Hello dear friends! Tis already the end of my school week (hooray!). I had a paper due today and have another due tomorrow at 2pm. Amazingly, I managed to finish them both relatively early, so I am both relieved to have that over with and well rested. A truly unique experience for me around this time of year. I am only a paper away from being done with this semester! That being said, two of my classes don't have finals until the end of the school year so... the British educational system will probably bite me in the ass at a later date.
At long last we made it into the airport, belongings still in tow. Size checked our carry on—success. Then we handed the woman behind the counter our boarding passes, and after a while she said, "Do you realize you're leaving from Gatwick?"
Gatwick being an airport. Luton being the airport we were currently standing in, on the opposite side of of London.
No, no we did not realize that.
The airline representative there said our options included taking the next flight out of Luton–£200 each, or taking a cab to the other airport and paying a flight change fee of £100 each to catch the next flight from there. Neither of these options sounded particularly appealing, especially given that we had only paid £10 for each round trip ticket. It seemed like Dublin might not be in the plans for the weekend after all.
After some research we discovered that we could get there by a combination of train and ferry for £29 the next morning. So that's what we did. We decided to take the earliest train out which required waking up at 5am. The voyage there was nice though. I hadn't been outside of London, the British countryside seemed lovely from what I could see of it.
Sheep!
Whilst switching trains, I saw this sign on the platform
Dublin itself was pretty great all around. I had heard a lot of mixed reviews from friends who had been—some loved it, some absolutely hated it. The city was a lot prettier than I had imagined (though, granted, I can't even recall having seen a photo of Dublin before, all that comes to mind is generic Irish hills and greenness).
Hannah and I were lucky enough to be staying with my godmother and her family. They are living in a beautiful home in Dublin for the year. This meant that each evening we feasted like kings, ah, those were the days. My god-sisters (who I have mentioned before, age 5 and 9), were very cute and quite entertaining.
We spent most of our days in Dublin just walking around, exploring the city and taking in the feel of the place. At times it felt a lot like Who-ville. It was very quaint, full of decorations and brimming with cheer. Moreover, it was the weekend so all of these families (often with 3+ kids) were out and about.
It was quite foggy and rainy like they say...
We went on a tour of the old Jameson Distillery where Hannah and my cousin Martyna's boyfriend Nacho took part in a Whiskey tasting
Martyna
Miranda, Hannah and I decided to go on the Ferris Wheel at night. I thought Martyna and Nacho would come along too, but it turns out they are afraid of heights, and my powers of persuasion proved useless.
Waiting to get on the Ferris Wheel
At first it was a little scarier than we had anticipated, but we got the hang of it eventually.
The view from above
In the evenings we went back to the homebase to unwind, and so that Sonya and Olga would brush Hannah's hair.
One night we planned to go to a club called The Button Factory, but it didn't seem like there was much going on from our outdoor analysis, so Hannah and I ended up going into a pretty crowded pub called The Temple Bar, where we met a bunch of really drunk British lads on a business trip. Needless to say, we have a lot of incriminating evidence, if the NHS is interested.
On another note, we had a really cliché moment where a Brit and this Irish dude started singing some old folk tune. That I have not uploaded yet. I have, however, compiled some clips from the evening, which includes Hannah Mo' Riffs and Jay-B freestyling poorly. We somehow found inspiration for our rap personas on the long, long walk home. Enjoy.
On our last full day in Dublin, the sky was clear, which is always a lovely note to end on.
We had planned to take advantage of the city's public bike-sharing program. Unfortunately, our credit cards were incompatible with the machine. This was a pretty big bummer. The program itself is great though—it's awesome that so many cities are doing this. Hopefully next time we travel to a city with a bike-sharing program we'll actually get to utilize it!
Instead, we walked... a lot. It was death to our feet, but well worth it. It was a pretty perfect last day. Bye, Dublin!
