Kiss Me, I'm Irish

St. James's Gate Brewery; photo credit Alexa Berry

About a month and a half ago, some friends noticed that there were particularly cheap flights from Prague to Dublin, so we took advantage and booked our weekend there. Somehow I was lucky enough to get a window seat on the plane on both flights! We arrived Friday night, dropped our stuff off at the hostel, and then went right out to dinner. Our hostel was in a great, albeit expensive location known as Temple Bar. We went to a "traditional" Irish pub for dinner, which had a great atmosphere and had musicians playing folksy music. The Irish are incredibly friendly, which was a bit of a culture shock coming from Prague, and to be honest I did not get completely use to it during my weekend there. I also discovered that when I wear my glasses, I apparently look like Ariel Winters who plays Alex on Modern Family (I definitely don't look like  her, but apparently the Irish think I do).

Long Room at Trinity College

The next morning we went on a free walking tour of Dublin. Free walking tours have become one of my favorite things to do as soon as I get to any new city. They are a great way to learn history while making sure you get to see a lot of the major sights (and even though they're technically free, everyone tips the tour guides a few bucks). After the walking tour we backtracked to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It was very cool to see such an old manuscript, but the best part of that exhibit was the Long Hall library upstairs. Our walking tour guide had told us that George Lucas wanted to film in the library for the recent Star Wars movies, but Trinity College did not grant him permission, so he took a lot of photos and created a CGI-generated library for his Jedis. After all that walking we went back to the hostel for a rest before heading out for another traditional Irish dinner (I had fish and chips), before walking around Temple Bar and O'Connell street at night.

Gravity Bar

On Sunday we had a lot of attractions to visit. We started at the Guinness Storehouse which was very well done. One of my favorite parts of the museum was learning how the casks (barrels) that stored the beer were made; I had never realized it was such a time consuming process to make just one cask, and each cask can only hold 8.5 gallons! Another part of the tour was the "tasting room" which was an absolutely ridiculous gimmick. We walked through a loud, dark hallway, and then abruptly entered a bright and quiet room, which was designed to shock our senses. I couldn't help but laugh, it was as if we were in a Willy Wonka beer factory. The best part of the storehouse was the Gravity Bar at the top, which provided us with a 360-degree view of the city.

St. Christ's Cathedral

After the Guinness Storehouse we walked to St. Christ's Cathedral. The church had some awesome tile work, and like every other church in Europe was huge, but the cool part was the "treasury" underneath the main floor. The day before on the walking tour we had learned that at some point in time a cat and rat somehow got trapped in one of the organ pipes, and through some magic of air pressure, their remains were preserved for a hundred years. While it's kind of gross, it's also interesting to really see things we had learned about in the walking tour. I also had not realized that they used St. Christ's Cathedral to film many scenes from the show The Tudors; I thought it was funny they had used the basement catacombs of the church as the backdrop for the Tower of London in the show!

The next stop on our hectic day of sightseeing was going to archaeology branch of the National Museum of Ireland (which was free!). Saw some great exhibits on the Vikings of Ireland. It's so impressive that most of the stuff on display in the museum was over a thousand years old, especially their gold and jewelry exhibit! A lot of the jewelry looked brand new, and the glass beads were incredibly similar to the beads sold in stores today. The best part of the museum was the exhibit with the "bog men" of Ireland. These remains were found in Ireland, but instead of being simply skeletons, much of their body still remains- organs and fingernails included! Later that evening I took the DART train a half hour out of the city to walk around the coastal town of Howth. While it was dark by the time I got there, it was still relaxing to walk around and be by the sea at night.

One of the things I liked most about Dublin was that we could walk everywhere! If I ever had to describe a city as a "quaint," Dublin would be that city. We lucked out and it barely rained during our entire weekend, which is a bit unusual for Dublin. I liked all of the attractions and things we did, but felt that the city was overall a bit touristy. While I am interested in going back to Ireland someday, and doing a tour of the coastal villages, I am satisfied with my trip to Dublin and felt that I saw everything I needed to see.

Trinity College; photo credit Alexa Berry