Ireland

A few words you should know before I begin my blog post:

Rubbish – nonsense or trash; it depends

Fancy – what you say when you like something

Spit and saw dust – authentic

Q – a line

Okay, now that you’re all caught up on the special Irish terms, we’ll get to the trip. So first of all, getting to Ireland wasn’t easy. Ryan Air, one of the cheapest airlines in Europe, says it flies out of “Brussels”. What it means by that is that it flies out of Charleroi, which is nearly an hour outside of Brussels. For me to get to Charleroi, I had to take a tram, a metro, another metro, walk a couple blocks and take a shuttle (that you have to pay for) that takes an hour to get to the airport. It’s rubbish! So When Alison and I finally made it to the airport and got all checked in we celebrated.

On the flight with Ryan Air they attempted to sell us lottery tickets, perfume, cigarettes and other things, which was kind of amusing. This was also the first place I heard rubbish. The flight attendant came down the aisle and asked, “Does anyone have any rubbish? Any empties?”

We ended up staying with the perfect hostel in Dublin, Paddy’s Palace. They had reasonably priced, clean rooms, provided a free shuttle to and from the airport, provided a free breakfast, were in a great location and if you stayed for at least 2 nights then you get a free bus tour to Glendalough and Kilkenny, which are just south of Dublin in the Wicklow Hills and beyond. It was great!

The first night we were there, Alison and I went to the well-known Temple Bar area. We tried our first Guinness that night! It looked so good and after the first sip we were like, oh, this isn’t too bad! But after the third sip, we were wondering how we were going to be able to finish the entire pint! Luckily someone told us to get a snakebite. You just ask the bar tender to put in some black currant, which is like a raspberry syrup type thing,. It was much easier to drink after that.

We were excited to talk to some Irish people our first night in Dublin as I was planning on getting really good at the Irish accent throughout this trip! Unfortunately the Temple Bar area was mostly well known by other tourists. We didn’t fancy that. We met some people from London, Germany and even Miami. We ended up going with some people we met to another place that happened to be more of a dressy dance club and not at all like the place we pictured ourselves to be at the first night in Ireland! We did meet a guy who owned a pub outside of Ireland that he said was a spit and saw dust kind of place. We never made it to his pub though. Maybe next time.

The next morning Kelly arrived. She had a test and had to come later on. We then set off to explore Dublin! We walked all the way to the other side of Dublin and back. Fortunately, we had the most amazing weather! I think that so far, it was probably their best weekend of the year weather wise. Dublin has double-decker busses for public transportation. People in Dublin, unlike in Brussels, are very good at waiting in very straight, well-organized Q's. Also, at every crosswalk they have and arrow and “look left” or “look right” written on the street. It was helpful. I just ended up looking both ways before I crossed every street, though. Multiple times I caught myself looking up at a car to find that a 7-year-old was driving it, or a sleeping woman or a guy with no hands on the wheel. Then I would remember that they drove on the opposite side of the road and that those people weren’t actually driving the car.

As far as the city of Dublin goes, it’s not that unique from other cities. There aren’t many “tourist attractions” or beautiful sights or anything. We got a tour in an old jail, Kilmainham Gaol, and heard more about Ireland’s history, we then walked by the Guinness Storehouse but didn’t really care to see how it was made. We saw the St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but you had to pay to go inside and we are cheap so we didn’t go inside. We somehow stumbled upon a small fish and chips place where a lot of famous people have eaten (or so this board outside their restaurant says). I had never had fish and chips and we decided this was the place to do it at! It was so much food! But oh, so delicious. We then found the Dublin Castle. I was very unimpressed. It was pretty small as far as castles go and in the middle of all these other buildings in the city. We walked to Trinity College (ISU is prettier) but didn’t see the book of Kells, because, like I said before, we’re cheap and it was 8 euro.

We wandered through this beautiful and huge park and found a nice grassy place to sit and rest from all our walking. On our flight to Dublin, Alison and I had seen this group of free spirited people that all had strange clothes and unique hats. After we sat down in the park, we looked up and saw the same group of people juggling and doing crazy hula-hoop tricks! It was so ironic! They were still wearing their unique hats, by the way. Also, while in the airport to fly to Dublin, we met some Americans who were studying in the Netherlands. We talked with them briefly (because we were both excited to speak English with someone else) and headed to our separate flights, Dublin and Madrid. When we landed in Dublin, we met another group of Americans who were studying in the Netherlands. Alison asked if they had friends going to Madrid. They did! We had somehow met both friend groups. Ironic, again!

At first, being able to hear English all around us was weird because we are so used to not hearing English and not being able to eavesdrop on conversations and understand what’s going on. For the first day I kept saying bonjour and merci to people just out of habit. But we quickly got used to hearing and speaking English again.

Katie arrived that night because she had a class she didn’t want to skip. We all got ready and went out. We first found ourselves in a pub with live music. It was a guy on guitar and a girl who played the fiddle and the recorder (not at once time) I think. They both sang as well and it was really great! There was a little bit of Irish dancing going on there, too. When that band was done we went to a couple other pubs and found some Irish people to talk to, which was fun. To our disbelief though, lots of Irish people wondered why we wanted to visit Ireland. They would then tell us they didn’t like it that much (I think mostly because of the not so great weather). I was always under the impression that Irish people loved their country! But apparently I’m wrong.

Our day trip to Glendalough and Kilkenny left the next morning. We all hopped on the Paddy Wagon (oh, yes) and headed south. We saw so many adorable baby sheep in the rolling hills! We all wanted to stop and hold them, but we never did. Our first stop was the ruins of an old monastery in the Wicklow Hills.

We were given over an hour to explore the hills around the area. We started hiking as fast as we could so we could get as far as possible into the big hills/small mountains. It was all so beautiful with the lakes at the bottom of the hills. We stood in awe for too long and realized we were going to be late if we didn’t hurry back! We took a loop around the area and came across a couple sheep and their babies along the way back! We of course had to stop and take some pictures. The closer we got to them the farther they went away from the fence. I tried many things to get them to come back. I called them like I do my dogs with a “baby voice”, I baaed at them, and I told them to sternly come. But in the end, I think they didn’t come to me because they didn’t understand my accent. They all baaed with an Irish accent and so when I baaed at them in my American accent they looked confused and didn’t know how to respond. By now we were really running late and so we began to run the rest of the mile back to the Paddy Wagon. We made it! But one lady did not, and we drove off without her.

We drove through some more beautiful scenery, apparently through parts of where Braveheart was filmed, and ended up by Ireland’s Stonehenge. It was an old burial tomb that consisted of giant rocks on top of one another. Must have taken quite some time to put together. We then went to Kilkenny where we ate, saw the longest cathedral in Ireland and saw the Kilkenny castle. The lovely weather continued.

We arrived at the hostel, made some pasta and bread and then went to a near-by pub to watch Ireland play in a football (soccer) game. We were anticipating a full pub with crazy fans all wearing green! What we found were people casually eating dinner and a few randoms actually watching the game. We grabbed a cider beer, that’s actually quite tasty, and decided to be the dedicated fans Ireland needed. They won in the end (mostly because of our intense focus on the game) and we enjoyed watching the game.

It was there that we decided we were sick of being American. When you say you’re from America people hope you’re from New York and when they find out you’re from Iowa they are disappointed and sometimes uncertain of what that means. Then it’s a series of questions like why are you in Dublin? They find out we’re studying in Belgium. Why Belgium? What are you studying? What does a Communications major mean? What do you want to do with that major? (I specifically hate this question because I have no idea). Etc. Essentially it’s the same questions/conversation topics with everyone you talk to. I decided I wanted to be from Iceland. What do people from Iceland look like? What do they speak? What do they sound like? What’s the capital? I don’t know. And I hoped nobody else knew either. Alison decided on being Columbian, Kelly, who was losing her voice at this point and has red hair, went for being Irish and Katie was from the Netherlands.

We were very anxious to meet people with our new identities and see how it would all play out. Our first chance came on the way out of this pub. We started talking to a group of guys and, naturally, they asked us where we were from. I proudly announced that I was from Iceland! And then I asked where they were from. One of them said they were visiting from Wales because their friend was getting married. The rest began to giggle in the background. After talking with them a bit more and hearing what sounded like Irish accents I realized they, too, knew how to come up with a story on the spot. It was no bachelor party (or stag party as they call it here). They could somehow tell I was not from Iceland right away (odd, right?) and decided to make up a story, too. We moved on to try our newfound identities elsewhere. Unfortunately, we had about the same luck with everyone else. One guy, however, was pretty excited about meeting someone from Iceland! So I fooled at least one person… I think…. It’s just easier to be American though. So I guess I’ll stick with that story from now on.

So our final day was spent sleeping in, then shopping at this wonderfully cute and cheap department type store, Penny’s, and then taking the train to some towns a bit north of Dublin along the coast. Howth was first, and it was a cute coastal fishing village. We walked around their Sunday market for a bit and then walked to the end of the pier where we saw seals along the way! They were so cute! People were throwing fish to them and they started to clap at us when they wanted more! We walked along the shoreline and enjoyed the beauty for a couple hours.

We then headed farther north to Malahide where there was a huge castle. We walked through trails to reach the massive open field surrounding the castle. We took pictures and did cartwheels in the field for a while and then wandered back to Malahide to explore a little. We found out there wasn’t much else to explore. So we went back to Howth to eat a seafood dinner (I had calamari and seafood soup, which were delicious) and then hike up this trail to the lighthouse, which we had found out about as we were leaving Howth the first time. We started hiking in the pitch black and kept assuming we would just come upon a huge light from the lighthouse. We could hear the waves crashing against the cliffs as we walked and knew we were missing out on some gorgeous scenery. We never ended up finding the lighthouse or any resemblance of a huge light for that matter. So our nearly hour-long walk in the dark was purely for exercise in the end.

We were up at 4:30 the next morning and on the Paddy Wagon back to the airport. I came back to town just in time to go straight to my internship and then to a group presentation meeting that night. I spent the rest of the week catching up on sleep, working and planning spring break, which is coming up soon!

I really really wish I could have made it to the west coast or the northern part of Ireland because I hear great things about both! But it just didn't happen this time. I guess I'll just have to go back someday!