Study Abroad in Paris!: Dublin

By far the best city I visited in Europe! So glad I saved the best for last. For starters the people were SO FRIENDLY (could have something to do with them being drunk all the time...but whatever) and the city was beautiful. I was surprised! You could walk everywhere and it was just bursting with tiny pubs and happy music and GUINNESS! It resembled Boston a lot in the way the roads were set up (not a grid haha and confusing as hell) and the buildings (mostly brick). I loved it! So we arrived in Dublin (Iceland finally cooperated) and our hostel was so easy to get to for once haha and it was actually centrally located which was also a first. We were located right near the river and a 5 minute walk from the bar area and trinity college. We couldn't check into our hostel right away because it was only 10 am, so we left our bags there and went to get lunch and walked around and saw trinity college, saint patricks cathedral, and christ church. Then we headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap (we had to be up at 5 am in order to catch our flight on time). We headed out to dinner at a little pub and got pints of guinness and I had a steak and guinness pie...it was so good! Then we decided to do the pub crawl so we headed to the first bar (it was still light out haha) and it turned out that it was our lucky night because we ended up being the only three people on the pub crawl so we had our own private tour. The pubs were all really cool and exactly like I pictured irish pubs to be like. Lots of guinness and lots of jameson. For once we were surrounded by people who actually LIKED americans haha. Imagine that? At one pub I was sitting there by myself because Steph and Andy were off somewhere and the guy sitting next to me asked me what part of Ireland I was from. I told him I was from the states and he laughed and said you could've fooled me, you look Irish. So we got into a huge convo about how my grandmother is Irish and he knew the village her family came from so it was cool. I guess I never thought that having dark hair, light eyes, and freckles was Irish but apparently it is. The next day Steph and Andy went on the bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and I waited at the hostel for Bay to get there (she had an exam on the day we left so she had to fly there the next day). We went and got bagels for lunch (I had forgotten what they were since france doesn't eat them). Then we went and took pictures of all the things I saw the day before (it rained the first time I was there so it didn't make for pretty pictures) and then we went to the guinness factory. It was UNREAL! Its like a HUGE compound in the middle of Dublin! The factory setup was really interesting. The tour was a self-guided tour (thankfully, I HATE guided tours, I get bored), and you followed the process of how to make guinness and what makes it different than other beers. We got free samples and even got to pour our own free pint from the tap. On the top floor they have a gravity bar which is this huge glass circular room so you have 360 degree views of the entire city. It was beautiful! After that we went to the Jameson distillery haha. No wonder why Dublin is full of drunks, their two main attractions are alcohol factories! The Jameson tour was a guided tour and super expensive so we opted to just walk around the factory and buy our own drinks from the bar haha. We even got chocolate truffles that were Jameson flavored. SO much better than the stupid guided tour! That night we went out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and split nachos and chicken wings (things we also cannot get in france). On our way home we got a pack of guinness and snacks and parked ourselves in front of the tv at the hostel for the night. We had to be up super early the next day for our bus tour of the Cliffs. We woke up the next morning super early and met our bus at 730 near the hostel. We got breakfast at McDonalds (I know shocker...but you can get bagels and cream cheese at McDonalds in Europe). Our tour guide was really funny. He entertained us with stories of Irish myths and even told us a funny one about a famous american political family. Ask me about it sometime...its entertaining. Telling it via blog just wouldn't do it justice. The tour took us from Dublin (on the eastern coast of Ireland), out by Galway (the western coast). Who knew you could go from one side of the country to the other and back via bus in one day!? Ireland is beautiful! I've never seen so much green in my entire life. We made a few stops before the Cliffs at various monuments that didn't have too much of an effect on me. Churches just aren't very interesting in my opinion. But the scenery I saw from the bus was gorgeous! Turns out Bay had packed the rest of our Guinness from the night before haha. Typical American's. But whatever. We finally arrived at the Cliffs and let me tell you they are well worth the drive. The sheer size of them and the size of the straight drop to the ocean was enough to take your breath away. Its amazing how the grass grows right up the edge and then...NOTHING, just a straight drop into the Atlantic. We hiked along them until we came to a sign that said danger do not go beyond this point, and naturally we kept going. A lot of other people did too. And yes I'm sure you're saying to yourself well if they jumped off the bridge would we have followed...and at that point the answer was probably yes. Once you got off the main tourist path it was even more beautiful. There were huge untouched fields full of flowers and nobody was around to ruin your pictures. We got out as far as the rock that Harry Potter 6 was filmed at and then turned around and headed back. Of course we had to see where HP was filmed, since we're such avid obsessive fans haha. But let me tell you, that bus ride back was AWFUL! It was just our luck to be stuck behind this god awful family that decided to take their 2 year old daughter on a 14 hour bus tour! HOW RUDE CAN YOU BE?! What child at that age would be okay for 14 hours cooped up on a bus seeing things she doesn't care about nor will never remember. I wanted to kill the parents every time she screamed...which let me tell you was OFTEN! It was horrible...I thought Bay was going to kill someone. Just our luck right?? But we were in Dublin so we can't exactly complain. Once we finally got back we were STARVING! We stumbled upon a burger place like Johnny Rockets and got chocolate milkshakes and burgers. Let me tell you it was amazing to have a cheeseburger with jalapeno peppers on it and the best part was my stomach didn't even bother me after. Maybe I can incorporate those back into my diet permanently (JUST KIDDING...kinda). That night the three of us just relaxed and got ready to head back to Paris. Andy flew out sunday night because he had class on monday and we flew out first thing monday morning. Definitely the best city and I wish I could go back. If I could pick any European city to live in it would be Dublin. Maybe I'll find a finance company there after college and grad school haha or maybe I'll work for the finance department for Guinness...what do you think?? Oh and the best part about our hostel...it was the old recording studio for U2...does Litton Lane ring a bell for any of you U2 fans??? It should.