Spring Break: Part One - Dublin and Cork

For those of you who don't know, Jacob and I are on Spring Break (which is 3 weeks long!). We spent the last week and a half traveling through Ireland and meeting some friends in the Netherlands. What follows is a description of some of our favorite adventures.

Since neither of us have class on Fridays, we were able to leave for Ireland on Thursday night. It was slightly stressful because we had to find a way to get to the airport from an unfamiliar place in the city. I had not been feeling well for a few weeks, so we had made a doctor's appointment and the only time they could fit us in before our trip was on Thursday, a few hours before our flight. The doctor said that I was fine and should be feeling better soon, which was thankfully proven true on our trip. I guess relief came just in time.

After taking our first Glasgow taxi to the airport (instead of having to deal with the buses and possibly being late for our flight), we landed in Dublin around 9 o'clock. To save money, we had looked into accommodations with a website called Airbnb where people from all over the world make their homes or extra rooms available for travelers (for a small charge, of course).

We had looked up how to get to our apartment before our flight, but our problems started when the directions told us to cross the James Joyce Bridge. We were on a street with about a million bridges, none of which were labeled. A nice man behind the bar in a pub led us in the right direction. With the solution to that problem came the next problem of finding the actual apartment complex and the apartment number (which we weren't given). After walking up and down the street a few times, we did finally find the apartment complex but had no way of finding out the apartment number. We bought a pay as you go phone plan for me with data while in Glasgow, but soon realized that it was only valid in the United Kingdom, which we were no longer in because Ireland had to go and decide that they wanted to be a free country (jerks ;) ). It was really kind of scary because we had entered a shadier part of the city, and many of the streetlights weren't lit, and we were afraid that we might have to end up sleeping on the streets for a night. But our saving grace was once again found in a pub, our new "favorite pub" in Dublin.

Hurray Wifi!!

This pub became our favorite mostly because they had free wifi that allowed us to look on the Airbnb website and find out what the heck was going on with our host. So with a pint of Guinness for Jacob and wonderful wifi, we discovered that our host and all of his roommates were out at a dance and would not be home until the wee hours of the morning. But they had left the keys in the mail box. All of our problems were solved, and we wouldn't have to sleep on the scary dark streets of Dublin, all thanks to our favorite pub (well kind of).

In the morning, the sun had risen and we had slept relatively well (Jacob wasn't too happy about the pillows provided, but he is picky in that area), and the city was looking much less scary. Armed with a tourist map, we set off to see what the city had to offer us. Our first planned stop was the National Museum, where I would be able to see many of the artifacts that I had been studying all the semester in my Celtic Civilizations class.

Along the road we stumbled upon the Dublin Castle

To actually go in cost money of course, but it was kind of fun to walk around the grounds and see the outside. 

The museum was next and free! I had slight nerd out moments upon seeing the Ardagh Chalice and the Tara brooch, but even if you hadn't been studying them it's hard not to appreciate their beauty and not freak out even a little bit. 

Tara Brooch: Front

Tara Brooch: Back + Jacob photo bombing on the other side of glass

Ardagh Chalice from the front

Handle of the Ardagh Chalice

Aren't they beautiful!? The pictures don't do them justice. These two pieces are considered some of the masterpieces of early medieval metalwork, and they were really spectacular to see in person!

Next we went on another nerd quest to see the Book of Kells (an early Medieval illuminated Gospel book, thought to be one of the most beautiful and elaborate from the time period, for those who don't know) and the Long Room library (which was the library that the Star Wars Jedi Archives room was modeled after), both of which could be found at Trinity College. 

We couldn't take pictures of the book itself but here's me being excited over the sign =)

Long Room Library

A Star Wars comic book on display that has a few pictures of the library,
but it's hard to see so you should use the Google if you are really interested.

These two places are where we spent most of our time, but we also saw the outside of some churches and the gates to the Guinness Storehouse. We didn't go into either the churches or the storehouse because we are poor college students. The outsides were nice though and free. =)

After only one full day in Dublin, we hopped on a train to Cork, a little coastal town that had been recommended to us by numerous people. I must say that Cork was a nice little town, but for Jacob and I this stop was our least favorite. We did enjoy our stay, the people we stayed with were very nice and welcoming and gave us some ideas of places to see. but really all we did was walk around. We saw a nice college campus that we decided was the Irish version of Regis, found a few very interesting murals, walked around the outside of an old prison, got some chocolate frogs from an Irish sweet shop, and saw a few more cool churches. 

University College quadrangle 

Zelda stuff so I'm told

Mario stuff I do recognize

The Gaol (jail)

A chocolate frog, no wizard card unfortunately

St. Finbarr Church

After Cork we headed off to Galway, but this post is long enough as it is, so I will let Jacob write about Galway, Dublin part two, and Amsterdam in a later post. 

Later Alligators,

Jessie and Jacob