After a very exhausting travel process caused by travelling on bad airlines from inconvenient airports, we arrived at our lovely hotel with its lack of free wifi and [initially] running water - oh the life of the starving college student. Fortunately, on Saturday, we awoke to sunny skies and positive attitudes. We started off the day by going straight to O'Connell Street, which is the broadest city street within Europe. Going with the record setting, also on this street is the world's tallest sculpture, The Spire of Dublin. On O'Connell's, we also popped into the General Post Office (GPO), which is for some reason historic and I don't remember why (hey give me a break, I've been seeing a lot of famous things that I'm supposed to remember lately, k?).
Part of the fun of travelling with 3 people, is you get a lot of people-rotating sets of pictures like this, get used to it:
(courtesy of Elise's camera - thanks lovely!)
Being expert tourists as we were with only the purest of intentions for our St. Patrick's day weekend, we continued exploring the sites. We wandered over to Trinity College, which is the oldest university in Ireland. It is also famous for hosting in its library the manuscript of the Book of Kells.
Look, we found a nice stranger to take a picture of all 3 of us at Trinity College!:
But don't worry, that didn't stop us from taking another set of rotating pictures:
As we had clearly already had a long day walking down one whole street and through another whole campus, we figured we had earned a break and started heading to the nearest pub. Along the way, we saw all sorts of fun things:
Why not?
A boat race!
Also, just the overall loveliness of the river
After all this we figured it was about time to wake ourselves back up with some delicious Irish coffees when we finally made it to the pub - yumm.
Afterwards, we met up with a few other lads from our program who also ventured out to Dublin for the weekend. And from there we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hopping from pubs to site-seeing attractions to pubs.
Dublin Castle
Yay, another successful group picture!
The gang
The next day, finally actual St. Patty's Day day, we awoke bright and early in preparation of the parade. From the minute we stepped out in the streets we could feel the excitement building up for the day's festivities.
Alex and Elise made a new friend! ... I stayed safely away at a distance...
This guy didn't scare me as much. Who doesn't love Guinness?
As we waited for the parade to start (and for the pubs to open...), we did some final touristy things and wandered around St. Stephen's Greens, a famous park. It wasn't exactly the sunniest of days, but it was lovely nonetheless.
We went all out with the green for the day-of
And at long last, parade time! Due to the huge crowds at the parade, we discovered we actually were able to find a better view of the parade indoor from the window of a pub on the main street, as it was elevated compared to the rest of the crowd. It also conveniently had a roof, meaning safety from the rain. Oh, and it had Guinness. Due to being indoors, we weren't able to take as many pictures, but a simple google search will convey the idea of Dublin St. Patty's day parades.
Alas, due to a flight back that night, we had to leave shortly after the parade. But all in all, I think my St. Patty's day weekend was a success. I met all sorts of interesting folks throughout the weekend, like the former soldier that cleaned up after his acid-tripping days in which snakes "laughed at him," annoying people who thought it was cool to show up to a pub during St. Patty's day in a limo and in suits with sunglasses (it was raining outside), some Swiss guy who stole my friend's seat at dinner and tried to steal his beer, a guy who apparently was also a fan of Lord of the Rings, and a woman from St. Louis who decided to adopt us and hold our spot by the window whenever we needed to stand up. I saw all sorts of interesting things. And I had all sorts of experiences that I may or may not remember for the rest of my life. That sounds about right for St. Patty's in Dublin, eh?
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