Last Stop, Dublin

We arrived in Dublin at 6pm and found our hostel very easily.  Our room was awesome!  It was Saturday night, so we quickly got ready to head out.  I really enjoyed the nice shower in our ensuite bathroom.  While I showered D went to get us beers and dinner.  Dinner was delicious and consisted of a baguette and Babybel cheese.  Bread and cheese are our weaknesses and luckily super cheap!

We were told to go to Grafton Street by a local we met on the bus.  She said the Temple Bar District was too touristy.  I guess we like touristy because Grafton Street was pretty quiet and Temple Bar was much more our style, full of music and dancing.  Just what we were hoping for!  We had a blast!  The bars all had live music, mostly American songs, especially Sweet Home Alabama.  Along the streets there were performers all over.  Some sang, some did magic tricks, some weird competitions like a bike that had all of the pieces on backwards so it was too hard for anyone but the performer to ride.  He won every time.  It was pretty funny to watch.  Quite a fun night!

The next day we decided to go on a free walking tour at 10am, so we slept in as long as we could, missed the free breakfast, grabbed a snack to eat on the tour, then joined the group back at our hostel.  Our guide walked us for about 30 minutes to meet up with the others on the tour.  We got to the main meeting spot by the castle and before the tour actually started we decided we weren't in the mood.  We bailed when no one was looking and walked through the castle grounds on our own.  You had to have a tour guide to go into the castle, so we just wandered the perimeter.  It wasn't really like a castle, more like a group of buildings.  I would recommend a tour guide because I don't think we grasped the signifcance on our own.


Christ Church Cathedral

  

 Next, we headed towards the St. Patrick's Cathedral.  We ran across the Christ Church Cathedral on the way, a very pretty church.  We followed the sound of the Sunday bells chiming and found St. Patrick's. We sat on a bench in the park outside and enjoyed the beautiful church in the background, green grass, and St. Patrick's Holy Well. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral





After this peaceful break, we headed to the Guiness Storehouse.  It was a little early for a beer tour, but we were in that part of town so we went ahead and headed there.  It was a great tour.  We really liked that it was self-guided.  At this point in our Europe adventures we had had our share of guided tours, as you can tell. The building was built in the shape of a pint glass, 7 stories high.



 

At the beginning of the tour, you recieved a ticket good for 1 freshly poured pint of Guiness.  You could turn your ticket in on the 4th floor and learn how to pour your own Guiness or you could save it for the 7th floor Gravity Bar for an amazing 360 degree view of Dublin.  We chose the Gravity Bar where they poured mine and drew a shamrock in the foam. It was pretty crowded up there, so we wandered around looking at the view until we found a group getting up.  We enjoyed our Guiness and our view.  It truly was a lovely day for a Guiness.

 

After the tour we headed to the oldest chipper in Dublin for fish and chips.  The order, which we split, came with "chips" a.k.a. fries, and a huge piece of cod, at least a foot long.  We ate it on the steps of an old building since it was all "takeaway" a.k.a. "to-go."



We were planning on going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, but the admission price was higher than our desire to see it.  Instead we wandered around Grafton Street and did a little souvenir shopping, then headed back to our hostel to rest up for our last night out.

We enjoyed another night out in the Temple Bar District. We had planned on having Bangers and Mash, but instead the Irish stew sounded much better.  Great decision.  Even on Sunday night the bars were lively and full of music and people. It was a little hard to be in a great mood, though, as this was our last night in Europe.



 

The next morning we woke up at 5:30am to be sure not to miss our 10:30 flight home. We were both kind of down that morning, sad to leave Europe.  We became so much closer over the length of this trip, not just because of the engagement, but because we experienced so many amazing things, which made our bond even stronger. We enjoyed each other's company more than we even expected. It was an amazing vacation, truly the trip of a lifetime.

 

Now time to head home to start planning a wedding!