Kelley BlankenshipUniversity of Worcester, England
Wow! What a weekend! Let me just say that the Irish know how to do St. Patrick's Day!
My weekend started off on Friday morning with a very early wake up call to make it to the Worcester train station by 6:59am. Tamara and I practically walked like zombies through the cool morning air, but we made it just in time to catch our train to Birmingham. After an hour on the train, we made it to the airport! Woohoo! I remember being very excited that we were actually going to Dublin! Ah! Everything ran smoothly with the exception that Tamara almost had to pay £50 because they said her carry on wouldn't fit in the little measuring thing. Let me just say that Ryanair is a pain-in-the-behind when it comes to your carry on. They're crazy. Anyway, Tamara didn't have to pay because we squished her bag in, but then it was a bit of a struggle to get it back out :)
After a very short 45 minute flight, we landed in Dublin!!! Tamara and I took a bus to the city centre, ate a small lunch and then met up with her friend Chris, who we were staying with for the weekend, and the rest of the day we went exploring around the city... in the pouring rain I might add. Despite the rain, it was so much fun! Dublin is such a nice city and it was totally decked out for St. Patrick's Day, so there was green everywhere!
Saturday morning we all slept in a bit because we had gone to a party the night before at another friend's flat in the city. Chris made a nice English breakfast that was delicious! We then painted up for the St. Paddy's Day festivities! The first one of the day was the parade! I must say that it was one of the strangest parades that I've ever seen. There were people on floats saying things like "Dream with your eyes open!!" in really creepy voices, a guy dressed as Dracula, and a giant rhino in a wheelchair....? Despite some of the strange acts floating down the parade, it was so much fun! We had trouble finding a place to stand and ended up having to walk quite a ways to find a place to stand, but we ended up in a great spot! After the parade we popped in a Japanese restaurant for some lunch and then rode the bus back to our flat for a nice power nap. :)
The real fun began when we decided to make our way back in the city to the area known as The Temple Bar. There is an an actual pub called 'The Temple Bar', but the area carries the same name. I've never seen so many crazy drunk people in my life. I've also never seen so much crap on the ground. haha. There were police officers (called Garda in Ireland), but they weren't really doing anything. We ended up meeting up with a bunch of French people that were friends with Chris and hung out with them for the rest of the night. The plan was to go on a pub crawl, but that wasn't really possible because of the amount of people that were actually in the pubs. We found one pub that we could fit in and stayed there for the rest of the night. It was so much fun!