500 Churches and 600 Pubs

After a long and agonizing day of travel on ferries, trains, and taxis (all of which, miraculously, contained crying babies), I have made it back to my safe haven of Oxford from the land of Guinness and Jameson. It was quite a weekend.

Ireland was absolutely amazing. We arrived in Dublin at around 6 am on friday morning after eleven hours of traveling the night before. (But hey, we're young right?) Exhaustion did not hold us back as we began the sightseeing shortly after checking in to the Holiday Inn. (No hostels this times, we heard bad things about the ones in Dublin...unsuitable for print) We started with the annoyingly tourist-y open-top bus tour, which actually proved to be a good investment since it provided a "free" taxi around the city all day. We popped in to Christchurch Cathedral, which is the sight of not only the oldest settlement of Dublin, but also Europe's largest underground crypt. Quite a sight. They even had the tabernacle from the King James era. Next, we went in to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is pretty incomparable. The soldier memorials inside the church date back to the 10th century. After the churches, we saw the Dublin Castle and the post office where the civil war began in the 1920s along with many other buildings and musems that I can't remember right now. It was a long day.

In the evening, we made our way to the legendary Temple Bar, which is famous for some reason unknown to me. It is pretty cool though because it has room after room of bars and a open-air beer garden in the middle. After meeting loads and loads of tourists, we finally met some legitimate Irish boys who were participating in the country's national pasttime: Drinking Guinness and singing badly.

The next day, we got out of the city and traveled by train. Between the group of Spanish fourteen-yr-oldsinging along to Britney Spears of all people, and the names of the towns we passed (like DunLaoghaire, which is really pronounced "DunLeery"), we were kept entertained the entire ride. We got off in seaside town of Bray. It was so quaint and we had the perfect weather all day; sunny and not too hot. The city was hosting a summer festival with vendors and merchants from all over the world. I ate Peruvian food for lunch...IN IRELAND! There were also children everywhere. Two words: Ginger Kids. Very fun!

This weekend was a blast but now its back to writing papers and reading communication journal articles. High Table is tonight, so that always provides a needed break from studying and I will probably have some stories about it later this week.

Cheers!