Just one
month after the Easter holiday, G received another day off – May Day! It’s pretty amazing the
amount of holidays over here…definitely NOT complaining :) So, to take advantage, we logged onto skyscanner.net (our new favorite
website) & chose the best deal for the weekend, which happened to
be…DUBLIN!
Thanks to
Gavin, Grant’s Irish co-worker, we had ourselves a complete itinerary from a
local (seriously, he planned out everything we should do, from which hotel to
stay at to where to go on a day trip, IT WAS AWESOME!). I can happily say that our first trip without our most
trusted inside travel source, Rick Steves, was a success :)
Here are a
few hi-lights from our weekend getaway!
Guinness:
I think we
were both pretty dang excited to be in the birthplace of Guinness! Yes, surprisingly, I do like
Guinness…the only dark beer I will drink.
So, we made it a priority to head on over to the Guinness Storehouse first! You can no longer tour the brewery
itself, but throughout the Storehouse you can read all about the process (which
we quickly passed by), learn how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, and
the best part, enjoy a free pint up in the Gravity Bar, where you have a 360
degree view of Dublin – pretty fantastic afternoon!
Kelly - this one's for Parker :)
That, my friends, is a four leaf clover design on my Guinness...now that is talent!
Loved this...a wall full of old Guinness bottles
Oldest Pub in
Ireland:
Of course we
had to pay a visit to the oldest pub in Ireland, The Brazen Head – established
in 1198 (I’m seriously becoming such a little History buff over here...I'm just amazed at how old everything is). We enjoyed a few pints, some traditional
Irish stews, and sipped on Irish Coffee, all while listening to a pretty sweet Irish band!
Trinity
College:
Trinity
College is an old (automatically making it beautiful) college founded
in 1592, which houses the Book of Kells (a 9th century gospel
manuscript). After taking in the Book of Kells, you can then continue
on to the old library on campus, which contains around 200,000 extremely old
books (as most of you know, one of Grant’s dreams is to have a HUGE library in our
house one day, so he was in heaven!).
The General
Post Office:
Don’t
worry…I’m not about to go on and on about a regular old post office...the Post Office in Dublin is probably
one of the most famous buildings in Ireland, so yes, it’s worth a visit. During the Easter Rising of 1916
(uprising staged by the Irish Republicans to end British rule in Ireland and
establish the Irish Republic…which then led to the Irish War of Independence), the Post Office served as the headquarters of the uprising’s leaders, and remains today as a
symbol of Irish nationalism. You
can even see bullet-marks outside on the original columns…so, basically the
Alamo of Ireland.
Temple Bar:
The Irish can
get pretty crazy once the sun sets, so we thought we would partake in some of
their nightlife fun! The Temple
Bar area is where everyone goes out…it’s pretty much 6th street
times 10! I don’t think we were
expecting to see all the fights, “unique” outfits, street performances, etc.,
whoa! It was pretty rowdy! Funny enough, our UT friends
also living in London right now, Lauren & Matt, happened to be in Dublin that weekend as well, so we met up with them here in the Temple Bar area and stayed out
WAY too late :)
Day Trip:
We had time for one day trip, so we chose to head North up to the town of Howth. It’s a cute, quaint fishing village right on the coast, with some breathtaking views from atop the cliffs.
And last, but not least, we stopped by St. Patrick's Cathedral & admired it from the park inside its grounds to end our trip to Dublin...
It was a
great little getaway…I think we both enjoyed being in a smaller city that
didn’t have millions of things to do & see, so we could actually relax a
bit! Next up is Greece at the end
of this month…I plan to make our first video of that trip, so stay tuned.
