Happy St. Patty's Day!
In and around Ireland
Happy St. Patty’s Day and may the luck of the Irish be with ye all! This weekend we took a fun and exciting trip to Dublin, Ireland to join in the greatest Irish holiday of all time—St. Patrick’s Day!
We were set to fly out on Ryan Air Friday night. I was really unsure as to whether or not I would even make the flight because I started getting this high-pressured piercing pain in my ears. I had never felt anything like it before and was literally running and pacing around to try to escape the pain. I really wanted to back out and stay home, but I had already spent about a half grand on this trip, and the hotel for the six of us was in my name and charged to my credit card. I knew I had to get to a hospital as soon as possible, and Andrea made a good point—Would I rather go to a hospital where I knew they spoke English or take my chances at a German hospital? Point made.
The flight was awful and excruciating. I was in tears and on the verge of screaming the entire time. Additionally, the fluid in my ear was making me unusually dizzy and queasy, and I almost threw up on the plane. (Much better than another girl in our party who actually DID throw up. Yuck!) When we got into Dublin, the EMT on hand checked me out and said I needed to go to a hospital, so they strapped me into the ambulance and we were off! Steven went with me, and we spent all night in the hospital. (Got in around midnight, left close to 9:00 am.) I got some great painkillers and antibiotics when they finally did see me.
Given the time, we decided to just stay up and make the most of the day. So we called the rest of the gang at the hotel, who were getting ready to leave, and set up a meeting time. Steven and I were absolutely starving since they didn’t have any food at the hospital. We made our way to another building of the hospital where the gift shop was now open. We stocked up on water, sandwiches, and wraps. Everything looked so good because I was so dang hungry! I really just wanted some McDonald’s, though. Then we took a taxi with a fun Irish driver to the nearest train (Dart) station. We figured out where everyone else would arrive, and bought our tickets to head there, the main station at Connolly in Dublin.
Amazingly enough, we found the rest of the group at the train station! I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t since we didn’t have cell phones, nor did we know where the hotel was. Someone was definitely looking out for us. Almost immediately, we broke into two groups and headed into town—a city of almost two million people dressed up and down in green. We took in the festivities, haggled with street vendors, and visited the largest and most popular souvenir shop, Carroll’s.
It was almost time for the parade, so we found as good of a spot as we could and waited for the show to start. It was so much fun, and the costumes and bands were so great! It was a little odd how many American colleges and high schools had their bands/color guards in the parade.
After the parade, we made our way through town, stopping at the tourist information center, which used to be a church. We wandered through the city, seeing the main sights: Dublin Castle, Trinity College, Christ Church Cathedral, a soapy fountain with kids playing in it—the usual. We also walked all the way through town to the Guinness storehouse, but we didn’t go in because it cost 10 euro, which hindsight would not have been that much given how much we spent on everything else. We did, however, go check out the souvenir shop where I got some family souvenirs.
Dublin had worn us out and it was time to head back to our hotel in Bray, a 40 minute train (Dart) ride outside of Dublin. We stopped at a little “pizza and cream” joint for a bite, where the three of us split a delicious pizza and a giant pitcher of free, ice-cold water!
Bray was such a nice, quaint little town, which reminded me a great deal of a Florida retirement village with its sea breeze and small, gated houses. It was a gorgeous city on the Irish sea front, and Sunday morning we stopped at the beach before heading back to Dublin.
The weather the second day was quite the opposite of the first. It was cold, wet, windy, and just plain nasty! We were all frozen to the bone by the end of the day. Steven, Bill, and I took a bus tour around the city for a good part of the day. It was nice, and best of all we were out of the wind and rain. We drove through the Medieval part of town, saw St. Patrick’s cathedral (where Brahm Stoker was baptized), saw a war monument oblisque (second largest in the world—guess who has the first largest??), drove through Pheonix Park (twice the size of Central Park), saw the president’s house, and saw the Dublin Zoo (second oldest in the world and home of the MGM lion). After the bus tour, we stopped by the Garden of Remembrance, dedicated to the Irishmen who had lost their lives fighting for Irish freedom. It was moving and beautiful.
That concluded our wonderful and jampacked St. Patrick’s Day weekend. I definitely plan on going back to Ireland one summer to see more of the country, as it was one of my favorite places so far!
Route taken and entries by Real Traveler Liz Hamilton
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