Up the Dubs!

Dublin, Dublin, Dublin...what an amazing city. Angela, Katie, and I had a great weekend in Dublin, Ireland this past weekend!

We left immediately after school to start our weekend. We spent 6 hours on a huge bus, traveling along little roads. A bit of a nail biter, but we got there. The first thing we noticed about Dublin was there accent. Extremely different than the west side of Ireland. We could barely understand the swears coming out of our taxi's mouth as he took us to our B&B! It was quite the ride. We first arrived in Dublin at 9:30pm, but still wanted to see some of the city. We are getting so good with city transportation, and managed to figure out the bus system.

This is a picture of Temple Bar located in the center of Dublin. It is one of the main attractions in Dublin. The cobble stoned streets on which it lies, are filled with pubs, restaurants, shops, and many, many people. A major tourist attraction....hence our visit it to it.

Here are some of the Irish lads that we met on Friday night. The Irish love to hang out in pubs, drink their pints, and socialize. They were friendly boys who made our first night great. There was never a dull moment chatting with them!

On Saturday morning we took a tour through Dublin city. It was called the City Bus Tour. It took you to over 25 different locations through out Dublin. You could get off when you pleased and pick up the next tour bus that came by every 10 minutes. It was very convenient!














Here is a picture of Trinity College. The man who took the picture of the three of us apparently had difficulty including us and the building in together. But oh well! Trinity College is the oldest college in Dublin, built in the 16th century. It has 12,000 students! The Book of Kells is currently in the hands of the university. Only four pages are displayed at once. And I think they said the pages are turned once a month! Interesting fact: David Beckham, the European soccer player, attended this college!

Another stop of ours and perhaps the most exciting one for multiple reasons was the tour of the Guinness Factory. This is the most visited place in all of Ireland!! Shocking...probably not!

Let's begin with the line outside of the Guinness Factory. It wrapped around the building and down the block. There was also a que (line) that continued to wrap around the inside. Well, the lady that Ang lives with knows someone who works at the factory, so we received three free tickets. Not only did we not have to pay the €25 for the ticket, but we also did not have to wait in line. IT WAS AMAZING!! We got to walk right past everyone to the very front. We felt very VIP. It was probably one of the best moments of my life! It saved us 2 hours of waiting in line and $40!! So we were liking the Guinness Factory already.

It was self-guided tour through the factory. So we were able to stop and look at what we wanted to!
The first four ingredients of Guinness is water, barley, hops, and yeast. Here is a picture of the three VIPs holding up the ingredient of barley. The large smiles and glows appearing from our faces is due to the fact that we just got to skip the whole line!

The tour provided us with loads of information about how Guinness is made, interesting facts about Guinness, and how Guinness actually does give you strength. Guinness contains a lot of iron, and it is recommended by doctors that those who lack iron should drink a pint of Guinness a day!

The first photo was our final stop of the Guinness Factory. We are in Gravity Bar, and about to taste our first complimentary pint of Guinness! The second picture was our reaction to the Guinness. I think that explains how we felt about the taste. A bit to bitter for our liking!

Our three pints of Guinness. Clearly Katie was the better sport and enjoyed hers more than we did! Overall, it was a great tour of the Guinness Factory. I recommend you get free tickets if you would like to visit it...it makes it all the more worth it :)