Four star floor space!

New study abroad lessons for this week...

1. You ALWAYS need your passport
2. The world is smaller then you think
3. You’d be amazed how comfy the floor can be when it’s free
4. Your tram ticket does not work forever.
5. While your tram ticket does not work forever, the stupid American ticket just might.
6. 6 girls, 4 sleeping bags, and 1 couch means that someone is going to be cold.
7. 9 college students and 1 shower means you just do not get to wash your hair. Deal with it.
8. You can watch the Super Bowl in Ireland…but it won’t have commercials!

We went to Dublin this weekend! I might have a new favorite city. It has a really cool mix of historical stuff, literary stuff, and fun stuff. Literally one of those places that has something for everyone.
We decided to Ryan Air it to Dublin this time around…arrived about an hour before our flight to check in…and learned a very important lesson about our American drivers’ licenses. They are NOT a valid form of ID for Ryan Air. So…in the midst of the small snow storm that was taking over Cork (yes snow, don’t get me started on the snow) Beth raced from the Airport to Leeside back to the Airport via taxi to get her passport…and managed to check in just in time to make our flight. So let’s review, one forgotten passport and the first snow Cork has seen in years. And we’re still at the airport. Yes this seems to bode well for the weekend ahead.
We got into Dublin safe and sound and grabbed the bus in town, from there we checked into our four star accommodations. Otherwise known as Buckly hall…otherwise known as my friend Ryan’s apartment. Aka… we brought blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, and had a slumber party in the living room. Ryan and I haven’t really seen each other since high school…but we realized we’re both studying in Ireland for the semester! Like I said, the world is smaller then you think. He offered us a place to stay in Dublin and…well...study abroad lesson number 3 of the week. You’d be amazed how comfy the floor can be when it’s free. I can’t even begin to explain how lucky we were to have such amazing hosts in Dublin. Ryan and his roommates were great; I’m still amazed at how willing they were to put up with all six of us taking over their living room.
We went out for lunch after we dropped our stuff off and then Ryan and Mike went with us to “The Old Jameson Distillery”. The tour is cool, but at the end of every tour a few “volunteers” are subjected to the unimaginable torture of being forced to sample a few different whiskeys (please note the sarcasm). I’m fairly certain Ryan has never raised his hand faster for anything in his life. After that we went back to the apartment for dinner…only to realize every traveler’s worst nightmare – one of us had lost a wallet. So- again with the fabulous host thing, Ryan took us back to the tram station to look, we took the tram back to Jameson to look there, and while we didn’t turn up anything, we learned a lesson about how the tram works! Every so often officers get on board to check tickets…well…we hadn’t seen them do that yet. Turns out the tram tickets we bought after lunch were not still good at 7:30 at night…especially since we bought one way tickets…and were going the wrong way. Hence, my next lesson. Your tram ticket doesn’t work forever. But, we explained what we were doing, they believed us that we didn’t know exactly how the tram worked, punched the tickets we had, and let us keep going…they even took down information about our missing wallet and promised to call if anything turned up. So, while your tram ticket does not work forever, the stupid American ticket just might. Nothing like nearly being thrown off a tram to bring old friends back together right? (Yes, I did keep the ticket, it’s going in my scrap book). So…no wallet, but a good lesson about the Dublin tram system. Thankfully credit cards can be cancelled, debit cards can too, and the time change meant it was still business hours at home, and in a few weeks we'll be able to sit back and laugh and go "hey! remember that one time, in Dublin? When they almost kicked us off the tram and gave us a huge fine?". (We’re silver lining kind of travelers). So, all things taken care of, the boys took us out for the night in Dublin, we met their friends studying here and got to see more of Dublin, always exciting.

We woke up the next morning sprawled in various corners of the living room and Maggie announced “I don’t know whose sweatshirt I’m wearing, but I was cold so I put it on!” Okay…so team UCC was a little short on sleeping bags when we headed up north to take on Dublin. We’ll work on that. The logistics of 9 people and 1 shower with European hot water supplies just aren’t great either. I think I timed my shower at about 3 minutes flat. Impressive right? And I’m not even sure I set the record for fastest shower on Saturday morning.

The boys went on their school trip to Belfast and the girls set out to conquer Dublin. We went out for breakfast, headed to City Centre, and started exploring. We went to the Guinness Factory, Dublin Castle, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and then hit Grafton Street for some shopping and dinner. After dinner we did Dublin’s Literary Pub Crawl. Two actors take you to four pubs in Dublin where some of the country’s best known writers hung out. They do skits along the way and the goal is that you’ll come out a little smarter in the end. I can now say I’ve been to the same pubs as the likes of Joyce, Beckett, and Wilde. Cool huh? Maybe some of their talent rubbed off and you'll all start seeing a drastic increase in the quality of the blog. (Uh huh, sure Alyssa, you keep telling yourself that.)

Sunday we went to the Dublin Zoo, Modern Art Museum, out for dinner, and then it was Super Bowl time! You have no idea how funny it is to see Tom Brady running out of the tunnel while listening to an Irish announcer saying “The match is about to begin! The players are taking the pitch!” They’re taking the what to start the what!? We had a good laugh that the Irish attempt at explaining American Football. No wonder it hasn’t caught on over here, they had us confused about the rules and we knew what was going on! At about 3:30 the game finished up and the few troopers who made it through headed for bed. And when I say bed I mean our sleeping bags. Did I mention we had to leave at 6:45 to catch our flight? I might be nuts. I stayed up for the whole thing and they didn’t show one commercial!
It was a crazy weekend, and we might have had a few setbacks, but we had a blast. I cannot say enough good things about our hosts or Dublin in general. And now I'm totally excited for round two in Dublin- St. Patrick's Day!