Well the day finally came for us to depart for our great Irish adventure. We left campus on Friday at 430pm to head to JFK airport, just in time for rush hour traffic...... But amazingly enough, we made it to the airport and checked in with plenty of time to spare. Take off at 945PM Eastern Time, and 6 hours and 20 minutes later we landed on the beautiful green island of Ireland. This length of flight is significant, did you know on international flights over 6 hours they serve free beer? I didn't either but bet your rear end the college rugby guys did, so they were all quite happy. I did what I usually do on flights and slept the entire time, easy to do when your knees are 6 inches away from the seat in front of you. There are few advantages to being smaller than average, but this is for sure one of them. This sleep worked out well since we landed at 830am Dublin time (For those who are keeping track, Dublin is 4 hours ahead of EST) We de-planed and headed to customs along with about 400 other people. I was pretty excited, having just gotten a passport a few months ago, I havent been out of the country since before 9/11 when all you needed was a birth certificate, I was ready for a stamp in my brand new passport. 30 minutes later it was my turn, I had visions of a gruff man asking me if I had anything to declare, length of stay, reason for visit, and if I answered wrong a body cavity search. What I really experienced was a very friendly Irish man who simply asked "Are you with all these ruggers? Ohhhhh what a lucky lady. Welcome to Ireland!!" ~~STAMP~~ and off I went. Apparently I did not look very threatening, or maybe he thought I was an American leprechaun coming home for the holiday. Which speaking of, I was pretty surprised to see how much of a big deal St Patty's is here. I somehow thought it was an Americanized holiday, but the airport was decorated with balloons, there were people wearing gaudy green clothing EVERYWHERE and the money exchange lady was wearing shamrock antlers, and all this before we even left the airport.
Once we did leave the airport, we loaded up onto a bus and headed into downtown Dublin for a few hours. The guys were pretty excited to run off and see as much of the historical architecture as possible in the few hours we had (AKA Drink as much Guinness as possible.....). The coach and I wandered around the center of Downtown Dublin and into Trinity University. Dublin is a pretty cool city, very walkable and very easy going, although today was not a typical day, as the crowds were growing for the parade. After a pretty delicious authentic Italian brick over pizza ( ya ya ya, Im in Ireland, why Italian. But it was crazy at the authentic places, and this was legit from Italy pizza, the menu was all in Italian. And it was tasty, so back off ) we wandered up towards the parade. If being able to sleep on a plane is a perk of being a tiny person, then seeing a parade is NOT. I did my best in trying to take some pictures by standing on my tip toes and raising my arm over the crowd, but this is the best you get.
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| I Should've had this kid take some better pics for me |
I'll put more pics on Picasa as the trip goes on (depending on internet availability). It was a pretty cool experience, tons of people (I'd say only about 5% were actually Irish) but pretty fun to say I was in Dublin on St Patty's Day. The time came to wrangle the cats back onto the bus, which actually went smoother than expected, no one had been arrested, everyone still had pants on, and we did'nt lose anyone. We drove the 2 hours to Galway, checked into Snoozles Hostel (Yes the real name of it). I will be staying in a B&B for the rest of the trip, but for last night I was in a 2 bunk bed room with 3 of the guys. Calm down dad and grandma...... It was like being back at summer camp ha. We went out to a pub to watch the Ireland v England 6 Nations Rugby game. Had my first Guinness here in Ireland, had a bunch of drunk Irish old men try and talk to me about the game, then they heard my distinctly non-Irish American accent and kept trying to say things about America, or at least I think they were. Between the booze and the brogues, I couldn't understand a word they said so I just laughed and nodded. After the game was over, it was time to head back to the bunk beds. Pretty early St Pattys day, but we have a game tomorrow and were all still adjusting to the time change.
Well that was Day 1. Hope St Patty's day was a good one for everyone!!
