Dooblin, Oyerlind

Friday morning five friends and I left Nantes on a plane to Dublin. We were really excited but we had no idea how much fun we were in store for! When we first arrived, we took a bus from the airport to downtown and checked in to our globetrotters hostel, which was awesome. It had chandeliers and an Irish breakfast to look forward to in the morning. Then we dropped off our stuff for the weekend and left the hostel to grab some lunch and explore around the city.

View of Dublin from a bridge. I liked the tipsy tower over there.

We went shopping and visited Trinity College and saw a bunch of street performers (painted people, fake statues, musicians, sand artists) which is where we met this lil guy...

Our Irish friend

And walked around some more and saw St. Patrick's Cathedral!

Then we headed over to the Guinness Storehouse. After going through the self-guided tour and learning about the history, making, and serving of Guinness, we got a free pint each to drink at the highest bar in Dublin, Gravity bar. It's at the top of the storehouse and looks out over the city.

Preston and I celebrated our first pint of Guinness until the foam was gone... then it was kind of  chore.

After the storehouse, we all went to Temple Bar, the happenin' street in downtown Dublin with all the pubs and street musicians at night. We had to wait for a while to get into the restaurant, but dinner was yummy and we got to hear some great music while we were wandering around.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to eat our hostel's Irish breakfast (yum!) and catch our tour bus that was going to take us on a day-long tour of the Irish countryside, stopping for a bit in Glendalough and Killkenny. We drove right by where the movies P.S. I Love You and Braveheart were filmed! At Glendalough (Irish for "valley of two lakes," yeah, I listened to our bus driver), there was an old Monastic city and graveyard and a trail that went around the little lake there. The fall colors made the Irish countryside even prettier and the walk through the crisp air with our new Australian friend Milly (we met her on the tour bus, she's an au pair in Amsterdam this year) was very nice.

Monastic graveyard

Irish countryside, Irish girly...

The trail went around this pretty lake

Finally we went to Killkenny and had a genuine Irish lunch in a pub there (I had the best beef and potato stew ever) and took a picture of us and Milly at the Killkenny cathedral.

Me, Preston, Kelsei-Kei, Elise and Milly

There was a castle in Killkenny too, but living in France the novelty of castles has worn off a bit; our conversation went something like this: "Do you guys want to go inside the castle?" "Uhh, well I guess if we're right here anyway... or maybe we can just go into that little court area right inside and take some picture. Then we can go GET LUNCH!"

When we got back to Dublin, we ate dinner and went to the pubs again to listen to live music and enjoy each other's company. At about quarter til 11p.m., we headed off to the airport, where we made a fort out of Starbucks lounge chairs and slept in a pile until our earrrly a.m. flight the next morning. I slept all day Sunday.

Now I'm back in Nantes gearing up for midterms and looking forward to Geneva and Rome, not too far off now!