Fall Break Part 1: 48 Hours in Dublin*

We stepped off our RyanAir flight in Dublin and walked right into the Guinness Factory, as I believe all Irish do upon setting foot in the country. It's basically a massive museum dedicated to beer, which I am not all that fond of, but I figured I'd try it out. All it really did was reaffirm that my body contains not a single drop of Irish blood. At the top level of the factory, we were given a pint of free Guinness to try.

I went back for seconds.

 

The next morning, we woke up around six to catch a bus for a tour of the Irish countryside. It was called the "P.S. I Love You" tour, since apparently some of the sites we saw were featured in said movie (and "Braveheart," but I've never seen that movie). Our tour guide was a stereotypical Irishman: bad teeth, road rage, and constantly talking about his drinking problem. It was probably an act, but he was charming anyway.

Our first stop was in a valley surrounded by two lakes and some church ruins. The path was a swamp, since it had been raining for the past 2000 or so years. We trekked up and down the path, taking in the nature and admiring the foliage like Senator Foley does in The Birdcage.

I was just so caught up in the Senator's... story.

After a bit of exploring, we greeted our tour guide back on the bus, who made a tasteless joke about his wife, clicked his heels together, and vomited shamrocks before stepping on the gas. It would've been nice to stay awake for the duration of our journey - to see the vast, rolling green hills of the Irish countryside - but we were so exhausted we ended up sleeping through a lot of it. When we awoke, the oversized leprechaun in the front seat was telling us to keep an eye out for Hillary Swank.

No dice!

Our next stop was Kilkenny, a town as quaint as Duloc (Duloc is, Duloc is, Duloc is the perfect place! I don't know where these obscure movie references are coming from today). It was as if God knew we wanted to enjoy Kilkenny the most; the sky cleared up and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds.

You can't actually see the sun in this picture, but it was beautiful here.

What did we do in Kilkenny? We ate. We first headed to a pub and ordered meat pies - a trend for the entire trip. Then we ran over to the Kilkenny food festival and got some cupcakes. I didn't take a picture of it, but my caramel apple cider cupcake was ecstasy in a little wax wrapper.

Upon returning to Dublin, we collectively thought, Hey, I want to go out to an Irish pub tonight and get hit on by drunk old grey beards who just clocked out at the factory. The Guinness Factory, that is. And that we did. It was the creepy ending to a fun-filled 48 hours we had all hoped for. The next day, we boarded our Aer Lingus flight to Amsterdam, our second stop on our fall break trip. To be continued... 

*This blog post is Writing Exercise #13 for CM316