The Luck of the Irish

This weekend I chased the leprechaun's in Dublin, Ireland. This was probably one of my favorite cities so far. The people are extremely nice, everyone spoke english, and the food was amazing (very American)! It rained the entire weekend, but luckily was never too cold. Once we arrived, I realized how the Irish are complete drunks. There are small pubs everywhere around the city. I asked the front desk of my hostel where we should go this weekend, and he said the Guinness factory, whiskey distillery, and pub crawling (everything he recommended had to do with liquor). Naturally, I listened to exactly what the guy told me and we added a couple other things! My friends and I bought a hop-on-hop-off 3-day bus ticket so we could tour the city. The first place we decided to go was the Guinness Factory. It was very interesting how they brew there own beer. Did you know they consider water there most important material in beer? This factory alone supplies all of the United States, along with 71 other countries with Guinness. The exhibition takes place over 7 floors, in the shape of a 14 million pint glass of Guinness. For dinner, we went to a local Irish pub where they brew there own beer. This place was so good that we ended up coming here everyday.

The next day rained all day, which put a damper on our activities. We ended up hanging out in the hostel with some other people we had met the night before. Then when we attempted to go outside, we got dumped on. We jumped on the hop-on-hop-off bus and rode it for the entire 3 hours. We got off the bus at St. Patrick's cathedral. This is the largest church in Ireland and we ended up spending many hours inside. Then we got back on the bus and rode it back to our hostel.

On our last day it was a wonderful, sunny day. We decided to take a free walking tour of the city. This was very interesting learning about the history of Dublin. The guide was very entertaining and informative. Then we went to the Jameson whiskey distillery. This distillery produces over one million gallons of whiskey per year. It was our last night in Dublin, so we did an official pub crawl. We met with a tour guide and he lead us to the most "popular" pubs in Dublin. I had such a great time in Ireland and was very sad to leave. But I am back to Alcala for two days then I head to Germany! :)