Day two in Ireland was a whirlwind. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it. We got up and went to Starbuck’s to get our day off to a coffee filled start. Such good choices.
I am not entirely sure of the order in which we did things, my apologies, so I will just tell you the sights that we saw.
We went to St. Patrick’s, which is a very old church. They have an awesome park/garden thing outside the church. It screamed photo-shoot. Obviously we took advantage of that (pictures to come soon). Inside the church there were lots of cool artifacts. They had memorials from various wars where Irish people fought. Things I did not know, there was a South African war, and Irish people fought in it. This church was also where Handel’s Hallelujah chorus was first played. In remembrance of that they have the original score. Erica, Kelsey, and I were totally geeking out. They even have the original organ. So cool!
We also went to the Guiness Factory. It was surprisingly cool. There was lots of history of the family and the brewing process. They had old advertisements and the old wooden and copper tools that they used to make the beer way back in the day. I also found it kind of cool that the factory that we toured has a 9000 year lease signed by Arthur Guiness from the 18th century. My favorite part was the cafe on the seventh floor that has panoramic views of Dublin.
After that we just wandered around. They have all the Christmas lights up so we thought we would walk around and soak that up. It was really very pretty.
For our last night we went to a traditional Irish food. I don’t recall what the restaurant was called, but I do remember that the food was good. Vanessa got a super tasty mushroom soup, and the rest of us got something called Boxty. It was basically like an Irish burrito, but the shell was a potato pancake. Erica got steak, Kelsey had chicken, and I had lamb. We rotated plates to share because they were all so tasty! Also, they split checks in Ireland, what?? We got really excited and our server laughed at us. Not nice.
After our traditional meal, we wanted more traditional Irish. So we went to the Arlington Hotel. Each night they have folk music and river-dancing. It was a lot of fun. Usually that thing is not really up my ally, but seeing as we were in Ireland it seemed fitting to spend our last night doing that.
At this time, I will explain my blog title. All over the streets of Dublin there are midgets (I don't know the PC term...vertically challenged persons of Ireland?) who dress as Leprechauns and you can pay to take a picture with them. They wear little green suits, hats, and all have redbeards. Clearly, this leads one to assume that Leprechauns do indeed exist. I say this, because they would never stoop so low as to monopolize the folklore as a ploy to extract more money from tourists. Thus, proving that Leprechauns are real!
When we were ready to call it a night we went back to our hostel to book a shuttle to the airport. Funny story. We thought our flight left at 7:30 so we could get up early, but not like crazy early. Well...its a good thing we checked, because our flight actually left at 6:30. So we said our goodbyes to Vanessa at night, set our alarms for 4 am (yuck), and went to bed dreaming of our reunion with Claire and Ava.
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