I've made it to my final destination on my European adventure and boy am I happy to be here! From the moment I got off the plane people were already being so nice and helpful toward me. I was pretty exhausted when I got to the hostel around 3 and Callie and Caroline weren't due back from the Guinness for another 45 minutes so I took a nap, it was well deserved. Then we decided to go get a late lunch/early dinner and despite all of the good food Ireland has to offer we got burgers. It was a good burger and I have no regrets. After walking around for a while we decided to go out for drinks. Out of all the pubs in Dublin I'd say we chose a good one. The bar tender was hilarious and had us playing silly games for an hour while he ragged on us Americans with his typical Irish humor. A guy named Fred shared his lode story with us, he is a head hunter, and told us all of the places we needed to visit. Actually, he go the whole bar involved in planning our itinerary. It was actually really fun! After a couple of hours we decided on a late dinner of nachos before meeting up with the last of the CIMBA crowd left in Dublin. We all went out to about 4 different bars and had the best time. One was clearly not for the younger crowd but we showed up in there and as soon as the guys started dancing to the Irish music we had the eye of everyone in the bar! At 3am when Callie, Caroline and I said goodbye to everyone it was once again back to "Bye, see you when I see you."
Thursday was our last day in Dublin and my first full day! The other CIMBA group went on the P.s. I Love You tour but we were instructed to go see the old Viking area and the jail. It rained all day so we were advised against seeing the Cliffs of Moher because the tour leaves at 7am and doesn't return until 8pm and half of that time you are on a bus. No thank you. We walked to the Viking area and saw the old city walls which were cool and we searched high and low for the castle but couldn't find it. How do you hide a castle!? We ended up near the college area before deciding to give up our search and go straight to jail, do not collect $200 if you pass go. Here I am on my last full day in Europe and I am going to jail, dang it! In all reality it was actually really cool. We've been in all of the churches and museums known to man kind but not yet a jail. It was a little uncomfortable but he history associated with it was pretty neat. During a normal year about 800-900 people would come through the jail but during the famine 9000 people were coming through the jail during the year. This is because people were committing crimes on purpose to be put there in order to get a place to sleep and have 3 meals a day, that's desperation. The key players in Irish revolution were also held and executed in the jail so there's a fun fact for you.
After we finished up our jail tour it was raining and we were a 30 minute walk from the hostel and main city area so we opted for a taxi. The taxi driver was quite a proud Irish mad who gave us a history and political lesson during our short 10 minute ride over the the Temple Bar area. It was very informative and actually really interesting. He was rattling off dates and facts like it was part of his job. When we got to the Temple Bar area it was raining pretty heavily and we were cold and fading fast so we got a Bailey's and coffee as a pick-me-up. It was really good! Hours of packing ensued shortly after before we decided on dinner. The guy working behind the desk at the hostel suggested a restaurant near Temple Bar where we could finally get some good Irish food. For appetizers we had these pancake balls and the main course was a corn and beef pot-pie type of dish. Desert was a Bailey's cheese cake. I still feel full just thinking about dinner! We decided to walk over to the actual Temple Bar for one last legal European drink before I headed home. Temple Bar is basically awesome and the live band was really good. They even sang Wagon Wheel but Caroline, Callie and I were the only three in the entire bar who were singing along, I didn't think anyone had ever hear it before. It was as if the band knew we were headed home and they were trying to send us off! Needless to say we stayed out way past our designated bed time of 10pm. Caroline and Callie left at 4am to catch their flight to Venice and I left at 5:30 to get my flight to London. Finally I had said the last of my CIMBA goodbyes and now it was time for one final goodbye to Europe.
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