THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2ND
After a short run around Dublin and breakfast we spent some time on the computer. This meant we had a late start. We headed out to search around Dublin a little further. We went to St Stephens green first and wandered around. It was just a city park really, nothing out of the ordinary. Although the grass there was amazing, beautifully kept. After a kebab for lunch we walked to the Guinness storehouse, located at the Guinness factory. We did the tour, which was about the history and production of Guinness. You don't actually get to see any beer being brewed, it was all animated and a bit disappointing. There were interesting parts like their old advertising campaigns, and also the origins of the Guinness Book of World records, which comes from Arthur Guiness (he thought bar-tenders needed a book to settle arguments between patrons). Neither Em nor I had been aware of this obvious link. At the end of the tour you end up at the top of a look out, which is 6 storeys high, and glass all around, so you get a pretty good view of Dublin. We also had a pint of Guinness, which may be the freshest Guinness we will ever have. We also met two Australians and organised to meet them later that evening for a drink and to go and watch some Irish dancing and music.
So after the tour we headed back to the hostel. On our way we found an amazing supermarket, Lidl's which is low cost, but lots of variety really. So we picked up dinner there. After having dinner back at the hostel, I hit the wall, so we ended up going to bed. We stood up the Australians but hopefully they had a good time anyway.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3rd
We woke up quite early Friday morning and got down to breakfast relatively early. The hostel does a great cooked breakfast (part of the room fee) – eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, hash-brown, baked beans, and... black and white pudding (yuck!). There's also cereal and hot drinks. After brekky, we packed up our gear - initially we were only planning to stay there for two nights, but as there was more to do, we extended our stay to four nights. Unfortunately there were no beds available in the 8 bed rooms, so we had to move to the 16 bed rooms. Neither of us were very keen, but it wasn't too bad once we were in there. So after organising this we headed into town. We did a walking history tour of central Dublin which was really good. We had a great guide, Edward, who was a Trinity College History graduate. He looked the part, wearing a ribbed skivvie and an olive green corduroy jacket. We started off at Trinity college, where he talked about the general history of Ireland, starting at around 800AD, and worked through the centuries, before telling us about Trinity College. It was amazing to briefly hear the history of a coutry which has had such a volitile past. I didn't really realise just how long different conflicts had been going on in Ireland. From Trinity College we headed across to the Bank of Ireland which was the old Parliament house up until the early 19th century. From there we headed to the Dublin city Hall; a house where 3 murders occurred during one of the bloody Sundays; Dublin Castle (not very castle-like); and the Christ Church cathedral. That concluded our tour which was only two hours long but highly informative. After this we headed home for a late lunch. Then we did some investigations about cars and car insurance, but decided that it was too difficult considering we did not have a postal address, or even know where we were going to live. To finish off our day we had another wander around Dublin, and picked up a SIM card so Maneesh could have an Irish cellphone. After dinner we played Scrabble Scramble then went to bed.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4TH
After surviving a night in our 16 bed hostel room, which actually wasnt bad at all we spent some time on the computer finding phone numbers for relations of mine. We tracked down a few numbers, and managed to get a hold of my grandfather's brother and his wife, Austin and Olive. They live in Dalkey, County Dublin. Unfortunately they had plans for the weekend so we couldn't go down to visit them, but this will be high on our agenda during our time in Ireland. After this we went back to Trinity College to go and see the Book of Kells, which is a collection of decorative books of gospel written and illustrated on calf-skin vellum, by monks hundreds of years ago. We also saw the long room, which is the original library there. It is huge, and freezing cold (we couldn't imagine having to study in there!). We were told that's the place that the library in Harry Potter was based on.
For the remainder of the day we just took it easy. I was starting to get a bit sick of continually being surrounded by people, and the hostel really didn't give you relief from this.
That evening we headed out for a walk in the Dublin rain to try and see some Irish music and dancing, but I forgot to change into jeans so wasnt allowed into the pub, so we headed back to the hostel.
