Dublin, Ireland
Well….we set out for Ireland on Wednesday evening. We had to take a train to Leeds and then a bus to the Leeds Bradford airport. We arrived at the airport at about 7. Right away we went to the information desk and asked them what we needed to do and they said you can go right to security. So we walked, got our boarding pass scanned, and then Cody, Emily, and I got through security with no problems. Mouse on the other hand, did not. The metal detector went off, so the security gaurds dealt with that, but then they noticed that his boarding pass did not have a visa stamp on it. With us being from the US, when we go places we have to get a visa stamp. We found it astonishing that we had gotten past the information table, the person who scanned the boarding pass, and security and none of them said anything about our passports not being checked. It was a BIG mess. So one of the guards was nice enough to take us back to information, but the Ryanair check in wasn’t open. So we had to wait about 2 hours before they opened. We decided to go and get some supper at one of the restaurants. I had Macaronni Cheese and it was delicious. 
Well after we finally got done eating we went back to check in and we were first in line. We talked to the attendent and she told us to wait while she called her supervisor, so we had to step aside well she dealt with the rest of the people in line. Finally she got to us and all we had to do was walk to the other side to the services desk and get a new boarding pass and get it stamped. We then had to go through security again. And again, Cody, Emily, and I got through with no problem…but Mouse did not. So he had to go trough the process of getting wanded down again. Poor Mouse. He also had to get his bag looked through, but after a while he finally got through and we were on our way. Even though this all took quite a while, we still had quite a bit of time to kill. So we sat and chatted and watched some soccer (or football to the people here) and finally at 10 pm we found our gate and got to board the plane. We left Leeds a few minutes early and started on our flight. I had started listening to my ipod after we took off and got through about 5 songs, and before I knew it, we were landing. The flight took a total of 25 mins. We had landed in Dublin 30 mins ahead of schedule. Always a great thing. Once we got our passports stamped, and in the airport we exchanged our pounds of euros and waited for our taxi driver, Gerald, to get there. We sat there for a while and then he showed up. I must say, he is…eccentric. He was very nice and funny. She showed us some places that we should go while we were driving to our hostel and told us stories. We finally got to our hostel I would say between 12-1. I have noticed taht we always seem to get hostels that are on the upper floors, but thank God that this one had a lift…even though we were only on the third floor, there were a lot of stairs. We didnt do much when we got there, just got settled in, got a map and found places to go the next day, and finally went to sleep.
On Thursday we got up and went and got our breakfast. We filled up on cereal and toast and then went to get ready to leave for our day of adventure. Our first place to visit on Thursday was Temple Bar St., it is pretty much just several blocks off the main roads filled with different bars. We walked around, went in and out of shops, and then decided to head to the Guinness Storehouse/Brewery. We went in and looked around the store, and then looked around the storehouse. It was a self-guided tour. After looking through 5 floors of information on how they make Guinness, the advertising, and the origin of the brewery; we made our way up to the gravity bar.With our ticket we could get a complimentary drink from the Gravity Bar. Of course the boys wanted to have a Guinness, but Em and I opted for the pop. In the gravity bar, you get a 360 degree view of Dublin, and it’s quite beautiful. It is a great view. The guys seemed to both like the Guinness, but they came to the conclusion that it is better straight from the brewery than it would be in the states.
After we went to the brewery, we decided to walk around and find a nice Irish place to eat. We settled on a place, and went in to order. I hadn’t had a nice meal in a while, so I decided to have the 10 oz lamb steak with mashed potatoes. It was quite good. I figured that it was the closest thing to beef steak I was going to get, and they taste rather similar. I wasn’t going to take the chance on getting another steak again (after the Scotland incident). Emily also got the lamb steak, and Cody got the grilled pork chop with new potatoes and potato and leek soup, and Mouse got a chicken boxty (a potato pancake with a bacon and leek cream with cheese on the inside). All of us were rather pleased with our meals, which was nice. After we ate, we headed back to the hostel and just relaxed for a few hours and finally went to sleep.
Friday was a day set to just wandering around, going in shops, and looking around. We also had to move to our second hostel, the Mount Eccels hostel. It was also nice and it had the biggest room we have had so far, so we could actually walk between the beds. Before we went to the hostel we went and looked around St Patrick’s Park/Cathedral, walked to O’Connell St to look in shops. I found a celtic ring that I liked, so I purchased it. Going in that was really the only souvenier that I was looking for. After we looked around we went to our hostel and put our bags in our room. Then we decided to walk and possibly find a castle, we went to the Dublin castle earlier that day but it was kind of disappointing. Instead of finding a castle, we got downpoured on. It was sunny out….but raining cats and dogs. It was ridiculous. Once it finally let up we walked back to O’Connell St (it’s basically a st with tons of shops and restaurants) and went to find a light lunch. We ended up just choosing McDonalds becuase I was cheap. I thought I was funny that they had curly fries at their McDonalds, they called them Twisty Fries, because that’s a Hardees thing in the states. But I got them anyway, and they were delicious. After we ate we walked around some more and a few hours later we decided to find a nicer place to eat supper. We picked The Celt pub. We all had been looking to get a traditional Irish Stew and that place had it. And Cody was happy that he also got his Crubeans, boiled pigs feet. Now when I think pigs feet the image that comes to mind it pickled pigs feet. That was the complete wrong image. It was a huge hunk of ham. And that is exactly what it tasted like…just plain ham. This was supposed to be a started but could have easily been someone’s meal. So Cody had to eat that AND his stew. I just went with the stew and I thought it was quite good. It had lamb, carrots, celery, potatos, and onions in it. I definitely got full of off my bowl….I have no idea how Cody suffered through his and the pigs feet and he also had a pint of Guinness. What a champ. We got done eating around 6 but decided to head back because we had a really early morning on Saturday. So we went back and I decided to shower Friday night. I have learned taht I had the showers in Ireland, there is no temperature control and you have to push a button to keep it on. I would push the button and the water would stay on for about 10 seconds. So I would have to continually push this button, a big pain in the butt. I have come to the conclusion that that is their attempt at saving water, it’s just so annoying that people won’t take long showers. We all went to sleep at about 8 because we had to get up at 3:45 am Saturday to get to the airport.
We got up this morning at 3:45 and our taxi driver picked us up around 4:10 to take us to the airport. We got there at about 4:30 and got through check in and security with no problems at all. (So much better than on the way there). Our flight didn’t leave until 6:30 so we had a few hours to kill. We finally took off at about 6:45 and finally got to see Dublin at night from up above, that was a great part of the trip. It was beautiful all lit up. We arrived back in Leeds at 7:30am and proceeded to take a bus, train, bus, and another bus to finally make it back to Hull.
That concludes our trip to Ireland. It was a good time in a beautiful city. This coming weekend we will be going to Italy (Rome and Napples). Cody is determined to have me climb Mt Vesuvius…we’ll see how that goes. 
