Dublin

Here I am back in Cork, and very happy about it! I loved Dublin so much. The city was a lot bigger than Cork, but everything was still walking distance from our hotel. Dublin reminded me more of an American city than what I have become accustom to in Cork. The first day we arrived around 6pm and had the whole night to ourselves. We walked around the city and went to dinner at Elephant and Castle, which had the best buffalo wings in Ireland! At night first we went to the oldest pub in Ireland, called "The Brazen Head Inn," actually our bus driver, Liam, brought us all there. Kathleen actually had an American Dollar on her so we were able to put a dollar with all of our names written on it up on the wall in the pub! After the Brazen head we went to the Temple Bar area, which is an area that is all cobblestone and filled with many different pubs and clubs. Temple Bar was a lot of fun and I definitely want to go back.

The second day we walked the steps of James Joyce's "Ulysses" throughout Dublin. It was very interesting to see that Joyce made a fictional story be so factual at the same time. Even though the character of Bloom is fictional, where he is walking around is a perfect description of the city of Dublin. We also went to the James Joyce Museum which had really great murals describing the chapters of "Ulysses." Later that afternoon we went to Guiness Factory, Dublin's number one attraction. The factory was really cool and the views from the Gravity Bar were unreal. You could see the whole city of Dublin from an all glass bar. I loved everything about the trip to the factory, except the Guiness. I only drank about 3 sips of it, I just do not understand the attraction to it. The next day we went to visit Trinity which is a University in Dublin. The campus was absolutely beautiful and I could not believe people could actually go to school at a place so beautiful. I felt like I needed to be dressed up just to be walking on the quad. Overall the trip was great and I definitely want to try and visit Dublin again if I have time!