How can you tell if a leprechaun is having a good time? He’s Dublin over with laughter!!

Which coincidentally is what my friends did when they saw these pictures…

For months my brother Josh, my cousin Michaela and I had been planning a trip to Ireland to see our cousin Emily. Emily is working in Wexford this year, and since an Ireland trip sounded like a blast we pretty much invited ourselves out to visit. We planned and we plotted (and even made Irish recipes!) until finally the day arrived.

I flew out to Dublin planning on meeting up with Josh for a few days before Michaela arrived. However, Josh’s plane was delayed (thank you American Airlines) and he didn’t arrive in Dublin until the day after I did. That left me with plenty of time to explore the city (and try out eye masks ha!) before he got there.

May I present: my walking tour of Dublin. The city was fine..

But the parks were better. Due to the nice weather, Saint Stephen’s Green was filled with people sprawled out on the lawn enjoying the sunshine.

After strolling through the park, I continued my walk past Christ Church Cathedral.

And did the obligatory tour of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

The cathedrals weren’t anything special (apparently I’ve turned into a bit of a cathedral snob), but what did impress me was the Old Library at Trinity College. It contains 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, and you actually walk past the Book of Kells to get to it.

After I completed my walking tour, I felt like I had seen the sights, done, check that off the list. They were fine, but I wasn’t in love with Dublin. So when Josh and I returned to Dublin after exploring the Cliffs of Moher and Galway, I knew that there was only one thing left to do: See Dublin the way the Irish see it. Blurry and a little unsteady. (Kidding, kind of..)

We headed off to the Temple Bar area, which thanks to my friends (and a really sweet Twitter follower!) I knew had some of the liveliest pubs in Dublin and was THE place to go out.

You know it’s going to be a fun place when the streets look like this at 10am:

We picked a pub that had rooftop seating and I ordered a cider. I then took the greatest cider picture known to man, if I do say so myself:

Josh had a Murphy’s, because apparently real men don’t drink cider. And Josh is a real man.

After a few drinks there, we headed off to the Temple Bar pub.

As we continued our plans for the day (drinking) we were serenaded by the man that holds the Guinness World Record for longest marathon playing guitar at 114 hours, 6 minutes, and 30 seconds. Is this the same Guinness?? It really is everywhere in Ireland!

Not wanting to drink on an empty stomach, Josh and I also ordered some soup…

Done with drinking for the day (our Irish ancestors are rolling over in their graves at that statement!), we joined hundreds of students sitting on the lawns of Trinity College. When I asked what the occasion was, one of them replied “the sun!”

We laid out on the lawn and relaxed until it was time to meet up with Emily and head up to Northern Ireland. Overall Dublin was fine, but here’s my pro insider tip: if you’re bored in Dublin, head over to Temple Bar. There, I promise, you will not be bored!

Sláinte!

~A