What an eventful weekend… to say the least! We left for our flight Thursday and arrived in Dublin with no problems. We found our awesome hostel, which was located right next door to the pub we heard we had to go to. We had so much fun our first night out! The pub was just how I imagined—a live band was playing Irish music and people were Irish dancing all around. The atmosphere was completely different from the US and England.
The next day we walked to the Guinness Storehouse Factory, which was pretty interesting, and also was the first time I tried Guinness… and all I have to say is I am not a fan lol. We also got a chance to trace our family name at the factory and I typed in Fitzsimmons, the family name before America. A lady by the name of Lillian, married to a man named David Alexander Fitzsimmons… any relation? I don’t know… I’ll have to ask my grandparents. After the tour, I got my Dad some cool things from the shop I thought he’d like, so it was a successful trip.
That night we headed to the bed & breakfast in Wicklow. We all were exhausted and poor Ryan stayed awake on the bus to make sure we’d get off at the right stop for our B&B host to pick us up. The scenery was BEAUTIFUL! There were so many shades of blues and greens and yellows and so many hills I thought I was in a movie! We arrived to the B&B and our met our adorable host who treated us so nicely through the time of our stay—she especially liked Ryan! She made us a full Irish breakfast each morning and it was delicious—minus the black and white pudding, which is a type of sausage made by cooking blood or dried blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. Sounds reallyyyyy gross but wasn’t THAT bad to be completely honest.
The first night at the B&B we all stayed in and watched Friends on TV together. It’s been a week since we’ve all watched TV since there aren’t any in our dorm rooms here, so we were happy to have a little entertainment besides our computers for a change! The next day we decided to take a walk to enjoy the scenery and visit the nearest town to eat some lunch. Our host told us it’d be a 40 minute walk, which we thought would be a nice little walk with great scenery; however, it started to RAIN! We walked about 45 minutes in the rain… umbrellas and hair flying everywhere. We saw another B&B ahead and decided to ask how long we had left til we reached the town, Avoca and she said we were only HALF way! We said our thanks and started walking. Minutes later, the man from that B&B picked us up and drove us down into town—how sweet!
We arrived in town and stopped into the only restaurant in the town, Fitzgerald’s Pub. We spent 8 hours there… lunch and dinner because there was no where else to go in this little town! I’m not complaining though because the scenery was indescribable and something you could never see anywhere else!
Sunday was our last day in Ireland… or so we thought. We went back to Dublin to visit the oldest jail and then ate dinner at the oldest pub, which was really cool. Then we decided to get back to the airport to catch our flight back to Liverpool to get to seminar the next morning. Our flight was supposed to leave at 11pm and we arrived at 7:30pm… a little early but we kept ourselves entertained and played cards together. As boarding time approached, we gave the workers our passes and they wouldn’t let us through! Apparently we were supposed to have our printed off passes stamped before we could board? Who knew!? So all 7 of us SPRINTED across the airport to get our passes signed, only to find out that desk was closed.. just our luck! We had to wait until 3:30am to talk to RyanAir and get another flight to make it back to Liverpool.
After sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in each others’ clothes and blankets, we talked to RyanAir, they offered to have us each pay 100 Euro for the next flight at 8:55am the next morning… one slight problem, we had seminar at 9:30am! The only thing going through my mind was how tired and exhausted I was, so I’d do anything to get back to Liverpool, even if that meant I had to stay 5 more hours in the airport and pay 100 more Euros.
We slept and waited some more, only to find out or flight would be delayed, delayed again, delayed again, and delayed again! We didn’t end up leaving Dublin until 12:30pm, Monday! This meant we had to miss seminar and we were all hoping we wouldn’t get deported for missing our class; however, the minute we missed our flight we called our parents and Dr. P about the whole situation, and good news… we’re not in trouble! YAY!
Apparently the hold up at the Dublin Airport was Obama’s visit to Dublin this morning at around 9. On the bright side, we got to see Air Force One arrive at the airport, which was pretty cool.
Sorry this is such a long post, but this weekend was quiteeee eventful. Even though there were some mishaps, I had a great first weekend and definitely won’t ever forget the memories made during the trip and the 18 hours spent in the Dublin Airport.
Now it’s bedtime… Goodnight everyone! :)
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