~February 3rd/4th/5th, 2017~
With an open weekend coming up, a few friends and I planned a weekend trip to Ireland’s capital, Dublin! Dublin is only a three hour bus ride from Cork, so we boarded a bus Friday morning and arrived to Dublin in the afternoon. Of course our first stop on our trip was the famous Guinness Storehouse. It was POURING on our walk across town, but the it was well worth the walk. We took a self guided tour of the treasured Irish storehouse, learned how they make the beer and how to correctly taste the stout, and finally were able to pour the perfect Guinness beer. I felt pretty accomplished after pouring my own pint without too much foam. We then took our freshly poured beers to the Gravity Bar at the top of the storehouse, where we got to enjoy our pints and look out onto the city of Dublin. Definitely a fun experience. From there, we grabbed lunch at the Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin (est. in the 1100’s), and I had my first fish ‘n’ chips since hoping across the pond. Delicious! We spent the rest of the evening walking around the city and popped into a few local pubs to listen to some live music.
We started Saturday off with a trip to Trinity College (the Harvard of Ireland) and saw the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is one of oldest, original bibles in the world. It was made by monks centuries ago and somehow was preserved to present day. It was stunning. From there we also popped into the Long Room Library, which houses a collection of 20,000 books that are centuries old. This was also beautiful. It was crazy to think about how much history and information was in those four walls. After leaving Trinity College, we walked through one of Dublin’s many parks and popped into St. Patricks Cathedral, a Church of Ireland cathedral. Then, we walked though the Temple Bar district, which was a poppin’ part of town that is full of bars and restaurants, which where we ended up going back to that night for a pint.
For Sunday, we took a train outside of the city to Houth. This was a coastal part of Dublin that had a hiking path on the cliffs along the sea. It was beautiful, and we had perfect weather for a walk. It was gorgeous to say the least. That afternoon, we had a bus home. Once arriving back at Cork, we promptly went to a pub for Super Bowl Sunday! My roommate, is a huge Patriots fan, so she was going crazy, and we ended up staying up until 4 in the morning to see the end of the game (oh what the time change will do to you). However, after the game it turned out to be, it was well worth it. A great weekend for sure.
