Dublin Day 2

We started today off by going on a walking tour of the city of Dublin. It was a free tour led by an 18 year old who was incredibly knowledgeable about the history and culture of Ireland, and most importantly VERY funny! I (Mollie) thought it was going to be a quick one hour overview tour of the city but it actually turned into 4 hour, very in depth tour of the city. We all really enjoyed it! We saw City Hall, Dublin Castle, learned about Red Hugh and his escape from the Castle, This paragraph about the tour would be 10 pages long if I told you everything we learned...but unfotunately I'm too lazy to type it all and lets face it, you probably wouldn't read it anyways. :)

We then decided to go back and tour some of the sights that we saw on our own. We went back to the Dublin Castle and saw the chapel inside. We also toured the Chester Beatty museum which seemed to have many of it's attractions closed, but since it was free we weren't too disapointed. We then went and saw St. Patricks Cathedral. There was a beautiful park outside. We then went inside and saw all the different artifacts that it had to offer. It was huge!! Jonathon Swift, was a man who wrote a book about selling Irish babies to the English for food in order to solve all the economic problems of Ireland. The book was a satire and represented a lot of political ideas that to be honest, I really don't completely understand. But so basically that means he was not serious--so don't get any ideas. Anyways, he was buried in the cathedral so we saw that burial plot.

On the way home we decided that we would be a bit economical ourselves and purchase dinner and bring it back to the hostel to cook it. So we had the gourmet meal of frozen pizza & Dorito's. Yes...we are experiencing lots of culture :). But we did have some Irish stew for lunch which was very delicious.

After dinner we retreated back to our lovely little hostel room in order to get a quick nap. We were then going to hit up a pub crawl which started at 7:30. However, we were a bit more tired than we realized and ended up deciding to post pone the crawl to the next night and instead went The Purty Kitchen for a drink or two. We then went and walked around the Temple Bar area. Tomorrow we decided that we will do a musical pub crawl...educational and fuN!

So far we are all having a great time. We haven't gotten too lost and I guess I (Mollie) am pretty impressed with ourselves so far. However I am a little worried about Amanda's tendency to not look both ways before she crosses the street. Good thing mom's not here b/c she probably would have already had about 5 heart attacks-I know that I have. Don't worry mom--I'm looking out for her :). You would think something so basic that you have been taught since you were 5 years old would be easy to remember, however I guess when you are in a new country everything flies out the door.

We have also met some very interesting people! Definitely one of the perks of traveling in a small group! Hope everyone is doing well in the states!


---Mollie