more DUBLIN!

Dublin was fabulous. The best part about the city was the atmosphere really. the people are awesome and ridiculously nice and everyone sounds like a leprechaun... seriously though.

here's a little run down of what actually happened - you may want to skip this if you're in to the whole breivity thing...

August 5th we got in to the city sooo early and checked in to our hostel at about 8:30 in the morning, but we couldn't get in our room until 3. So we went exploring. We found Lydia's hotel (who was in Ireland with her dad). She was actually sitting in the lobby of the hotel - perfect timing. We all went walking on Grafton street which is the big shopping street in the city (haha of course...) and we found St. Stephen's Green which is a lovely park and we sat there for a while. A band started to play - an Irish Military band with like full orcheastra, but they were playing such hits as Grath Brooks' I've Got Friend's in low places and the music from West Side Story. Then we went to Trinity College and saw the Books of Kells which is some old manuscript that is apparently a big deal, but I didn't think was as cool as everyone else did. We went back to the hotel to nap - much needed. We are staying in a four person room and our roommate is a 20 year old french boy named Maurice who speaks limited english and is working in Dublin for a month to improve his language skills. He is very nice and clean and quiet. Then we met Lydia and her dad for dinner at Wagamama!! yay. After dinner, Tom, Lyd's dad, went off on his own to see a play. We all walked around and went to a pub near the temple bar district which is where we are staying and has crazy nightlife. Drunk people everywhere... we couldn't stay out too late though cause we were still jet lagged we were in bed by 11:30. go us.
On the 6th we went shopping - i bought a cute jacket, which I needed cause I'm awesome and didn't bring one. Then we had lunch and took a tour of Dublin castle which was one of the better tours I've ever been on. Our tour guide had the best accent ever and looked like Kate Winslet. score one for the tour guide. Then we went to this museum which won the "Best Museum in Europe Award" in 2002. Very cool. It specialized in old artifacts. That night we went on a pub crawl and took Maurice (our roommate) with us bc he doesn't seem to know anyone in the city. The crawl was lots of fun, our tour guide, Crew, has traveled all over the world and had some of the most ridiculous travel stories I've ever heard. We were elegantly wasted by the end of the night and Sasha led us to this club that was one of the "most posh" in Dublin. It was actually really cool inside and they were playing trendy 80s music, but someone spilled red wine on sasha and so we promptly went home.
We slept in til 1:30 on the 7th... yeah for hang overs and jet lag. We got up and I ventured to the writers museum, cause i'm super cool and Mel and Sasha went to St. Patrick's Cathedral - as in the day. We met up at the National Gallery which was plesant and free. the operative word of course being free. Then we toured the Guinness factory which was for sure a high light of the trip. (Did you know that Guinness is the same as the Guinness book of world records....yeah, it is.) On top of the factory is a rooftop lounge with an amazing view of the city. That night we had a nice dinner, packed, slept, woke up and headed off to edinburgh....

here are the corresponding pictures: http://community.webshots.com/user/lstar85 enjoy!!

stay tuned for scotland.

much love, lindsey