Day 1 - Dublin

Today was our first day in Ireland! We arrived in Dublin at about 6:40am local time. The plane ride was bad - I'm of the opinion that there is no possible way to get comfortable enough to sleep on an international flight. As I write right now, it is about 7:40pm in Dublin. I've officially been awake for 33 hours! When we got into Dublin, we had a little adventure trying to find our hostel, Jacobs Inn! We may or may not have circled it several times before we figured out where it was.

Once at the hostel, we dropped our bags off in the rooms and were set loose to wreak havoc on the city (just kidding! We were on our best behavior, I promise!). I, along with about 7 other people from the trip, took a really long walk around the city - we basically did a huge loop around all the fun places. We found cute little shops, saw the River Liffey (the river that divides Dublin into north and south), and a bunch of other random stuff (there will be pictures!). While we were out, we found the best little pub called M.J. O'Neills. We spent a few hours there just hanging out, warming up, and eating lunch. I had shepherd's pie - and I actually kind of liked it!

After lunch we saw a memorial for the victims of the Great Famine and walked around some more.

After a little rest back at the hostel, 10 of us went to see the Guinness Storehouse! Super cool - everything you ever wanted to know about how Guinness is made and its history is in that one 7 story building. On the 7th story is the Gravity Bar, which is round and has glass walls so you can see the city surrounding the brewery. We went at night so we saw all the city lights - they were beautiful! Then we came back to Jacobs and had dinner.

I really love it here. It's kind of cold (mid 30s) and I don't have a lot of really warm clothes (darn it, I'm going to have to go shopping!), but the city is so amazing. It's a big city, but the pace is a lot slower than what I expected. One thing that came up while we were eating lunch at O'Neills was that no one around us was distracted - they paid attention to their friends and conversation, and we didn't see even one person check a cell phone. I thought that was pretty interesting. The architecture really got my attention too. It's so beautiful! We saw the Temple Bar area which is just south of the River Liffey, which was adorable with its ornate buildings and cobbled streets, and I absolutely loved the style. A lot of the other buildings in Dublin are also really gorgeous.

All in all, a really, really, REALLY long but awesome day. 33 hours so far...and it's only getting longer. I'm about to keel over from exhaustion, but I'm so excited to be here!

Love,
Amanda