Seeing the 'Aminals' and Gettin My Holy On

On Tuesday I got to sleep in a little bit til 9AM. We split up into groups cause we all wanted to do different things. Carly, Shaina, and Abby all went to Kilkenny (of Kelkenny? I don’t remember) and then me, Caroline, and Amy went to the zoo! It was a good day. It was so nice to sleep in for a little bit! We got goin and had such good luck with buses that day! No way were we gonna try to walk all the way there when we had no idea where we were going! So we took a bus, and had perfect timing for catching it and took it to Phoenix Park. The park was so pretty! I guess, looking back at it that it looked just like any other park like in the US, but it seemed so serene and beautiful to me that day. As soon as you crossed over the line that separated the park from the rest of Dublin, it was like the world went completely silent.

 I have only experienced that in only one other place in my life and that was at the Harvard campus in Boston. It is so crazy to me how drastic of a change it was. We had to walk through the park to get to the Dublin zoo, and I am glad we did.

We got to the zoo just as it was starting to open for the day which was perfect cause then it wasn’t crowded with people all over the place. It was almost like we had to zoo all to ourselves. Just us and the animals! The zoo was like any other zoo, where it was divided up into different sections like the monkey house, the water animals, and the animals from Africa. It was really cool and it was a lot bigger than what I expected it to be.  There were  a few animals that I had never heard of before. There was this thing that looked like a kangaroo, rat, deer, and bunny all mixed together called a Mara. 

I thought they were cute, but Caroline and Amy didn’t seem to fond of them! Then things like a Tapir, red panda, African hunting dog, and the most terrifying bird EVER called Abyssinian Ground Hornbill. That thing like attacked us through the window and was HUGE! It was scary! Haha and they had peacocks loose walking around and they didn’t seem to fond of us either, but they were so beautiful to look at! 

Then the gorillas, tigers, and otters would come right up to the window as if you were right there with them. It was pretty cool to see. 

Then just like at the St. Louis zoo, they had random parts where you could pose with fake animals, so naturally I became friends with the gorillas and penguins! 

They also had a farm animal section with the most adorable baby goats and the most terrifying roosters! I don’t think that birds in Ireland like me very much now that I think about it.

 Overall I really enjoyed the Dublin zoo and I am glad that we went there.

Afterwards we grabbed some late breakfast/early lunch at this little café place right outside of the zoo inside the park. It was called The Tea Room. It was so cute! It was like a healthy and gluten free place and it was super delicious! I ordered a ham and cheese flat bread. Oh, wow! I want one right now just thinking about it! They coat the flatbread in some type of sweet tomato dressing on the inside of it and it was absolutely genius! I loved it!

 While we were sitting and enjoying our food this cute little old man came over and started to talk to us and as we talked we learned that he was a sketcher/artist. He showed us some of his work and it was really cool. He used pencil and ink together in a beautiful way. He just sketched what he thought was beautiful around him. Then he gave Amy a free sketch of Trinity College because he overheard of talking about going there for a visit later in the day. He was the sweetest man! We heard his whole life story and he told us about how much he loved his wife and how she had passed away but he always keeps a picture of the 2 of them in his wallet so that they will always stay together forever. He was so precious!

So we got side-tracked for a little while talking to him and finally got back on track and headed back towards the bus to make our way to Trinity College. As we were walking through the park we saw this guy in the distance. Then we all started to hysterically laugh. He was doing some type of tai-chi and yoga and karate mix. It was like nothing we had ever seen before and it seemed like a joke! It was hilarious. He was doing random kicks and making noises. Oh wow, it was hilarious! Alas, we finally made it to the bus stop. As we were looking at the bus schedule to figure out which bus we needed to take and where we needed to take it to an older woman stops and sees that we are confused and asks us where we are trying to get to and we told her and a bus pulls up and she says that this is the bus that we need to take (perfect bus timing once again!). She then gets on the bus with us even though she didn’t seem like she was going to get on the bus when she stopped to help us. She told us that she would ride the bus and let us know when we needed to get off. She was nice to do that, but she was a little sketchy too! So we were on the bus and then a lady and her little daughter (who could not have been more than 4 years old) gets on and as soon as the little kid passes the lady that was helping us, the lady starts to say “Disgusting child! Disgusting!” and she was telling this to me and I didn’t want to be rude since she was helping us but I also wasn’t going to agree with her so I was like “uhhh, huh, yeah?” Apparently this little girl made some nasty gesture to the older woman that was inappropriate, but none of us saw it so we are thinking this lady is crazy! Then all of a sudden we hear the little 4 year old girl start saying (excuse my language, I am just quoting the 4 year old!) “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off!” really fast over and over and we all start busting out laughing! How is this little kid saying this and making nasty gestures to people! It was nuts! And her mother wasn’t stopping her from saying it either! It was so funny and so inappropriate at the same time! Then this old man comes on the bus probably in his late 70’s and sits down next to the lady that is helping us get to Trinity College. All of a sudden he is mubling really loud saying nothing but jibberish, but he is acting as though he is carrying on a conversation with someone. Then he starts laughing at himself as if he just heard a really funny joke. It totally caught us off guard and we couldn’t help but laugh, but we tried to keep the laughter to ourselves cause clearly something was wrong with this man. Then the little girl from before come walking up with her mom to get off the bus and the little girl says “Damn you!!” in an almost demonic voice! She was nuts! I have no idea what her mother is teaching her, but it is not good! Then that caused the old man to talk even louder and laugh even harder to himself (or the voices in his head!). Then all of a sudden the lady that is helping us starts poppin prescription pills like its Halloween candy. She just grabs them out of her purse and starts eating them! She then asks the old crazy man if he had been drinking and he replies “Of course I have! I know where you’re from!!” and the lady just continued to eat her pills. It was such a bizarre bus ride! Finally the lady told us that we were at our stop that we needed to get off at….thank goodness! We couldn’t wait to get off of that bus! As the bus pulled away the old lady was waving at us goodbye with a sketchy smile on her face as she was poppin more pills. We felt like we had just left the twilight zone or something. It was so strange and weird and bizarre we couldn’t even get over it!

We were finally at Trinity College though! We really wanted to go see the library cause I guess it is famous and really gorgeous and big and amazing so we left to go find it. When we did we saw that it cost 9 euros to get in to the library and we were not about to pay that much to just walk in and out of it. So we just walked around the campus for a little while. Wow, that campus is gorgeous! (of course it was, it was in Ireland…land of the gorgeous everything!). 

I would absolutely love to go to that college! It is right smack-dab in the middle of all the shopping and pubs of Dublin and has its own little area. It was adorable. It was really cool to walk around and see all the students walking around. There were so many different types of people. It was very similar to college campuses at home. You had your nerds, your fashionistas, and your alternative groups. It was interesting to people watch there. Then we found the place of where the man from the café this morning had drawn on the sketch that he gave to Amy and Amy posed with her sketch in front of it. It was pretty cool to see it in person, I must admit.

Then we had done everything that we had set out to do that day and it was not even 3 in the afternoon yet. We had a lot of time to kill before the rest of our group got back from their trip so naturally we went shopping! We found their shopping mall, which was really amazing looking. The whole ceiling was windows with cream paneling and everything was so bright and open. It was really pretty! 

We didn’t stay in there very long though cause we were more interested in the shops that were outside. They had so many cute little shops. We found some really great deals on clothes since the stores are trying to get rid of a lot of stuff to make room for all the spring and summer clothes. It was yet another moment of great timing! Definitely dropped a few bucks that day on clothes and what not.

 Then we stopped in this church/museum place to look around and I met a group of about 7 or 8 Irish school girls. They were adorable! They heard me talk and got so excited and asked where I was from and one of the girls says “Oh my! I know all the states and capitals! Go ahead, ask me any of them!” So I tested her and she definitely knew her stuff! I don’t even remember all the capitals! I was pretty impressed. They were hilarious to talk to. Then they asked what I did on St. Patrick’s day and I told them where we went and they said “oh, of course you did. You are a tourist!” so then they told me where all the good pubs are that the locals go to that most tourists over look. I am so glad I met them cause we went with their advice about the pubs later and it was so good! They told us to go to this place called O’Neil’s cause they have the best food. But, before we went there we went back to Temple Bar for a drink and some snacks  and did some more shopping, but this time it was for the touristy souvenir junk. Then we trucked our butts back over to O’Neil’s. It was really good. We got some ice cold beers, some good old fashioned hot wings, and chips. I had been craving hot wings since I got here and they were so good! They were a lot hotter than I expected them to be though! Holy cow my mouth was on fire for what seemed like forever! We were waiting around for the other girls to get back from their trip and we realized it was almost 10PM. We were starting to get tired and didn’t want to wait for them anymore so we started to trek back to the hostel. As we were walking back though we ran into them and exchanged some stories with them about our days and met them back up at the hostel since they hadn’t eaten dinner yet. It was yet another successful day in Dublin!

The next day we had to get to Venice for the second half of break! Our plan didn’t take off until around 4PM though so we still had some time to kill in Dublin and we still wanted to see a few more things before we left. We got up around 7AM so that we would have enough time to go out and do things and come back for our bags before we had to leave for our flight.

Our first stop was Christ Church. Christ Church is the oldest church in Ireland. It was so pretty. It was very gothic style and was in the center of all of the hustle and bustle. 

We didn’t have time to go inside of it though cause we also wanted to go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral before we left which was a little bit of a walks away. St Patrick’s Cathedral was amazing! The grounds outside of is were beautiful! They had a little park area with flowers of every color and a fountain right in the center with benches all over to enjoy the scenery. The Cathedral itself was giant and gorgeous! We definitely wanted to go inside this one and it only cost about 4 euros each. 

When we got inside they were having a service going on that was almost over. A choir of elementary aged boys was singing. It was one of the most beautiful and relaxing sounds I had ever heard in my entire life. I could have sat there and listened to them all day. It was so smooth sounding and pretty. I loved it. I was a little upset when they were done. The cathedral was gorgeous though. The stain glass windows were unlike anything I had ever seen. They were so huge and intricate.

 I cannot imagine how much time it took to do all of them and there were so many of them! You just had a feeling of calmness consume you when you were inside the cathedral. It was an amazing feeling. I could have sat there in silence all day too. I really enjoyed it.

We had to leave though to get back to the hostel in time to grab out stuff before check out time. After grabbing our stuff we still had a few hours before we needed to get to the airport so we went out for breakfast and last minute shopping. We went to this great place fore breakfast. It was buffet style and was only 6 euros for 4 items plus toast and coffee. It was so delicious! The hashbrowns and the sausage were to die for! Then some of the girls wanted to buy some gifts for family members so we walked around for a bit. As we were walking around we saw a lot of street performers and even some PETA people. One of the street performers was this older man and was singing opera. It was beautiful! He was do great. We all decided to give him some change cause we enjoyed it so much. It was really nice.

Sadly, it was time to leave Dublin. We got to the airport and were headed out by 4PM to Venice!

Ireland is definitely my favorite place in the world. I seriously plan on moving there someday. I absolutely loved it. Everything there was just so perfect. There was nothing about it that I didn’t like! It was a dream come true. It was exactly what I was expecting and then some more. It lives up to all of its expectations that the movies give it for sure! I highly recommend that everyone goes there before they die. It truly is an amazing place.