Dublin In DetailPosted by simon on June 5th, 2008
We arrived at the airport as planned around 5:30am and was unable to get onto 3 flights because they were all overbooked by US Airways. Mind you, we were flying Stand By trying to get to Philadelphia to try and catch a late night flight to Dublin. After speaking to Customer Service we found out that we probably wouldn’t be able to catch a flight until Monday Or Tuesday. As you can imagine I was very excited and by excited, I mean, I wanted to shit on something held very dear to the person who decided overselling every flight was a good idea. With that said we decided to just buy one way tickets to Dublin, which after 20 minutes of looking, we found tickets at Continental departing in two hours. After getting over to the terminal we were greeted by Chip and Jody. Chip is one of my bosses who lives in Denver and Jody is a co-worker who lives in Iowa. After relaying our grief to them a man overheard our conversation and began expounding on how great Prague was and setting a rather pleasant scene for how great Europe is. Apparently this guy had been all over the world for his company and was more then happy to lay out any Idiosyncrasies of a culture. ( “I didn’t find any flaws in what he had to say but I didn’t find anything he was saying to be very self evident. Then again this guy got to live in these countries for a few weeks at a time and we were pretty much sprinting through them”) I had been up for 26 hours so I slept pretty much the entire flight to Europe.
When we landed I was pretty excited. The trip through customs was a breeze and the weather was sunny with a bit of a chill. Once we had purchased our bus pass we hoped on a bus and began our trek to the Hostel. We had some basic directions that were printed out but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how crazy European streets are. Phoenix was built off of a grid structure so it is really easy to get from A to B just by knowing street names since it is rather rare that a street will change names. In Europe it seems streets change magically and at a whim as they whip around and intermingle with one another. Thankfully James had a sweet GPS unit he had won the day before at a work event. This brought us to the Hostel with a minimal amount of wandering.
More Brewery Hostel Pics
Once we arrived at the “Brewery Hostel”, which was about a 5 minute walk from the Guinness Brewery, we drop our stuff off, pick up a free map and proceeded to wander around Dublin. The first impression of the city was amazement as I never really see cathedrals or castles or city walls that were constructed around the 12th century. Now after having been there I realize Dublin is very similar to many metropolitan US cities, the exception is it has history. Now we arrived on a Sunday, which seems to imply most things are closed or have very limited hours. Most of the pubs weren’t open when we arrived so we checked the map and decided to hit up the “Jameson Distillery”.
The Jameson Distillery was awesome to say the least. It is a tour that covers whiskey 101, Jameson family history and how Jameson whiskey is different from the many whiskeys of the world. It seems the major factors are they use a smokeless coal when heating their malts which prevents a smoky flavor in the whiskey. They use a triple distillation method to create the whiskey then the have very special casks that they use to age the whiskey. It seems the casks are used to make various kinds of flavored liquors which take somewhere around 2-3 years to created. During this time period the cask soaks up the flavor of the liquor. These casks are then shipped to the Jameson plant and used to age their whiskey. As you can imagine the whiskey begins to take on many of the flavors of the liquor that was previously in the cask. This is what helps give Jameson some of it’s flavor. I know this sounds like a sales pitch but I found it interesting and highly recommend the tour to everyone. A word of advice, when the tour guide asks for volunteers , Be one of those volunteers. You get a big whiskey taste test at the end of the tour and it is very much worth it.
Jameson Distillery Pics
After having a few drinks we continued our travels to the Dublin City walls which I tried to climb. Needless to say the walls were a little slick and I ended up cutting my head on one of the stones. I still think I could climb them with a little chalk and some climbing shoes. We then wandered into the Dublin Castle which was rather uninspiring as it seemed to have been rebuilt around the 1600’s. The Crown Regalia were stolen from Dublin castle and no one knows where the went.
Dublin Castle Pics
After walking around all afternoon we went back to the hostel and met our hostel mate. It was this German chick who wasn’t doing much so we picked her up and wandered over to the local Pub “Ryan’s Pub” and proceeded to have a very entertaining time. As soon as we sit down in the pub an old women whose cheeks are red with drunk points me out and asks “Are you a Pollack?” To which I replied, “No”. She then quickly followed with “Are you in the KKK?” I have to admit, this one threw me for a curve at first. I wasn’t quite sure what the hell this old lady was getting at, then I realized I was wearing a hoodie and this might be some kind of crazy cultural deal. So I threw my hood up and gave her the stink eye. This put me on the receiving in of a sign of the cross from this little lady who then toasted me. We ended up hanging around for quite awhile. We discovered there is quite an active lesbian community that shows up around 8-9 and that everyone in the bar is all too familiar with music from the 1950-70’s that came out of America. In fact I found it quite scary.
Dublin Random Pics
After having our fair share of drinks and sing-alongs we departed the bar in search of sleep. I however was not quite prepared for sleep so I wandered into the common area where a few people were watching a DVD of outtakes from “Cradle of Filth”. Apparently this is a “Dark Metal” band that is kind of big. I had the privilege of having a few people explain to me the differences between “Dark Metal” and “Death Metal” but I couldn’t tell you what they were now if I had to. I ended up watching the DVD for over an hour with a rather diverse group. Some people from Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland and god know where else. Needless to say the DVD was not entertaining enough so it quickly became a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Multi-Cultural edition. I must say I have not laughed that hard in a very long time.
The next morning Neil, James and I decided to take the city tour on the “Hop On, Hop Off” which is a double decker bus where the driver fills you in on all the history of city sites. It just so happens that James had a friend who was in Dublin the same time we were and wouldn’t you know it but he and his posse just happen to be on the same bus tour. So we joined forces with them (Joe, Bobby, Nikki, Josh (Maverick), Debbie ) and proceeded to do the rest of our site seeing and go drinking later that night with them. We also managed to meet up with John, Eric and Will. After a day of visiting Dublin sites and drinking in the Temple Bar district we hit the hay.
Dublin Site seeing Pics
Dublin Temple Bar Pics
The next morning we hit the Guinness Brewery and caught our flight to Prague.
Dublin Guinness Pics
More Info:
Brewery Hostel – This was an ok stay. It has way more character then anything else.
Guinness Brewery also awesome food
Jameson Distillary
The Brazen Head
Temple Bar
Ryan’s Pub
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
Dublin Castle
Dublin Zoo
Lessons Learned:
Never fly stand-by, ever. Should you consider it, inform me and I will kick you in the nuts. It will be less painful, trust me.
Bring Cold meds. Weather changes are drastic and often result in a wonderful cold. Something I tend to forget. It’s a great idea to bring your favorite high powered cold meds so your trip isn’t miserable.
Beanies, hoodies, thick socks and rain slicks. These 4 things will make your trip MUCH less painful. At least it did for me, though I really wished I had a beanie.
Hostel beds are going to suck, and their pillows and sheets won’t be much better. Just be prepared.
Ear plugs. Great for the flight and when you have fat snoring neighbors, people trying to get it on, or loud drunks at the hostel.
