So I have to say one thing that keeps being a constant during our whirlwind tour of Ireland is our constant change of plans! And fortunately both of us (erin and I) are flexible and just view it as an adventure and we were never really stuck to our plans in the first place so it doesn't make that much of a difference!
Yesterday we had planned to get up go to town grab little thank you gifts then take a bus to galway and spend the rest of our time there. Then we found out that the maxwells weren't going on their family vacation until Monday so we could spend another night with them. On top of that Max and Jean were planning on going into Dublin at night and if we wanted to go they could give us ride home late. With that all in mind we decided to stay in Greystones and get all of our other Dublin "check-list" stuff done and then spend Saturday night there and then head out to Galway Sunday (today) and stay Sunday and Monday night, taking an earlyish bus straight from Galway on Tuesday to Dublin Airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam!
Most of this went according to the new plan. We got up early, were welcomed by the girls, saw all of Jessica-Mai's gear before she went to hurling practice, saw Nic-nic's baby hurl and then did our little trip to town. With our Dart train chosen Max graciously agreed to drop us off at the station but unfortunately an accident closed the main road that makes for easy access between their house and the station so rather than having us wait another hr (we wouldn't be able to get there intime for that train any more) Max drove us all the way to the closest Luas station. So without planning it Erin and I got to add a new form of transportation to our growing list:
-plane, - local double decker busses (both in Dublin and Scottland) -taxi (going out in Edinburgh) -coach (intercity bus in both Edinburgh to Inverness and Dublin to Galway) - -scottish rail - boat ride (on Inverness) - tour bus (to Loch Ness) -London tube - Dublin Dart - Dublin Luas - and of course the most used OUR LEGS!
Once in Dublin we went straight to the Guiness Hop Shop and Erin and I were quite impressed at how they designed the whole place to be ooberly interactive, very effective fonts, sounds, design pretty much everything our nerd brains analyze when going to museumish type places! Any way it was a lot of fun to learn about it all the 9,000 year lease, how they make guiness, the best way to taste test guiness (although both Erin and I still don't really like it...sorry!) although we did thoroughly enjoy a chocolate guiness muffin! The advertising floor was also really interesting with how they marketed guiness, how they shipped it around the world way back in the 18th century, how they came up with slogans and the brand image. One of the best parts was the Gravity Bar at the very top with the 360 degrees of the city. Then on the windows by where the site was they had painted the name of the site and then a quote from some famous old literary work that mentioned the place.
Also coincidentally enough up in the gravity bar was where our Ginger Tally reached the amazing 100!
Looking at the view we realized we hadn't seen St. Patricks Cathedral and we made that our next stop. Again without a very detailed map we wandered according to our mental compases in the right direction and had nice tour of some neighborhoods, took sweet pictures of "dublin's doors" which is a theme of a postcard we see in many of the tourist shops. Soon after we arrived on the footsteps of the Cathedral and enjoyed a quick break in the pretty park and then continued on our way to more center city to get dinner!
Once fully fed (kind of, we had to go to the market to pick up a little more food after we scarfed down our dinners! We then went around dame street area looking for a pub that had been recommended by a local trinity student we had met a few days before. We spent some time there then headed out to find somewhere new and were captured by a huge crowd of people out in front of Trinity. So of course we wander to the crowd and find some friendly looking young people and ask them what they're waiting for. We found out they were about to do a famous "Dublin Pub tour." The guy leading the tour had ran out of wristbands aka tickets but Erin and I decided to just follow along and make friends with the participants and what not! Fortunately everything worked out and the fact that we didnt have wristbands went un noticed and we made fun friends from Austrailia, US (two ucsb guys ah americans everywhere!) brazil, Italy, and canada while visiting a few pubs not on Temple Street. Ironically the last pub we were at had a basement with tables and you could buy a pitcher of beer to play beer pong! So funny how a pub is known in Dublin for having beer pong!
ginger count: reached 140 while in the basement of a pub listening to a live band
-side note: when we met the trinity student we were talking about going out and what not and he asked us about what we do in the US and we said we go to Frat parties. He then said he wanted to start the first Irish frat and told us about how his house where he lives with a couple of other guys had a "frat" themed party trying to make it like their impression of american frats!
We had to leave the "tour" a little early to go meet up with Jean and Max and fortunately where we were was only 2 blocks from where they were so it worked out perfectly to head back to Greystones with them!
Today!
Woke up early and made sure we had everything packed, got breakfast and headed out Dart to Dublin then currently on Bus to Galway (i'm writing in word and am going to later post online...the bus says it has wifi but when we asked the driver he said he didn't know it was just set up so we assume maybe someone forgot to turn it on!)
Anywho halfway through our ride I was dozing and thinking about the rest of our trip and how much time we had left and the time in Amsterdam. Then I realized it didn't really make sense for us to be flying to Amsterdam on Tuesday (when Erin had said our flight was, and it sounded right at the time so I jsut went along and didn't think about it..oops!) because I am heading back to London on Thursday and then back to California on Friday! So then I checked my saved e-mail files and sure enough we actually fly to Amsterdam tomorrow aka Monsay, so now we have a day less in Galway. But fortunately that's not devistating news, we would have wanted to do a long trip today any way regardless and we will still get time to explore here, see the West coast and spend a night in a different Irish town and take the early train to the airport tomorrow morning and then arrive in a new country!!
Side Notes:
While staying with the Maxwells we've learned the native celtic sports 1. hurling 2. irish football and 3. handball!
we discovered that the best way to get our coffee we want is to ask for expresso over ice and then ask for milk and its way cheaper and they understand what we're talking about!
they call bachelor parties stag parties (ran into 2 during our pub crawl) and then bachelorette are hen parties :]
pictures to come later!
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