We landed and found out that a Bus2Alps tour guide was also on our flight, so she could show us where our hostel was and how to get to Dubln from the airport. We kind of lucked out because we didn't know where we were supposed to go; if we should get a cab or try to catch a bus somewhere so that was nice. It was a half an hour bus ride into town and the bus dropped us off a couple of blocks from the Hostel. We stayed at Generator Hostel in Dublin and it was rated the best in Dublin. The rooms were really clean and nice. It also had a bar on the ground floor where breakfast and meals could be served. John and I lucked out, we got a double room and a private bathroom to oursleves, and a lot of people we knew had to stay in dorms; rooms with 5 - 10 people in them and public bathrooms.
As soon as we checked in and got our room keys we were one of the first ones to check in and we didn't know what we should do first. We dropped our stuff off in our room and took a short nap, then took some showers and went out to get some fish and chips. The Bus2Alps leaders told us to go to Temple Bar. It's a sectoin of the city that has a lot of good food and pubs. It was only a ten minute walk so we headed there first. We didn't know what we were looking for, so we began walking aorund looking for a good place to eat. Some of the first place we saw were the cheapest but we thought we could find something better so we passed it up. Once we were really getting hungry we settled with a place called "Gourmet Burger Kitchen". For ten Euros we could get a burger, fries, and an appetizer. Sounded good so we gave it a try. John got a regular burger and I got a spicy burger. The burgers were good and so were the fries. After we were done eating we asked the waiter where some good pubs were and he directed us to a couple with live music. The first one we stopped at, Quay's Bar (pronounced "keys bar") was awesome. It had a live band playing some cover music. We grabbed a pint and listened for awhile. They also played some traditional Irish jigs and the locals sang along when they played those. I got some cool videos of the songs they played. They're on youtube. You can see them on my channel here, look for the "Dublin - Temple Bar" videos.
The next day we took a walking tour of Dublin with the rest of the crew that flew in later and through the night. We got up around 7ish and ate breakfast and walked back to the Temple Bar area to the City Hall where our tour started. It was raining off and on all morning which made the tour seem kind of long. The day we went on this tour, the new president of the Republic of Ireland was being sworn in. Our guide told us that he was a well like man everywhere and often referred to by his first name if he was seen out and about in public. From City Hall we hit all the major landmarks in Dublin. A couple of intersting remarks about them: They put a big needle in the middle of the town because at one time a majority of the population got messed up with heroin so the city decide to put a big needle in the middle of town... Another certain bridge in Dublin, It was constructed by the same man who Engineered the Titanic, our guide told us that he would never walk over the bridge for ovbious reasons. Around noon we stopped at ONiells Pub for lunch. We had a choice of salad bar, beef roast, and fish and chips. I choose fish and chips. It turned out great.
After lunch we continued our tour and walked through Trinity College. We also went to a street that Bono from U2 owned. The story is that he got in a fight with a bar owner and he got kicked out and he told him that he would be back to buy the whole bar someday, and the guy laughed in his face. Don't quote me on that but that's how it went I think. So sure enough he comes back once his band is getting big and buys the Hotel/Bar and fires the employee who kicked him out years back. He then went on to buy the buildings on the whole block. Our bar crawl stopped at this club later in the night and we even got free entrance too. The last thing we saw on our tour was St. Stephens Green, which is a very well known park in Dublin. It was wet and rainy so it didn't look as pretty as it usually did, but it was esentially the 'Central Park' of Dublin. On our way back to our Hostel we got to walk down Grafton Street which is a very wide pedestrian street with a bunch of stores on it for shopping and commerce.
The last thing on our agenda for the day was to tour the Guinness Storehouse. We already had reserved tickets for our self guided tour through the factory. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Storehouse learning how the Black Gold is brewed. There is seven floors the tour winds through and on the top floor you can redeem your free pint sample of Guinness. Each floor is designated to a different type of the brewing process. So we took our time and looked at all the artifacts on display in the Storehouse. On the way to the top we were also informed on the correct way to drink a Guinness. One of the coolest parts of the tour was the top floor where the Gravity Bar was. It had completely glass walls and offered a 360 degree view of Dublin from the seventh floor of the Guinness Storehouse. It was pretty cool hanging out there sipping on some pints. On our way out everyone dropped some Euros in the giftshop.
John, David, Chris, and I went to Subway on the way home. We had to walk back and be showered by 8ish, so we ate and hurried back across the river to our Hostel to get ready for our Bus2Alps sponsored Pub Crawl. We all met in the lobby of the Hostel and received wristbands for all the pubs we were gonna go to. We went to a total of three bars and to end the night we went to two of the best clubs in Dublin. Our bar crawl leader took us to all the cheap places which had some good drink specials. At "The Garage" we got to see Ireland win in their qualifying soccer match, that place got crazy once they won. One of the bars we went to was ONiells where we ate lunch that day.. The first club we went to was called the Purty Kitchen and had about three different bars and about seven different levels in it. John and I were wondering around and walked through a hallway to a bathroom and came into the VIP section of the club which was pretty cool... There was a bouncer guarding the stairway up and we didn't even know we took the 'back way' up. It was pretty cool cause we knew we weren't supposed to be there, so we had a beer while we could and chilled. Next we went across the street to Bono's club called "The Kitchen". Bono owns it, too bad he wasn't there that weekend, anyways we got free entrance there and hung out there for awhile.
Later on John, Chris, David, Kevin, and I went out to eat to grab a late night snack.. We ate some burgers and headed back for another hour or so. Probably not the best idea since we had to be up at 6ish again the next morning and on the bus at 7 for the Cliffs of Moher.
The next morning was pretty rough, but the breakfast was a cure to the hangover. So we tried to eat what we could before sitting on a bus for the next four hours to the Cliffs. The only thing we saw on the whole way there were a couple cool golf courses once we got close to the Cliffs. After a sleepy and uneventful bus ride we got to the Cliffs around 10:30 or 11 o'clock. We were given a couple hours to hike around the Cliffs and eat lunch inside if we wanted. We walked up one side of the Cliffs first that had the Castle on it. We were instructed that a lot of people unfortunatly have died at the Cliffs for various reasons, and to be very careful around the Cliff edges. In some place the path would be feet away from the Cliff edge that was hundreds of feet just straight down. There was also a fence that was not advised to climb, but we did anyways cause we could get some cooler pictures on the other side. After a little while on the one side, we hiked over to the other side. This side was better I think because we could see the rock face that we were previously standing on.. It also had a better view overall of the Cliffs. After a couple hundred pictures and some video on Marks FlipCam we went inside the gift shop to eat a quick lunch before heading to Galway, Ireland for a tour.
It was another couple hour bus ride to Galway and we got into town around 3 o'clock and we had a walking tour of the city that lasted a couple hours then we were to get dinner before heading back to Dublin for the night. The town was pretty small and had a couple of neat churches in it.. After our tour I got fish and chips again for dinner and we killed about an hour then headed back to the bus for the ride home. We got back into Dublin pretty late, around 10 or 11, and the group was supposed to go to the oldest pub in Dublin later that night called Brazen Head, but we wanted to take a nap quick. Our flight also left at 6 o'clock in the morning so we probably would have called it a night early anyways. We went up to our room and layed down for a nap and set our alarms for a half hour or whatever, and I don't think John's ever went off but mine did a couple times and I silenced it and went back to bed. I looked at John and he was out cold and I didn't want to go out, I was exhauseted. We also had to get up at three or four in order to catch a taxi to get on our fligh at 6.. We called a cab ahead of time and when we woke up from our nap we packed up and got in the cab for the ride home. Dublin was amazing and might have been my favorite trip I took.. It was a great experience and I met a lot of cool people there. Back to Rome, only to fly out to Barcelona in a few..
