of dublin and we enjoyed our guinnesses as well as ran into our friend sarah from tulane! such a small world.
my first beer ever
guinness mustaches...yum
after guinness we went back to the hostel to get ready to go out. no time wasted. we grabbed a burger for dinner before....which was also unreal ugh the beef in ireland was just to die for and being a carnivore like myself i was yearning for some good ol' fashioned homegrown MEAT. afterwards we headed to a pub crawl with the rest of the bus2alps crew. honestly we would have gone on a different one but our really awesome tour guide from that morning said he was going to be there so we were like we must go he is the man. he wasn't there. and then we found out that his tours and these pub crawls were run by the same company, oh the deception! never thought such a jolly irishman would lie to me like so but i guess its the business. so we had to endure the somewhat painful company of the other bus2alps tourists during this pub crawl. we went to some cool places including one of the bars bono owns but once we finally got to the fourth bar that had the live music (what i was looking for the whole time) we decided to ditch and stay at this place once everyone left for the next place. it was here that we ran into some french canadians who had some irish friends that convinced us to follow them to another pub. motto to following random strangers this weekend: why not? we weren't going to get taken in ireland so we jumped on every opportunity to hang with locals. we met these guys' irish friends, one of them legitimately being mitchell from modern family's straight and incredibly drunk and hilarious twin, and followed them to this super swanky club called hogan's. it was too swanky for me but ella said it reminded her of LA, not a club but not a pub just a very swanky bar. we met all of their friends and i could have just let them talk to me for hours cause i like listening to their accents but once we realized the ratio of girls to guys we figured we should probably ditch the situation as it was getting late anyway and we had to be up at 7 am.
the next day we headed out to the cliffs of moher bright and early. it was still dark when we got on the bus, which was some sort of luxury mercedes benz bus (not too shabby bus2alps i'll give you that one cause its in the name). the seats on this thing put me right to sleep and when i woke up the sun was rising over the irish countryside and i don't care how corny it is but it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. until we got to the cliffs. the cliffs of moher are in county clare and at their highest reach something like 750 ft. they were also in the running for the seven wonders of the world. put the cliffs in portugal to shame. they were absolutely breathtaking and although ella's camera snapped a lot of great shots, no photo can really do the view justice. we of course snapped touristy pictures from every angle and wandered up and down the edges of the cliffs for 2 hours. it was actually pretty mind blowing because they had a dedication to those who had lost their lives at the cliffs of moher, which initially i thought was suicides, but actually probably commemorated people who had just fallen off the side as well because if you aren't careful it's definitely possible. sorry kind of a grave thought. anyway! gorgeous views and so many stereotypical abroad shots taken. this was probably my favorite part of the whole trip, it was to die for and everyone needs to go in their lifetime.
everything is so damn GREEN
yes everyone, ella and i are dating and only take pics with each other
this shot was so candid!!!!
after the cliffs of moher, we headed out to galway. the ride to galway was all through these tiny winding backroads in the country side which had some more amazing views but was incredibly bumpy and i was pretty sure i was gonna toss my cookies at one point cause i felt so carsick. also at one point we had to stop cause a heard of sheep trotted by our bus. no joke. how irish is that? i loved galway from the second we set foot in it. we got a walking tour of this city as well from this very old irishman who was something like 7th generation galwegian named Liam. the city was tiny and we saw all of its points of interest in an hour walking, but if i had to compare it i think that galway would be the granada of ireland. more small town with a hint of city feel to it with a lot of students and culture. after the tour we had time to wander around so we sat down for lunch and ate more amazing food. this time i had quiche lorraine and butternut squash... yum. and of course we headed to shop st for some dessert where i had actually the most amazing hot chocolate and slice of carrot cake in my life. i'm starting to realize half of this entry is about how much i enjoyed the food.... major #fatgirlprobz oh well. there was also some sort of musical parade going on where this marching band played songs ranging from irish songs to the scooby doo theme song to grease lightning while two people on huge stilts walked around them in weird costumes giving people high fives. it was definitely entertaining. also, thomas dillon the original maker of the claddagh ring started this symbol and selling this ring in galway. i've been given two claddagh rings in my lifetime and both times they haven't fit my fat fingers so i figured while in galway it only seemed right to finally invest in a genuine one. the rest of the day was spent wandering around galway up the river and people watching. we headed back to dublin around 6 for our last night there.
OG claddagh
after the bus ride back i was a little delusional cause the bus was 1000 degrees for some reason but after some motivation we were back out the door by 9:30 to head out to some different places. we stopped at the porter house for some specially brewed beers and some live music. after a beer there we headed down to camden st per recommendation but realized it was more of a local club scene which wasn't what we were looking for. we started walking back towards temple bar when we decided to walk down this random back road that seemed kind of crowded. then we saw a sign for live music so we walked into this bar called the stag's head. we went downstairs expecting bathrooms and happened upon some of the best live music we saw all weekend. it was a very authentic place filled with irish locals, but of course you can't just walk into these places without realizing how small this world really is. ella and i were mocking ourselves for being so american in this very irish place when the guy behind us asked us where in the states we were from. he happened to be from atlantic city near where ella has a summer house and knew a bunch of her friends from brigantine. smallest world ever. this kids mom was from ireland and they were all there on family vacation so we got to hang with their whole family and they were the merriest clan ever the mom was loving dancing with us and we had a blast with all of them.
the next morning we woke up early to get a full last day wandering dublin. what better way to start your day then a good glass of whiskey? we headed to the jameson distillery for a 10 am tour because that just seemed like the most healthy choice. the jameson distillery is actually the old jameson distillery, they now distill their whiskey in cork and this was more of a done up museum like tour but nonetheless still really cool. jameson is hands down the best whiskey out there and as i learned on sunday its because they distill their whiskey three times and age it five years in three different kinds of casks and then marry it all together so that's where it gets its smoother kind of vanilla like taste. at the end ella got to do the honors of being a certified whiskey taster (which our tour guide had to put out a disclaimer at the beginning to all americans: this is not a shot contest... embarrassing). so we tasted jameson compared to jack daniel's (once distilled whiskey) and johnnie walker black (twice distilled scotch). jameson wins again. i got a complimentary whiskey ginger and savored it til the very last drop.
GOOD MORNING WORLD!!!
a balanced part of today's breakfast
turn that chandelier upside down... my christmas tree next year
after jameson we were feeling a little silly but walked around the rest of the day. we saw st. patrick's cathedral and went into the bank pub which was rated national bar of the year in 2009 and i can see why it was absolutely gorgeous. but we went in there because our tour guide from the first day told us they had an exact replica of the book of kells that they even change the page every day like they do at trinity and it doesn't cost 12 euros to see. how sneaky are we? after we sat down for a burger at bobo's which seemed to me to be the irish boston burger company. they had so many choices. i obviously went for the emancipator which was complete with onion rings, bacon, etc... i practically made love to this burger it was so good. okay last time i talk about the food i ate. anyway before heading back to the hostel to grab our stuff and head to the airport we went to a bar near jameson that seemed to be a sort of whole in the wall called cobblestone. they had live music but it was very mellow and enjoyable sunday afternoon in a bar kinda setting if you catch my drift. we enjoyed one last guinness before hitting the road. only seemed appropriate to fill out stomachs with jameson, guinness, and a burger before heading out, right?
YUM
so we sadly parted ways with ireland. i have already started researching grad programs in dublin because i am actually obsessed and want to move back. i am so glad i got to visit but i know it would have been tOo convenient for me to study abroad there. i am certainly enjoying the challenge of being in spain and it is perfect for me for this semester, but ireland is where i can see myself living for the rest of my life. still waiting to find my gerry, ya know? this weekend i head out with my program to some local spanish cities, sevilla and cordoba. i'm leaving earlier than my program with kathryn because we are going SKYDIVING! sevilla is ranked in the top 10 places in the world to go skydiving actually and it was pretty reasonably priced as well (of course if you don't buy the completely overpriced photos+DVD package). it's something i have always wanted to do, and i'm actually pretty scared of heights.... so if i don't pee my pants it will be a success. if i write another post you'll know i've survived!! as they say in ireland, sláinte!
wow some of the photos in this blog are absolutely incredibly amazingly fantastic
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