Dublin

We flew into Dublin Saturday March 14th. I had packed my heavy coat and umbrella basically expecting Robinhood and Braveheart weather. Not so. Pretty much every day of our stay was sunny, about three of them no clouds at all. It was awesome.

Our cab driver from the airport, like most oldish irish men we met, immediately started yakking away with us, asking questions, telling stories, joking and cussing away. Everyone there seemed so easy going and friendly, relaxed and making jokes of pretty much everything.

Dublin itself is a cool place with so many many bars and pubs. A drinker's paradise, tho after a few days, you start to feel pretty gritty. St. Stephen's Green is this huge (or pretty large) park near the city center. Lots of students there, chilling out after a night at the pubs, laying on the grass and harassing each other in a good natured irish way. Dublin has another park on the outskirts, more than twice the size of Central Park in New York. Pretty impressive, tho from what I've seen of both, I still liked that New York's didn't seem to have quite as many roads going through it and it had more trees I think.

We did a tour of the Guinness Factory.... definitely a little heavy on Guinness glorification (constant cheesy reminders of how awesome the beer is, even if it is), but it was still really cool to see how everything is done and has been developed since 1759 when the brewery was established. Arthur Guinness, the dude who started it, signed a lease with Dublin city back then for 45 pounds a year, not to increase for 9000 years. That's right. 9000.

Anyways, we visited the parks, the Christchurch Cathedral, saw the Patty's day parade, checked out tons of pubs and shops. We went on a couple of day trips to Malahide to see a castle and to Howth (sounds like both), a small town on the sea. Walked up some seaside cliffs.... very beautiful. The pictures from that have ocean and yellow flowers.

I wish we had more time to see more of the country, we're talking about going back again sometime in the summer maybe. Below is a link to our pics... we may have more as our friends load them online.

Dublin Pictures