DAY FOUR

So, the past few days in Ireland have been a blast, and since i'm awake and ready by approximately 830, I think it's safe to say my body has sufficiently adjusted to the time change. Way to go body, you get a high five. So we're going to go on our day trip to Glendalough (sp?) today, but while i'm getting ready/waiting for ashley to get done in the shower i'll give a quick recap of the past couple of days:

DAY TWO:
After a horrific first night experience, involving burned foreheads, nightmares of that horrific French movie Martyrs and possible trips to the hospital, we woke up happy to have survived. Ha, but seriously, it was a crazy night. We woke up probably looking hungover as I knocked a bowl of cereal over - sorry Brad Love. We had the awesome Ariel house breakfast and then went into the city.

The walk to St. Stephen's green didn't even seem that bad. We were all like, we could definitely do this all time. But then we walked further. and further. and I was about to start complaining because i'm a complainer apparently when we finally stopped to wait for our tour guide.



That [hopefully] was a video of him singing Molly Malone to us. But yeah we went all around Dublin with him and he explained Irish history to us. We saw Dublin castle and all of it's crazy additions, we saw Temple Bar - which is a district as well as a street as well as the actual pub, we visited Trinity college - although we have to go back to see the Book of Kells, we saw a lot of churches, learned about the vikings and on and on and on. For full pictures and captions, see Facebook. It was a really long day and we ended it with some traditional Irish food before we went on our pub crawl :



mmm...fish and chips. How Irish. Almost as Irish as our pub crawl. Full pictures of this are soon to be seen on Facebook as well - although you know my whole uploading pictures day thing. geez guys. So the actual crawl was 5 pubs and we actually only made it to four of them. Wow disappointing eh? But the thing is, Guiness is really, really, really hard to drink fast and a lot of. So me and a few other girls decided to go home. And we actually walked from Temple Bar all the way home which I was proud of us for knowing the way and also for being very cost effective. [If you look it up on a map our b&b is on lansdowneroad so it's quite the hike.] It was a really good girls night and we were back in our drinking element haha as Ashley liked to say.

DAY THREE:
We woke up after our pub crawl and got the delicious Ariel house breakfast. I am so happy that i've stayed at a bed and breakfast, and in case you have yet to be so fortunate let me just tell you the food is dank. Ashley actually got the traditional Irish breakfast and ate the white pudding, wouldn't touch the black though. I got eggs and bacon, haha - except that the bacon was actually ham. Fruit and juice and toast, all in all really cool. Ariel house is super nice by the way, we're in the ritzy district of town. When we tell people that we live on Lansdowne road they're like oh, well hoity toity for you. Good to know that your tuition money is going to the best huh mom?

Anyways so we went to breakfast...wow and immediately went to lunch. ha fat. But really me and Ashley had gotten up at like 9 and then had time to take a like hour nap before we had to head out. Still though, fat. Ha, we actually had to walk all the way around the city - they really like walking over here in Europe - till we got to the place. So I guess it felt kinda crazy? Anyways, this was our welcome lunch with some lady from the University. There were two tables and we actually didn't sit with her though, so maybe we'll meet her today. We ate at the Brazen Head, which is the oldest pub in Ireland, which was kind of cool. The food there was extremely delicious also. We started out with a tomato soup - the first that i've ever tried actually, and it was delicious. Then we had a chicken stuffed with...stuffing and wrapped in bacon. I don't know if it was Irish but it was definitely delicious. For dessert we had bread and butter pudding. Mm, alright, I'm sure you would have enjoyed it Mom, but I was like ok I'm ready to go to sleep now. Especially since the weather was pretty gross, even by Ireland standards - misty and dark/rainy.

We left the restaurant and walked like a mile down the river Liffy [which is the biggest river in the city, it separates it into North and South Dublin] into the shopping district. A lot of the girls wanted to go to H&M and other places to shop but seeing as how I have no extra room me and Ashley decided to go look at movie times for Sex in the City 2. We went to a matinee showing and it was so good! Slash awkward at the part with the braless Irish nanny. Ha. But yeah, after all of the sage Carrie wisdom, we were ready for bed. I took the bus for the first time and I just want to say: thank you, Irish transportation. I will begin using you more often so I don't kill my feet. Came home and crashed since we have this apparently long day ahead of us.

DAY FOUR CONT:
So we just got back from our day trip to Glendalough. It was so pretty! Being outside wasn't even that terrible because it's a really nice sunny day. Still cold of course, but definitely pleasant. We left at 10:00 and got on buses to go to the countryside. Being like any other bus tour that I go on, I was lulled to sleep by the rocking of the countryside. But we saw some really nice hillsides and lakes, and got great pictures. If I had uploaded before I posted this you would see my picture of the bridge from PS I love you with the caption PS I haven't seen this movie, but everyone was pretty excited about it anyways. There were some fields where they shot ring of fire - some mcconaughey movie, and braveheart in. We visited this really old - like 10th century - church and saw these gorgeous pristine lakes. I'll try and upload some pictures to add to this later.

Anyways, we leave Ariel house for the last time tomorrow to check in at UCD for the rest of the stay. Quite excited to finally settle in for real and eek..start class?