The Dublin Chronicles

We are now home and fully rested from our Amazing Dublin Adventures. We’ll give y’all the day-by-day rundown of our activities and throw in some pictures to round it all out - hold your pointer over them to see captions. Enjoy!

Day 1: March 13, 2009
Our bags packed and alarms set, we woke up bright and early to catch the 9:22 train to Tampere, an hour and a half southeast of Jyvaskyla. We arrived at Tampere expecting an airport fairly similar to RDU or PTIA, or maybe even the cute little Asheville airport, but were greeted by something looking suspiciously like an empty warehouse, or perhaps a garage! It was about as chilly inside as outside, and check-in wasn’t open until a set time... namely, when they turned around the signs to say “Dublin” instead of “Closed.” After receiving a hand-written ticket with no seat assignment, we waited in plastic chairs, and, while the people on our plane filed out the back, we filed into the front. The seats were first-come-first-serve, so we were really thankful we sacrificed the extra 10 Euro for priority boarding (confirmed by a little yellow slip.) On the bright side, we are happy to report that the Ryanair terminal did not reflect upon the Ryanair airplane... though it did lack amenities such as seat pockets and reclining seats.

Our flight was nevertheless both peaceful and timely; we experienced only one minor disturbance. His name was Johann, and he was four. Accompanied by his classically overly worried mom and happy-go-lucky oblivious dad, Johann wreaked havoc on the Ryanair terminal, from sliding under the makeshift barriers to running atop the makeshift barriers to army-crawling in between people and their baggage. Johann seemed infinitely pleased to have the entire terminal for his playground, while Johann’s parents seemed alternatingly concerned/embarrassed and unaware.

The descent into Ireland was absolutely gorgeous. As we passed through the lowest layer of clouds, the rolling emerald hills emerged before us, in every shade of green imaginable, and occasionally dotted by little white sheep. After we landed, we caught an airline bus to our hotel. Funny thing was, we had a little trouble recognizing our hotel, even though it was a marked stop for the bus. We were dropped off in front of a huge, cathedral-like building. We looked left, then right, then left again (a behavior we would come to correct; more on this later), and finally saw a sign for our hotel on the lawn of the cathedral, in front of a huge fountain. We walked through the wrought-iron gate and passed by the flower garden, and finally realized that the “cathedral” was, in fact, our hotel. We checked in, got settled (it was quite nice inside, too), and ventured downtown to get some dinner. We ended up in Temple Bar – not actually a bar, but an area of the city which we would return to many times, it being a center of pubs, bars, and restaurants. Then we went back to our hotel and crashed for the night.

Day 2: March 14, 2009
Our first full day in Dublin was cool and party cloudy, which to us felt like sunny and 70 degrees. After sleeping in just a little, we headed out to the Medieval-Viking area of town, where we passed through Dvblinia, a Viking exhibit, and saw the Christ Church Cathedral. Then we walked south to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, whose spire Elizabeth pointed out and followed. We also spent some time in a park nearby, where we saw the reputed site of St. Patrick’s Well, where he is said to have baptized the first Irish Christians. We found lunch at a pub on Dame St., where we got watch a Liverpool-Manchester United soccer game with the rowdy locals. (Lunch was great – we tried Guinness bread for the first time, which was brown and sweet.)

After that, we went to Dublin Castle, though it didn’t really look anything like the Irish castles we’d been picturing in our minds. When we got back downtown, we did a little accessory shopping, and saw Watchmen, before returning to our hotel to ambush the Lauras. Laura Francis and Laura Varnier, or the Lauras, as we like to call them, are both friends from UNCA, and had just flown in from Barcelona. We spent many hours catching up and sharing travel stories before tuning in for the night.

We should mention here, being that we had to cross the street from where the bus dropped us off in front of our hotel, that the Irish people believe it necessary to drive on the wrong side of the road. This wouldn't complicate things so much, if the core behavior of looking left, then right, then left again wasn't so ingrained in our minds. We would complete the first part of the sequence, not see any cars, and take one step into the street, look right, and then promptly scoot backwards, as a bus barrels down the road. Occasionally we would catch each other, yelling or physically blocking when necessary. This actually worked out pretty well for us: Elizabeth remembered to look right first when were downtown, while Jaime was much more proficient about remembering when we were by the hotel. We only had a couple of really close calls.

Day 3: March 15, 2009
We spent a little more time catching up before heading out into the city for a late lunch at a pub off O’Connell Street, the main road in downtown Dublin. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon wandering around downtown, exploring stores and shops, and generally having fun with our fellow Americans. By this point in the trip, we had the realization that we have become Eurosnobs, because we have begun to find the common (loud) American tourist super annoying. We also enjoyed the downtown sights, including the post office, and the Dublin Spire - known to locals as the Stiletto in the Ghetto, much along the same lines as the statue of Molly Malone (the Tart with the Cart) and the statue of Oscar Wilde (the Queer in the Square – but you have to say that one with a really heavy Irish accent for it to work out).

The four of us spilt up for the evening, and we headed back to Temple Bar to hunt down a restaurant. We were feeling up for something a little bit nicer than the usual pub fare, and ended up making an amazing discovery: Fitzer’s, an Irish/Continental-European restaurant. It was warm and dimly lit inside, and our table was tucked into a corner beside a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the main street of Temple Bar. Elizabeth ordered linguine with prawns (large shrimp) and chicken with blush tomatoes in a citrus wine sauce, and Jaime ordered braised chicken over winter vegetables in a tarragon cream sauce, and we shared a little basket of Irish brown bread and herb rolls. For dessert, we shared a lemon tart with raspberry sauce and a warm sticky toffee pudding (more like a little cake) with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. The dinner finished with hot tea, and by that point we were more than ready to get back to the hotel.

Day 4: March 16, 2009
Another cool and sunny day, and we got up bright and early once more to get started on the Dublin Bus Tour, which is a guided tour of Dublin by bus, with hop-on-hop-off sightseeing points. We started off downtown, and then headed to Trinity College, to check out the courtyard and see the medieval Book of Kells – though, since they were demanding exorbitant fees to see it in a large throng of tourists through a glass case, we opted to look at in up-close in books in the gift shop instead.

After that, we hopped back on the bus, and cashed in on our tickets for a self-guided tour of the Guinness Storehouse at St. James’s Gate, complete with complimentary pint in the highest bar in Dublin. The storehouse was a seven-story building, and the tour led us through the beer-making process, including a large waterfall, walls of hops, a huge vat full of barley, a safe of the ancient strain of yeast used by Arthur Guinness himself, roasted barley to taste, and exhibits on quality control, advertisement, packaging, and distribution. As the website mentions, “the core of the Guinness Storehouse is modelled on a giant pint glass, stretching up from reception on the ground floor to The Gravity Bar in the sky. If filled, this giant pint would hold approximately 14.3 million pints of Guinness!” After spending a little time in the gift shop, we headed out, and caught the Tour bus to Kilmainham Gaol (“Kill-main-um jail”), where we booked a tour for later, and got lunch advice from a local.

We were already on the outskirts of Dublin, far from our beloved Temple Bar area, and he directed us on a short walk (actually short here, about 10 minutes) down to the Black Lion pub. Definitely a local dive, the Black Lion was established in 1734 and was tucked into the corner of a little commercial street. Though it wasn’t particularly fancy, it was a traditional Irish lunch meal, complete with huge servings of everything (a “little bit”), including chips and steamy cabbage.

After our relaxing and filling lunch, we returned for our jail tour (preceded by a really awesome piece of black forest cake in the jail’s Tearoom, the existence of which was kind of odd but appreciated nevertheless). We learned a lot of interesting Irish political history during the tour due to the number of political activists that were held in and executed at Kilmainham, including the fact that the Irish flag represents Catholics (green), Protestants (orange), and the hope for peace between them (white). After finishing the bus tour circuit, we met up with the Lauras for dinner at a traditional Irish restaurant named Quay’s. There, Elizabeth tried the Guinness stew, which was beef accompanied by a little bit of potato and carrot, and Jaime tried the traditional Irish stew, which was Little Bo Peep’s Sheep (thank you Elizabeth) with potatoes, carrots, and onion.

After that, we decided to check out the bar scene. Enough said about that. If you would like all the PG-13 details, feel free to email us. We’ll be happy to provide them.

Day 5: March 17, 2009
ST. PATRICK’S DAY! We hung out at the hotel talking for a good part of the morning, then we went downtown to get lunch at the Mona Lisa, a pizza place that the Lauras had found the other day. The streets near our hotel were quiet, with not many people wearing any shade of green, but as we approached downtown, the green exploded with people wearing hats, facepaint, flags, and all manner of Irish regalia. The streets themselves were also becoming increasingly colorful with confetti and decorations such as balloons and banners. After finding an internet café for Laura V to write a paper, we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap.

That evening we all headed downstairs to the hotel restaurant to sit in big comfy leather chairs and dine on sandwiches and salad and catch up on the latest news. Afterwards, we spruced up our green and caught a bus downtown, on which we made friends with an American from Wisconsin and her French boyfriend. We had trouble finding an under 21 bar that wasn’t packed, but we eventually tucked into a bar while the bouncers were occupied with a rowdy patron. Temple Bar, at this point, looked like a shamrock threw up, with green everywhere and people packed shoulder to shoulder, Irish music blaring in the streets. After a fun night, we went back to the hotel to finish packing.

Day 6: March 18, 2009
Completely exhausted, we nevertheless successfully caught our flight back to Tampere which left Dublin at 7:30 am, meaning we had to catch the 5:30 bus to the airport. From the Tampere airport we hopped on another bus to the train station where we were lucky enough to only wait 5 minutes for a train to Jyväskylä. Two hours later we were eating lunch at a favorite downtown restaurant before taking our final bus back home.

All in all, we had a great trip. Dublin was beautiful and it was really fun to catch up with old friends. We’re happy to have some time to rest (and wash clothes), but we’re already looking forward to our trip to Lapland on the 23rd.