Éire Part 2

The rest of our week was much less structured. There was much more wandering and warming up wherever we could rather than tours and organized activities. Tuesday we mostly shopped and aimlessly walked all over. At the end of all the walking we kept trying to find some place to go and just decided to go back to the International Bar. Another great decision. We, of course, got ourselves some stew and lots of Bulmer's. It's hard not to stand out when your accent is different from everyone else's so the most common question of the week was, "Oh where are you girls from?" We quickly became the California girls wherever we went. 

Our night got increasingly interesting the longer we sat there. Oh! So, I should preface this all with the weird fact that literally everywhere we went we were surrounded by French people. I genuinely communicated with more people in French this last week than I thought was possible while in an English speaking country. Julianne mostly just stood there while I had full conversations then had to remind me that she did not speak it and would need a recap of the events. So three Frenchmen were seated next to us at the International and they eventually asked us for directions. One of them pulled out the map and walked over, asking in pretty good English. But I had heard them so I responded in French and we all had a fun little bilingual time trying to find the street they were looking for. They also asked if we were Irish, which we thought was hilarious. (And this continued throughout the week- there was a woman in our hostel who we could only speak to in French and an elevator full of people joking and laughing together, after which Julianne was pissed and saying, "Am I seriously the only person here who doesn't speak French? That is not a skill I should have to posses to visit a country that speaks my language!")

Comedy acts upstairs

Back to the International. We had been there for probably a few hours when we found out there was a comedy show about to start upstairs. So we made our way up and were thrilled to find that it was a good hour or so of solid laughing. There were some great stand up acts, but my favorite was the emcee in between all the comedians. He was impressively quick. There were maybe 20 people in the whole place, so the foreigners were picked out. We even got biscuits at the end! We're not sure if this is a normal Irish stand up thing, but we were more than happy to end our night with jaffa cakes and chocolate biscuits. 

Every meal at the Pantry

Our next few days were pretty similar, with great highlights. We ate Irish breakfasts as often as we could. It's hard not to be a fan of a huge breakfast consisting mainly of various forms of meat. We also hit the Guinness Storehouse (one of the most visited attractions in all of Ireland) for the tour. It was pretty anticlimactic and a little disappointing. We thought it would be a look at the actual process, but it's all virtual and digital exhibits about Guinness. The pint at the end of the tour, with the best view of Dublin was a good touch though. 

Guinness Storehouse by night

 Wednesday was Halloween and we spent it in a few museums around Dublin. We found a really cool Yeats exhibit in the National Library that I would recommend seeing. And that night we enjoyed some more live music while looking at all the costumes around us. And we kept running into people. I ran into two girls from my program in Paris and Julianne found someone from her school too. It was weird finding them all by chance.

Thursday we took a bus down to Cork for the day. The bus had wifi and that's when my last post happened. It was about a three hour drive, but worth it just to get a look at the rolling hills and green countryside. Since the bus was so long, and the last one left pretty early in the evening, we only had a couple hours in Cork. But we tried to use those hours well and saw a lot of the city.

Cork, Ireland

On a bridge with one of many spires

 It poured while we were there, which gave us a good excuse to warm up over huge pots of tea and snacks in a cafe. I really loved Cork and spent most of the time there imagining my dad visiting and remembering all the great things he's told me about seeing there. When we got back to Dublin that night it was pretty early, so we went to another pub we had heard about. It was called Sweeney's and is known for having music almost every night of the week. When we were there, there were multiple bands playing on each floor of the rather large pub and stood there for hours hearing some great local acts.

Friday and Saturday were pretty slow days. And super cold! We tried to walk around and see more, but we were constantly looking for somewhere to pop into to warm up. We went to the International again, to get our fix of stew and be terribly beaten by bar games. And we found Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. One night we went on the Literary Pub Crawl on a recommendation from a friend. It was really fun and I felt like I learned a lot about Irish literature. It was interesting being brought through areas we were pretty familiar with already to find out that different pubs, buildings and walkways are all over such famous novels. I picked up a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses as a souvenir and I'm really excited to start reading.

Dublin's Streets

Christ's Church

St. Patrick's Cathedral

And then this morning, around 3am, we made our way to the airport to sadly part ways. I love Ireland and I can't wait to go back. I didn't kiss the Blarney Stone, so I definitely need to go back for that. And really, I feel like there are entirely too many reasons to return. I was nice to be somewhere where people actually understood me and where we got a warm welcome everywhere we went. I enjoyed the sass we got and the people we met. Great life decision.