Doin' St. Patty's Day the Right Way!

Okay, so, I’ve decided to split up my spring break update into a few different posts to make them easier to read! (Sorry its taken me like 20 years to post again, i was waiting for pictures from other people. its actually been written for a while, just been waiting to post! so expect alot of updates in the next few days!) So, the first half was spent in Dublin, Ireland! I. Love. Ireland. I plan on moving there at some point of my life. I loved everything about it. I loved the city. I loved the country. I loved the people. I loved the food. I loved the smells. I loved their patrioticness for their country. I love the accents. I love the shopping. I even loved the slightly gloomy weather. It is my favorite place in the world. It was just perfect and I didn’t want to leave.

We left Tuscania at 7AM on Saturday, March, 17^th…..St. Patrick’s Day. When we got to the airport we had about 2 hours until our plane was to take off. So what did we do? We people watched of course! It was hilarious all the types of people you see at airports! Then we watched other people get on their planes and how much trouble they had with their carry-on bags. Every time we travel by air we use the company Ryanair. They are very very super anal about their carry-on bags. A normal sized carry-on bag is too big. The perfect size is a book bag…not bloated. Sometimes a duffle bag can work depending on how big it is. When you get on the plane they make you check to see if ur bag is the right size by putting it in this really skinny metal box and most of the time people’s bags are too big. They try everything to make them smaller and some people even had to throw some of their clothes or shoes or towels away to make their bag fit. Other people just layered their clothes. The catch also is that if you have a purse it has to fit inside of your carry-on. You cannot take a carry-on AND a purse. It all has to be one. It was really tricky packing for a little over a week in a tiny carry-on book bag for spring break but we managed to make it work without having to throw anything away at the airport! Yay us! Then we get on the plane finally and I sat in between Shaina and Amy and across from us Amy and I kept lookin at this really sketchy guy on the plane. He kept fidgeting and lookin really suspicious and it worried us a lot. Obviously he didn’t blow up the plane or anything since I am here writing this blog entry, but it definitely seemed like a possibility at the time! Haha One awesome thing about the flight though was as soon as we could see Ireland out of the window we saw a rainbow! That just had to be a good sign to see a rainbow on St. Patty’s day in Ireland! It was so cool!  That was the exact moment that I fell in love with Ireland. I knew immediately that this was gonna be my favorite place. I knew that from 1,000’s of feet up in the air.

Then we landed. It just kept getting better. First of all, the airport was structurally really cool looking. It was very modern looking with lots of metal and glass and fun curves and arches everywhere. Then we go inside and not only are the people all dressed up in green, white, and orange for St. Patty’s day, but the airport itself was decorated too. Arches of green, white, and orange balloons everywhere and shamrocks hanging from the ceiling. It was so fun looking! I loved it!

Then it was time to find our hotel. We had to get a hotel the first night and a hostel the rest of the nights cause everything was booked on St. Patty’s night. It was decently priced though. It was 60 euro a night, so split up it was only 10 per person. We walked around for what seemed like forever. It was close to 2 hours. I kept suggesting that we get a taxi, but of course no one wanted to listen to me until after we had walked in circles for 2 hours. DUH! We had just gotten there, of course we don’t know where we are going yet! Anyway, we finally got a taxi and got to the hotel. Only 3 of us go to check-in cause we told them we only wanted 3 beds so we had to sneak the other 3 people in there with us later. We went up to the desk and the guy told us that he couldn’t find our reservation and we had printed up the proof that we had booked it and then he tells us that a pipe had burst on the floor that we had our room on. (we did not believe that for a second! They totally lost our reservation!) So, he told us that we were gonna go to their sister hotel which was 10 minutes away and it was 160 euro a night, but we still only had to pay the 60. So, things were definitely looking up! We even had free taxi rides. Well, we were only supposed to have 1 free taxi ride, but we didn’t know which car was supposed to pay so we told them to charge the hotel for them! Haha! Oh well. So we finally got to the hotel and by this time it was about 8 or 8:30PM. We ran up to the room, which was gorgeous! It had 2 twin beds and a queen bed. It was really comfy, it had a nice TV, a fridge, a safe, and a really nice bathroom. We were excited, but we had to scramble to get ready cause a taxi was comin to get us for goin out in 20 minutes. It was a little difficult for 6 girls to all get ready to go out with one bathroom and 2 outlets. We managed to get it done though!

 On our way out we asked the taxi driver for tips on where to go and how to handle it. He basically told us that it is gonna be crazy and that we need to find a bar and stay there cause it was gonna be really hard to keep goin in and out of them cause it will be so crowded. So, goin into the madness, that was our plan…but of course we couldn’t stay put in one place!

We started out at Arlington Bar. We decided it would be a good idea to have an Irish Car Bomb as our first drink. 

So that is exactly what we did. It was a pint of Guinness with a hot of whiskey dropped in it. It was so good….until the after taste hit! That part wasn’t that great, but we felt like troopers having that as our first drink on St. Patty’s night! Arlington was pretty crowded, but not like what the taxi guy was telling us, so we ventured out to other parts of Dublin and went to Temple Bar area. Wow! The streets were jam packed with people!!

 It was so crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was such a blast! Walking a few feet you would hear 5 or 6 different languages being spoken and everyone just out having a good time and dressed all festive and crazy. It was just so…alive! It was great! We got in line to get into Temple Bar and we noticed that they were checking IDs and turning people away if they didn’t have theirs. I was freaking out cause all of my forms of ID were stolen in Greece, except my passport, but there was no way I was gonna carry that with me in such a madhouse like St. Patty’s day in Dublin! So I was getting worried, but we got to the front and he asked us for our IDs and we all said we didn’t have them and he said “you look 23, are you 23?” so we all said yes and they let us in! Score!! Then we discovered exactly what the taxi guy was talking about. We couldn’t even move in there. We would go a few feet and be all up on strangers cause so many people were jammed into this one bar. Temple Bar is huge though. So many rooms and floors, but it was totally crammed. We had a few drinks and left.

 Then we were just wandering the streets for a while. We met this guy from Spain and talked for a few minutes. He was a good time haha.

 Then we kept walking and ran into this French guy. He came over and started talking to us and then he was like “oh, you like the French kiss??” and one of the girls with us said yeah and he asked her if she wanted to French kiss with him and she was like “yeah, sure why not??” and then they just started makin out in the middle of the street in Dublin! It was hilarious! We couldn’t believe what was happening haha it was great. The streets were more fun than the bars sometimes! I’m telling you, it was so crazy and alive. 

Everyone should experience St. Patrick’s day in Ireland at least once in their lives!

We continued our night at another bar called Vat House. There was a line there too and they were checkin IDs again but then a fight broke out and the bouncers let us inside just to get us away from the fight. So, we dodged another bullet there! Haha perfect! We were able to find a spot in this bar where we could breath and have a little room so we hung out there for a little while for a breather. Then we were on the move again! We went back to Temple Bar for a little while. We had to wait in line again and as we were in line this guy asks to take a picture of us for a tourist site or something so we went with it. Whatever, it was fun. Then we get into Temple and hang for a while and decide that we should probably go to the bathroom before we go to the next place. So we go downstairs and it’s a small area with a lot of people jammed together. All of a sudden this woman puts her entire hand right in front of Caroline’s face like she was gonna high-five her face and yelled “Excuse me!!!” super loud! It was actually really hilarious so we got a good kick out of that one. Then this guy started shaking the vending machine yelling “Chili peanuts!!” This just shows the kind of drunken mess of people that were around us. It was so funny though. Those were our inside jokes the rest of the night.

Finally we got to this bar/dance club called Sin. There was a 5 euro cover charge and we just told them we didn’t want to pay it and they let us in anyway! Yay for us! We didn’t really buy many drinks here cause every time we went up to the bar they kept changing the prices of the drinks. Sometime they would be really expensive and other times they would be really cheap, so we just decided we would dance. We have been wanting to go to a club for sooooooo long so we were so excited to just go the the dance floor and let loose and have fun! It was such a blast! They were playing good music, we were with good people, and having a good time. Then some guys came over and danced with us too and they made it even better for us! Haha it was definitely a good time. 

We ended our bar night at the same bar it started at. We went back to Arlington to just kind of chill out. We were there for about 20 minutes and then we each stole a beer glass for a souvenir of the night. They didn’t even care. I am pretty sure they saw us do it.

Then we all decided that we were really hungry so we set out for food. It was about 1AM this time. We ended up going to Papa Johns….yeah yeah yeah I know…but we were hungry….sue us! We all got some pizza and bottles of water. We met some interesting characters there too. Haha, this one guy wanted us to feed him through the glass window. He pretended to eat it. It was hilariously entertaining.  Then there were these girls who thought they were Snooki from Jersey Shore. It was great.

Then we decided it was about time to head back for the hotel. It took what seemed like forever to flag down a taxi big enough for all of us! We finally got one though and when we were dropped off I went to hand him the money for the fare and I dropped my Guinness glass that I stole from the bar! I was so upset!! I guess it serves me right for stealing it huh? Oh well! It was so nice to finally get in the room and get into comfy clothes and just lay down and sleep. We were all so exhausted from the night I felt so disgusting too, like I was really dirty so I decided to take a shower before I went to bed…bad idea. I couldn’t figure out how to make the shower work for the life of me! I could get it to turn on, but it was freezing cold! I had no idea how to get it hot! So needless to say, it was the fastest shower I have ever taken. I was in and out of there so fast it was ridiculous! I felt so dumb not being able to work it right! At that point though, I was just glad that I was clean and in my bed. It was definitely a night to remember! One of the best ever! I really wanna win the lotto now so that I can go back to Dublin every year on St. Patrick’s day! That is definitely the place to be!

.....Spring Break to be continued.....