Ireland

Hey everyone!

This is finally my last post on Dublin, thanks for sticking through and reading all my prolific posts!

So, Sunday morning we woke up relatively early to check out the fishing village of Howth. After eating some Irish oatmeal and drinking some Irish breakfast tea (did I mention I love Irish food?), we caught the yellow double-decker bus once again. I am still fascinated by those buses. I loved sitting on the front right corner of the upper deck, it was like an amusement ride! I don’t know how those bus drivers get these huge buses into and out of such tight spaces, but they really drive like champions! Even though we could have taken the local Dublin bus service all the way there, we caught the Dublin Dart commuter train to maximize our time out on the coast.

Howth was cold and windy, but great! You walked out of the train station to see a small seaport filled with fishing boats.

Howth has a special Sunday market, so first we checked out the food! We picked up a rhubarb pie for only 3 €, and then got some seafood chowder at a stand next to the fishing boat that had brought the fish in that morning. I don’t even like seafood, but this chowder was fabulous. It was the perfect remedy for a cold blustery day.

The port also had seals! They were so cute just hanging out in the water waiting to get their snapshots taken!

After our impromptu lunch, we decided to explore the rest of what Howth had to offer. We walked up the hill and found some great views, and some very soft green grass where we ate our dessert and then took a nap!

Next, we stumbled onto the cliffs path, which was INCREDIBLE. The Irish coast is gorgeous! It's a shame, because no pictures I took could ever capture its beauty.

We ended up circling one half of the peninsula on this scenic walk. I knew Ireland was beautiful, but you really can’t appreciate it until you go there and experience it for yourself. Everyone should try to get there someday. I can’t wait to go back and explore more of Ireland someday in the far distant future...when I finally pay off all those school loans... :-/

The end of the cliffs trail took us back into town, where we jumped back on the Dart, and headed home. Before we went all the way back to the apartment though, we stopped at the Asian food market. We picked up ingredients to make Pad Thai. I hadn’t had any Asian food since I left America, so this really was another treat! I wonder if I can find an Asian market in Italy somewhere… We called it an early night so I could pack and get some rest before my flight on Monday morning. I was so sad to leave Ireland, but I was certainly excited to get back to the warm, sunny weather in Rome. Overall, it was definitely a most memorable Spring Break!

Hey guys!

Sorry about the delay, I finally got my bulk photo uploader to work again! So check out all the extra pics in my photo gallery.

Our next stop on Saturday was the Guinness Storehouse. How could I come to Dublin and not visit the home of the most iconic Irish beer in the world? I really enjoyed the Guinness Storehouse tour.

The building is designed in the shape of a giant pint of Guinness, that, if full, would hold 14.3 million pints! It was so interesting to see all the care that goes into making a good Guinness. First we start with the ingedients:

...water from springs in the Wicklow Mountains, aka St. James' Wells

On the next floor, we learned about brewing, cooperage, and transport.

1st barley is malted, roasted, milled, mixed with hot water and mashed.

Roasted barley out for tasting...mmm.

The liquid is then filtered off and boiled with hops.

Then yeast is added, and fermentation begins.

The beer is clarified, matured, and prepared for packaging.

Now, follow the route to the tasting lab, where you can sample the finished product.

Here, we watched a video to see how to taste the brew like a true Guinness connoisseur. The process is a lot like tasting wine!

Next, we visited the Cooperage exhibit and discovered the ancient craft of cask making.

Also on this floor, we explored the various methods used to transport Guinness beer for centuries.

On the next floor, we learned about Guinness history, Guinness’ past advertising campaigns, and more!

Past Guinness bottle labels...

We saw the colorful world of Toucans, Ostriches, Surfers, etc... that comprised John Gilroy's world famous "My Goodness! My Guinness!" ad campaign.

The last stop of our tour was the Guinness Gravity bar...we had now reached the high point of our visit to the Guinness Storehouse. This bar sits on the top of the Guinness Storehouse, forming the head of the pint. This bar had spectacular 360 degree views across Dublin.

The great thing about this bar is that it is entirely free!

You just present your factory tour ticket, and they hand you a pint of Guinness! I must say, this was probably the best Guinness I have ever tasted, and will ever taste in my life. It’s such a sad thought, because every Guinness hereafter will be a disappointment!

This Guinness was perfectly pulled, did you know there’s a special way to pull a Guinness? They filled it about 2/3 of the way, let it rest for 2 minutes, and then filled it to the top.

It was creamy, smooth, and delicious! You can even watch a video on how to pour it correctly and "savor" your beer correctly on the Guinness website: http://www2.guinness.com/en-row/Pages/thebeer-draught.aspx

Also, the Guinness in Ireland, unlike the Guinness in the United States, is not pasteurized, so I’ll really never get the true Irish taste of Guinness back home! :-(

That ends our tour of the Guinness Storehouse...but on our way out we walked around the complex.

Hope this all makes it into one post!

Cheers!

Hello again!

So on Saturday morning, we slept in, and then my friend Corby made me her signature cider pancakes for breakfast! Cheap hard cider is a lot less expensive than milk, and the carbonation allows you to skip the leavening ingredients. They were apple-y and delicious! I don’t even remember the last time I had a real pancake with real syrup; it was such a treat! Then we caught the bus into the city center to walk around and explore.

Corby took me back into the Temple Bar neighborhood, where we visited the Saturday morning market. This market was awesome! Unlike the market I have in Rome, it’s just a little specialty market with cheeses, baked goods, spreads, etc… We picked up some sharp Irish cheddar cheese (my favorite! they don’t make cheddar in Italy!),

some blueberry scones to die for,

and some Indian food. I’ve never really had Indian food; Corby was shocked and said I must be introduced, because this particular stand had fantastic Indian fare. We got some stuff with tomato sauce and some stuff with curry, it was all vegetarian, and I really liked it! How was I missing out on the greatness that is Indian cuisine all this time? After the market, we walked back up Grafton Street to window shop and look for some Irish souvenirs, and then we headed over to Trinity College. Trinity’s campus was cool because it was your quintessential college environment with impressive looking buildings, cobblestones, etc…

This is also where they keep Dublin’s famous Book of Kells. We could have gotten in to see it for free, since some Notre Dame students go to Trinity, but no one was home at the time, and I didn’t want to pay for the ticket. So I’ll have to check it out the next time I go to Dublin! We hung out at Trinity and ate our Indian lunch on the quad. Then we headed back to Corby’s apartment to drop off the rest of the wares we had acquired over the day.

Hello everyone!

Last Friday was my traveling day to Dublin. I took the shuttle bus to the airport with my new friend Mike from the Old Prague Hostel. I met Mike on Monday when I asked to share the breakfast table with him, and Genevieve, Tom, and I had breakfast with him every morning since, sharing news of what we had seen the previous day, and what we were planning to visit. Mike is a retired guy from the UK who decided to travel to Prague on a whim because his bonus air miles were about to expire. He remembered from his earlier travels that he like Prague, so he came back to see it again. Mike must have had a pretty lucrative career in his day, because he has traveled all over the world. I enjoyed hearing all his stories about traveling to Russia, living in Thailand, Kazakstan, taking flight lessons in Florida, etc… I think he’s been around the world more than once! I loved hearing his perspective on the relations between Europeans and Americans. He said we’re easily targeted because our accent is so distinctive. What accent? I asked. lol. It’s strange for me to think of Americans having a certain accent. Anyway, since I was traveling by myself to the airport, it was nice to have someone along to look after me. He made sure that the shuttle bus driver was going to, “Take the lady to Terminal 1.” It was so funny to hear him call me a lady with his British accent. I felt so proper!

Another interesting thing about today was the Prague airport. First of all, it’s nicer than I expected for Prague. Also, I first thought there wasn’t going to be any security check because all I needed to do to enter the departures area was show my passport. But then, I realized they do have a security check, it’s just at each individual set of gates instead of one security checkpoint for the whole airport. This seems like a good idea to me. Everything here is running a lot smoother, and since the security personnel have less people to check, they can do a more thorough job.

Anyway, my flight ran smoothly, I met some nice girls on the airplane to chat with. Then we landed in Ireland! The first thing I see as I walk though the Dublin airport…men, lots of them, in KILTS! “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Italy anymore!” Then I got on a yellow double-decker bus (all the buses are double-decker here!) to go to the city center to meet my friend Corby.

I discovered on my super long bus ride, that Dublin traffic is horrible, even in the middle of the day! It took me over 40 minutes to reach the city center from the Dublin airport. I was then freaking out about where to get off the bus, because there were no visible stop signs. Corby called and assured me, we would turn onto O’Connell St., and I would know by the huge spire in the middle of the square. Sure enough, the bus turns and I see an enormous spire right in the middle of everything! This spire marks the middle of Dublin. I got off the bus with all my stuff in tow, and met up with my friend Corby. It was such a happy reunion! It was so great to see a good friend from home again!

Since the weather was unusually nice that day, Corby gave me a short overview walking tour of Dublin. We started off by walking down O’Connell Street (I love street names in English!), which is the main shopping area of Dublin. Then we turned and walked along the Liffey River, crossing it at Ha’penny Bridge. It’s a pedestrian bridge that was built in 1816.

Next we explored the Temple Bar neighborhood, which is an artsy Pub area. She also took me past Trinity College, Dublin’s most famous university, established in 1592. From Trinity College, we walked up Grafton Street, which is another famous Dublin shopping area, and through St. Stephen’s Green. Next we crossed into Merrion Square park, which has a statue of the famous Dublin writer, Oscar Wilde. A lot of the scenes from his book, Ulysses, took place right around here. This guy is REVERED in Dublin.

The Merrion Square park was beautiful, green grass, budding tulips, blooming daffodils, I loved it! Right across from the Merrion Square park is the Notre Dame center at the historical monument home of Daniel O’Connell: the guy responsible for Catholic emancipation in Dublin. How appropriate for Notre Dame, no? This house is SO CUTE. It’s got a blue and gold door, and has a beautiful chapel inside with a gorgeous stained glass panel. The O’Connell house is used as a congregation area for Notre Dame students in Dublin, as well as classroom space. Seems like us Rome kids got the short end of the stick!

Then we walked to the bus stop, and boarded a double-decker to University College Dublin (UCD) for short, where Corby lives and goes to school. The dynamic of the program here is completely different. First of all, the Dublin kids live on a real, honest to goodness college campus. I think UCD has somewhere around 20,000 students, most commuters though. As I walked up to Corby’s dorm, there were tons of people out on the quads tossing around footballs and playing soccer. She shares a dorm apartment with 3 other girls. Each girl gets her own room, and then they have a common space and a kitchen. I KNEW life here was totally different when Corby’s roommate Kelly came in and announced she had found some abandoned rugby stadium chairs in the woods, and we needed to go salvage them for extra seating in the common room. This is such typical college student ingenuity! So the first thing I did when I arrived in Dublin was trek out to the woods behind the rugby stadium with Corby and Kelly and carry back three stadium seats to be hosed down and hauled up to the apartment. Let’s see, if I were to go to the hypothetical woods in Italy (kind of impossible with no green space!), I’d be too afraid to go anywhere near it for fear of getting accosted by gypsies camping out there. I was officially totally jealous of the Dublin program’s carefree college life.

After we installed the new fabulous seating arrangement, Corby and I got on another double-decker bus and headed down to the grocery store. We picked up ingredients for dinner, well, breakfast for dinner. Corby made me the Full Irish Breakfast, including eggs, Irish link sausage, black pudding, baked beans, roasted tomatoes, and sautéed mushrooms. What a weird combination of food, but oh so good! I even loved the black pudding, although Corby wouldn’t tell me what it was made of. She said I didn’t want to know, and I’m fine with keeping it that way! We also got some real brown Irish soda bread, and spread Kerrygold Irish butter on top of it. I had been dreaming about soda bread since St. Patrick’s Day, so I was in heaven! We washed it all down with a cold glass of hard Irish cider. I’ve never had anything like it before, I really enjoyed it!

A bunch of girls from the London program were also visiting Corby’s roommate, Maureen. So once they got in, we all got together for some good fun and good conversation. We ended the evening by checking out Dublin’s famous nightlife. Dublin is just as busy at nighttime as it is during the day, but the town has a completely different vibe, with Irish music pouring forth from every pub. And there are soooo many pubs here! I don’t know how they fill them all, but they do! I especially like Grafton Street after dark, if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch the movie, Once. It was filmed right here.

I'm also adding some videos from Prague to their respective posts, check them out!