The Leprechauns Made Me Blog It

(The title is in reference to a common joke, "The leprechauns made me...", that we saw quite often last weekend.)

This past weekend Kara, Sarah, Kathy, and I made a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland. We left VERY early Friday morning. Upon arrival we dumped our stuff off at the hostel and headed across the city. We were embarrassingly American and ate at a place called Eddie Rockets (basically, the European Johnny Rockets). We trooped across the river and came across Dublin Castle, which is a poor, poor excuse for a castle; perhaps castle is synonymous with “palace” or “manor” in Ireland since it was simply a very well-decorated residence. We also saw a couple cathedrals in the "viking and medieval" area of Dublin.


After much walking, we ended at our final destination: the Guinness Storehouse.


It was actually quite interesting; the Guinness Storehouse is located inside a factory building that they used for about 100 years. It has a very cool setup and you have to climb through the five or so floors before reaching the Gravity Bar at the top, which boasts one of the best views of Dublin.


And of course, our admission included a free pint of Guinness, which only I out of the four of us was actually able to finish. It is definitely a very rich, hoppy beer.


After the Storehouse we were too exhausted to do anything besides grabbing some dinner and then crashing in our hostel room.

The next day was dedicated to getting to Malahide, a suburb of Dublin. Upon arrival, we quite unexpectedly ran into one of my friends from IC, Katie C., who's studying abroad in Siena, Italy this semester. What are the chances??? She was leaving Malahide Castle, which was our destination.


Malahide was a small castle but I still consider it my first "legit castle." It wasn't a royal residence, but it was owned for hundreds of years by the Talbot family, a high-ranking Irish family. The grounds are gorgeous and the inside was quite nice (no pictures allowed, though). This castle is also supposedly haunted by the Talbot patriarch, who makes an appearance every time an alteration is made to the castle that he doesn't approve of.

After visiting the castle we walked to the seaside, where it was very windy and cold! We completed our tour of Malahide and took the train back to central Dublin, where we made sure we got back to the airport in plenty of time to make our flight back to London.