Ireland

I won’t lie; I never thought that I was going to travel to Ireland. Let alone be there over St. Patrick’s Day! We left at three on Wednesday morning to get to the airport on time. Luckily everything went smooth this time and Ryan Air gave us zero problems. Although we had a good laugh when we “crash” landed. Ha no joke we were all dead asleep and hit the ground so hard that everybody woke up from being thrown forward or into each other. Haha Carly and I literally smacked heads... hard. I don’t know how the airplane didn’t fall apart! Too funny. Everyone on the plane was freakin out.

The unfortunate part of flying with our whole group was finding the same flight for that many people. Yup didn’t happen. We were split in half and of course I was in the first group and had to wait in Dublin for an hour and a half for the other group to arrive. Luckily I was with all my pals!

Once everyone was in Ireland we hopped on our bus… which was the nicest bus we have been on. Haha we were loving it. Our driver was awesome too. His whole dashboard was covered with leprechauns and funny decorations. The first place we went to was the Guinness storehouse. Who knew that the Y would let their students go to a brewery? I won’t lie it was actually pretty cool. Probably would have been a little bit better if I drank but whatever. It was a huge! There were five levels. Up at the top there was a bar and if you took your ticket to the top you got a free drink. Funny how we all had to take the 18 and younger ticket so we could get our cokes! Haha. It was sweet though because there was a 360 view of Dublin up top.

After we finished up there, we went and checked into our hotel. It was called Jury’s Inn and it was very nice. I roomed with Bevs and Anne! We were all pretty exhausted so we took a nap and around four headed out into the town. Dublin wasn't quite what we all expected. We were right in the middle of the city and it was almost St. Patrick's Day. So it was super busy and wasn't the cleanest place haha. It still was great and had some cool sites. We walked around and explored until it was dinner time. For dinner that night our professors made a reservation for all of us at the oldest pub in Dublin. It was such a blast and was the best meal we have had in awhile. 

The next day we had the day to do what we wanted. Yes this included some extra shut eye. Then me, Liz, Carl, Anne, and Ash spent the whole day checking out the sights and shopped of course! They had some of the cutest shops we have been to. Avoca was the name of one of them. It was like an Anthro but a little different. We went crazy in there haha. We also put together our St. Patty's day outfits. Carroll's was the store where we got all of our junk. It was amazing! They had every kind of green thing you could imagine. We loved it. Then for dinner we went to some restaurant that seemed American... our bad. Only two meals out of seven were even decent. Ha we laughed, went to the grocery store and headed back to the room for a girls night. 

Ha our theme of the trip... notice the shortbread in hand!

The next day was St. Patrick's Day... little did we know what was ahead of us. It was fun getting all decked out in green! Haha. There was a parade on the main street at 12:30. Obviously it was extremely crowded, but we were loving every minute of it. There was such a variety of people it was crazy. We saw the Crowe's and a big part of our crew who had front row spots some how. We hung out around them hoping we would be able to squeeze in once the parade started.

my gells

this kid...

Before the parade started we were just going crazy. Haha. Talking to everyone that walked by, blowing our stupid whistles and horns, getting asked to pose in pictures with people, doing some jigging with everyone haha. It was nuts but I couldn't have been happier.

Just posing with people who wanted pics with us...... haha.

The parade started and let me tell you, it was the creepiest thing we have all ever seen! HAhahah. I cannot even explain!! Let's just say the US knows how to do parades because this was the scariest thing. I honestly can't even post pictures because they are so odd. We watched maybe ten minutes of the parade and then bounced. The streets everywhere we went were just jam packed! We met some friends from all over. Our favorites were our Brazilian pals though haha. Then we went and checked out the carnival they had going on.

one of the creepy floats

By the end of the day we realized that we were making the holiday ten times better than it was really cracked up to be. Haha. We figured the parade would have been much better if we would have been intoxicated. Although we still had a great time but were pretty tired. It was getting colder too so we just went and hung out in the hotel lobby until we had to get back on the bus. 

typical.

For our third night we drove into Kilkenney. It was a much smaller town but I think I liked it better than Dublin. Much cleaner and was so darling. It was also more in the countryside which made it seem like we were in Ireland ya know? It was pretty late at night when we got there so there was a pretty good crowd out with some festivities goin on. We got dropped off right in the middle of a concert venue..ish place. Haha it was a riot! The band performing was so awful and was just screaming. Ha it was crazy. We then walked to our hostel. It was the best place we have stayed at! The lady who owned the place was darling and it was SO clean. The rooms were actually cute too! We could not have been happier. Although it was fun to find out that they were community showers the next morning... hahaha yup. That's a good story.

That night we went and found some pizza place for dinner. It was delicious and tasted just like home! Good old Papa John's pizza. It was late enough that not a whole lot was going on in the small town so we just went back and hung out at the hostel with everybody. We had some fun encounters on the way home that's for sure. Ohh Ireland. Haha.

The next morning we had free time until about two. So we just went and saw the sights.. which was basically the castle and the houses on the streets. It was fun! We stopped and sat outside of a little restaurant. The weather was beautiful so we stayed a little longer to catch some rays.

Then we headed to the Rock of Cashel. It turned out to be a castle.... none of had any idea so it was kinda funny. Ha. It was freezing so we quickly checked the place out and hopped back onto the bus. It was nice finally seeing the true countryside of Ireland. It was gorgeous!

We headed back to the airport and luckily got to all fly together. The airline this time was Aer Lingus. This airport was so legit! But the downside was that there were US ports and flights going out everywhere. We all were dying and felt like we should have been going home. Haha. The plane ride was wonderful! Once we got back into London we still had an hour and a half bus ride back to the centre. We ended up getting home a little before one. The weird thing was that since we slept all day, we were not tired at all... haha. It was Bev's bday the day before and her Mom had sent her the greatest package ever. Soooo we ended up eating all of it and went to bed at three. Luckily it was Saturday and we could sleep in! Such a great week.