Chasing leprechauns in Dublin for St Patrick’s weekend
Just an hour’s flight from London, is Dublin, Ireland home of leprechauns and shamrock and this weekend the celebrations for St Patrick’s Day. Kristy, Lija and I headed over there for a fun-filled weekend and a well-deserved break.
We were all on a very tight budget but that didn’t stop us from having a heap of fun. Kristy came over on Thursday night and stayed with us so we could all get up early Friday morning for our 8am flight from Stansted. Lija and I just took the one backpack and shared carrying duties because we really didn’t need to take much. (Don’t know how someone snuck the hairdryer in!) It was strange to travel at a reasonable hour, we got to our hostel by 11am, which was more of a B & B, which had a nice room just for us.
We went out for a wander around town, down the main street and along to Trinity College, where many of Ireland’s greatest writers went, including Oscar Wilde, Shaw, Keats. It’s a nice university, not too big, I wanted to see the Book of Kells, which was first published in 800 AD, but the entry was 8 euros just to see this book so we passed and went into the bookshop to look at books about the Book of Kells.
By this stage the rain was in between just light and heavy, but it was still bearable, so we walked down one of the shopping streets – Grattan St and found the Bewley’s Oriental Cafe, Ireland’s oldest cafe since 1927. It had a nice atmosphere but the coffees were too lukewarm for my liking. England makes them stifling hot, Ireland makes them bordering on the artic.
From there we went down to the gardens, beautiful big and wet, and kicked around a rogue footy for a bit, before heading back to the hostel. We made a stop off for some ham, cheese, biscuits and nutella, and a loaf of bread – of course the bakery didn’t have a slicer so we bought a knife too. My Subway expertise was required to cut relatively straight slices of bread, and those breakfast jams came in handy too the next day. We set up all our munchies on the table in our room and had a good old party and then siesta. We were stuffed from getting up so early, so we took a granny nap and got up with just enough time to head out into town on a literary pub crawl, where two actors took us around to several pubs and in between introduced us to the lives and times of some of Ireland’s greatest writers with history and performance of their works.
They had a quiz at the end, and the pubs we visited all had significance. One, The Old Stand, was where the political uprising in Ireland was being planned and plotted. There was one huge pub with about five diferent bars and many rooms downstairs and upstairs. After the tour we met up with Kristy’s friend Mel, a Canadian living in London, and Mel’s friend Erin, another Canadian who has been travelling since January. They were both lovely, and we went out to one of the pubs in the Temple Bar area, basically a huge area known for its entertainment and night life.
On Saturday we got up for breakfast, where we were fed an Irish breakfast, which is exactly the same as an English breakfast – it just depends which country you are in – sausages, egg, bacon, baked beans and toast, a great meal that I haven’t had in so long and is very satisfying. It was pouring outside but that didn’t stop us, so we headed up to the Writer’s Museum. The others didn’t want to go in, so they went off to the Guiness factory, but I’d rather experience literary culture than how beer is made. Each to their own. I really enjoyed it. They had a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on viewing, yes Stoker was Irish, as was Oscar Wilde (The Importance of being Ernest – to lose one parent is a tragedy, but to lose both is just plain carelessness), James Joyce (Ulysees), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels, which is actually a political satire and wasn’t meant to be published as a children’s book). The common theme is that although many of these writers were born in Ireland and went to Trinity College they often lived elsewhere later in life – London, Paris, Spain – but wrote about their hometown and the country of Ireland. A lof of it was to do with the class war and the political uprising that was occuring in the nineteenth century.
From there I made my way down to the National Museum. The National Library was right next door, but it closed at 1pm on Saturday and I got there just as the gates were being locked. The Museum was really interesting though, because it centres on Ireland’s Gaelic and Celtic history, that of Vikings and religion and language. The artifacts on exhibition were as old as 500 BC, such as flint knives, cauldrons, very old clothes and jewellery; it was amazing how much influence other countries had brought over to Ireland. The Viking part was mostly weaponry, including the skeleton of quite a tall looking viking who had been buried with his sword and dagger, pretty cool stuff!
I met the other two at Butler’s in Temple Bar area. No, not a bar, but a chocolate shop! mmm On the way there was a parade through town of musicians and people in giant inflatable rugby people. They were so cute bouncing around in the suits! Butlers did THE best hot chocolates, Kristy and I had oreo cookies melting in ours – so yum! You even get a free chocolate on the side so you don’t have to buy any! It was utter divinity.
We did however move onto the pub after that, to watch the England V Ireland six nations cup. We settled on a massive screen at Fitzsimmons Pub, and were accepted a place on the bottom of the stairs when the Irish boys two stairs up were sure we were going to be barracking for Ireland (the three of us were wearing green shirts at the time!) The whole pub was packed, as was every pub in Dublin – we tried a few before we settled on this one. Kick off was at 3pm, and I had a good yell and shout. We pretended to go for Ireland, may as well back the country where you’re in, although we regretted that after they lost their lead and England won 30-10, secretly we were glad – although Ireland has the better looking team.
After a day of gallivanting around non-stop, we were so up for another siesta (can’t wait till we actually go to Spain and get made to rest!) so we went and plonked with some plonk, good ole’ Bulmers, and got up at about 8 to head back to the Temple area with Mel and Erin to party. We ended up in the same pub we watched the rugby in, only tonight they had good live music which Lija and I were keen on. The others not so, so they went upstairs where there was different music. For a while we just got squished against a wall trying to keep our drinks upright, the place was so packed you couldn’t turn your head let alone swing a cat. Some guy trying to get past me, quite off his face, leaned in and told me he’d been to U2 live and these guys were better than the band!
The others took a cab to some other place but we stayed where we were because we didn’t want to fork out for a taxi and we were having fun as it was. The music was really good and I seemed to be making a good enough spectacle on the dance floor as it were. Not on my own of course. (You know I’ve been in England for ten months and I meet an English guy in Ireland – crazy). Insinuate what you will, I say no more. Lija and I went back to the hostel just after 4. Am. We slept in long enough to still be ready in time for another great Irish breakfast on Sunday morning, and spent the morning until we had to check out at 11, watching the Grand Prix in our room. It was so nice to see Melbourne, a little bit sad, I kept yelling at the camera to turn to the right just a little bit so I could see our mountains, but it didn’t comply, so I had to make do with watching the nice sunny weather over the city.
We still had a bit of time before having to head back to the airport, so we decided to do fly-bys of Dublin Castle, Christchurch Cathedral and St Patrick’s Cathedral – we thought it was all in the spirit of the day. Oh double whammy there! Spirit – get it? Spirit! Ah ha hah. Eh.
We gave in to the lack of decent food places and were all craving for a bit of salad, so we had Abrakebabras, which were alright but still lacking in the rabbit food department, so we headed back to the hostel to grab our bags and caught the bus back to the airport. Amazingly our Ryanair flight wasn’t late this time, even though their staff all seem to have PMS at the moment. Lija and I reckon the low cost airline also hires low-cost attendents – none of them are possible models, they’re more like the pimply faced, slightly larger, a bit weird looking – you know, anyone the fancier airlines wouldn’t hire to staff their planes.
I think Kristy and I were still a bit hyper from the night before, we were very antsy and loud for a while, but that’s okay because we were drowned out by these north England tarts. We were on the bus and back home in no time. It was strange coming home at a reasonable hour unlike all our previous flights, I was wide awake on the bus and didn’t have a lack-of-sleep headache.
Thankyou Dublin and Good Bye. Hello Cork this coming Friday.
For St Paddy’s weekend pics click here.
Tags: Travel
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