The first week- The Dublin Experience

Even though I still have lots to do I need some way to procrastinate, so you're getting the first installment of the spring break updates.

Our first week (March 16-21) was spent living in Greystones near the rest of the TU students. We nearly missed the bus from Galway, got stuck in the Bray DART station like usual, but Ben and I were too elated to return to our old home to care much. We were staying not at the YWCA with the rest of the group, but at a small theological college called Carraig Eden. It was really rather like a hostel situation and Ben and I shared a room that had four beds, community showers down the hall. It was so great to sit on the rocks above the waves again and climb down to the beach like I always used to. That night Kelsie and her roommate went out to dinner, so Ben and I headed to the Y to introduce ourselves to the TU crowd and have dinner with them. We got to chat with a number of people we had kind of known from back on campus and it was really nice to chat with other people from our school. Ben and I went out later that night and even bought Tesco 2 litre colas for defenestration, but the guys didn't seem too into it. The Man House had been all refurbished and lacked it's wonderful smell and character, but it was still my old home. The rock doorstops that we named two years ago were still there!
Monday was St. Patrick's Day and so we accompanied the group into Dublin for Mass at the Dublin Pro-Cathedral and the parade, but not before I accidentally got drenched by a wave that literally rose more than fifteen feet from the sea to hit me. I think God was messing with me or something because it was totally impossible for any wave in those conditions to reach me as near to the road as I was. Aaanyway... Dublin was SO jam packed for the parade. As Megan told me later "I wouldn't wish Dublin on Paddy's Day on anyone"... yet we went by choice. The parade was so weird and fantastical with loads of awkward costumes. I didn't even upload most of the pictures; it just wasn't worth it. But! Afterwards, we had a choice of going to a Gaelic Athletic games day in Croke Park or dancing. Kelsie went off with some girls for dancing while Ben and I headed off for some hurling and Gaelic football. Some sweet games and solid pics. Being a separate group from the ISP, we took the liberty of leaving early to go to dinner in Temple Bar, but we had to meet up with Kelsie who by this point was all alone and trying to find us in an unfamiliar city. Poor kid, she did well finding the Millennium Spire, but we're probably not gonna leave her alone much more. We had dinner with a couple girls who had a mutual friend with Ben, then headed back to Bray to explore to Promenade, then back to Greystones to chill at the Y.
Tuesday, we spent the morning hanging out with people at the Y and then in the afternoon, headed off with the group to Glendalough. It was great to return there also, but it's so much prettier in August when I first saw it. Again we split off from the group and did our own little hike, meeting up at the picturesque tree with the huge swooping branch so Kelsie and her roommate could take pictures of each other in front of the lake.
On Wednesday, the ISPers had to go to Irish Lit class with Beulah Baker... not wanting any part of that we fulfilled our duty to Vance and pretty much finished off Kelsie's Irish history class by giving her the grand tour of historical sites in Dublin. We took the Hop on/Hop off bus and saw Trinity College, the Book of Kells, Dublin Castle (which I had never been to before), Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, as well as Kilmainham Gaol (where we had the same fantastic tour guide I had had two years ago. We had dinner at Flanagan's on O'Connell street which shows up in the Tom Clancy book and movie Patriot Games... this wa sonly after our attempt to eat at the pub in which Patrick Pearse surrendered at the end of the Easter Rising was foiled. Coming back, we stopped off in Bray again and spent the rest of the night chilling at the Y.
Once again on Thursday, the ISPers were in class, so we went on our hiking expedition. Walking through Greystones harbor reminded me of Sam and Frodo returning to the industrialized Shire... "This is worse than Mordor, Mr. Frodo... This is Mordor, Sam." It was sad, but it afforded us the opportunity to meet Liam the Wise Construction Worker. Just a random working man, hauling cement in a wheelbarrow, stopped us and just drenched us in little pearls of wisdom! Such a delightful man! I hope he does that to a lot of people because I feel like there are a lot of people who needed to hear the kind of stuff he had to say more than we did. Appreciate what you've got- your two legs to hike, the weather, your friends. Don't be greedy for more, it'll never satisfy. Friends are the most important thing you've got, never let go. And the like. So we had a bit of beauty before we reached the stunning view of Bray Head and the Cross over Bray and the descent into the town. From there we picked up the DART headed north because Ben had to go to Dublin Airport to pick up Lauren and Kelsie and I went to to hike to cliff walk on Howth Peninsula. On the way there, we found that we had our whole DART car to ourselves and like little kids, we ran around gleefully because there was no one there to look down on us for being foolish. It was great. I had hiked part of the cliffwalk once before with Ben, Kim, Kristin, and Kiira, but we did the Sutton half and missed the incredible cliffs on the far side of the peninsula. It was an exhausting hike, with a good bit of windblown mist in our faces in the latter half, but we made it and barely made it back to Greystones in time to meet Ben and Lauren at the Hungry Monk for our dinner. I had always wanted to go to this ridiculously nice restaurant but it's just out of my price range, so this spring break was my time to splurge. I had the most incredible and tender fall-off-the-bone Wicklow Mountain Lamb. Best way to end a long day of hiking. i was content.
On Friday, I mostly spent the day preparing to go to France that evening. I got my hair cut in anticipation of the lack of showers, I did my laundry, packed, ate lots of food at the Y and sat around reading. I caught my DART to Dublin around three, had a fun time finding the AirLink buses, realized I had to pay extra to bring my checked luggage (stupid RyanAir) and eventually was on my way to Paris that night.


Here are the pics- You can restart the slideshow or just click on the Picasa icon to go straight to the album and preview the pics at your leisure.