Spring Break: Dublin

     I feel like I always start my posts off with "its been a while...I'm sorry." But its so true! I feel like it has been FOREVER (mainly because it has). This past week was Spring Break. Crazy I know. Even crazier that it is basically the exact midpoint of my semester here in London and that totally freaks me out. About a month or so ago, my friends and I decided that we wanted to spend some of our spring break travelling. We all decided that one of the places that we most definitely wanted to go was to Dublin, Ireland. We booked our flights and a hostel and we were all set. Now we just had to wait for the time to come, and believe me, it crept up really fast. We left Atlantic House on Monday at about 2am to head for the airport.
     Our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:45, if I can remember correctly, which was early but also great because that meant we got into Dublin a little before 9am. After going through passport check, we hopped in a cab that brought us to our hostel. Our hostel was amazing. We were staying right next to the Jameson Distillery, so it was a pretty great location. In the hostel, we got a 6 person private room with a private bathroom, which was perfect for us. The hostel had a movie theater, restaurant, cafe and bar inside. Because we couldn't get into our room until 2, we decided to do some exploring. We decided that we were going to head to the Guinness Storehouse. Guinness was located on the other side of the river and without having the ability to use Google Maps, we got lost a few times, but no worries, we found it! It was an awesome experience to see how the beer is made and to be able to learn how to pour the perfect pint. Believe me, it is a lot harder than it sounds! After we all learned how to pour the perfect pint, we headed up to the Gravity Bar to enjoy our brew. The views from the bar were incredible. You could see all of Dublin from here. After we were done drinking, we decided that we would head back to the hostel and then grab some lunch. We did a little more exploring that day and called it an early night because we were all exhausted.

The view of Dublin from the Gravity Bar!

My perfect pint!

     Tuesday rolled around and it was more of our relaxed day. In the morning we went and grabbed coffee from Starbucks then wandered around O'Connell Street. It is one of the main streets in Dublin and it is really pretty. We ate lunch at Eddie Rocket's, which is basically Johnny Rocket's back in the states. After we had a very filling meal we headed back to our hostel to tour the Jameson Distillery. It was a guided tour that filled us in on all of the history of Jameson. At the end we had a whisky tasting where we tasted three different whiskys. When it was over we got a complimentary drink to enjoy in the bar and a certificate that said we were official whisky tasters! We then headed back to the hostel to relax and eat dinner. That night we decided that we were going to get dressed and go our for a few drinks because it was my 21st birthday the next day. So that's exactly what we did and it was a lot of fun!

So. Good.

Whisky tasting at Jameson!

Strolling by the river on a beautiful day!

     Finally, Wednesday. Also, IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY!!! I am officially 21! This day we were planning on doing a lot of touristy activities. We decided we were going to head to tour the prison, tour Dublin castle and go and explore Trinity. Thankfully, my birthday just so happened to fall on the perfect day because in Dublin, the first Wednesday of every month, these attractions are free to the general public. SCORE. So we got to do all of these things for absolutely free. They were all amazing and beautiful and I loved every second. After our last stop at Trinity, we decided that we were hungry and tired so we headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out for a birthday dinner. We weren't quite sure where we wanted to go exactly, so we decided that we would just head across the river towards Temple Bar. Originally we walked into an Italian place and there was a little bit of a wait, so we wandered back outside. Thankfully, we spotted a place called Mexico to Rome (which was perfect because half of us wanted Mexican food and the other half wanted Italian). We went in and got seated. It was seriously the day of luck. If you were seated before 7pm (which we were) you can get the early bird dinner, which gave you an appetizer and a main course for only 14 euros. INSANE. So obviously all of us got that. I ordered chips and guacamole as my appetizer and a steak as my main course along with a margarita. It was delicious and I still think about that steak all the time! And to top it off, I have some pretty amazing friends who decided that they would buy my dinner for me. I was so happy that I was able to spend a wonderful day with them all. After dinner we basically had to be rolled out of the restaurant because we were so full. But somehow we found ourselves at a gelato store right near our hostel to top off the night. We decided that we were all tired and called it a pretty early night.

Prison

Dublin Castle!

The inside of the castle. It was beautiful! 

Trinity was absolutely stunning. Thank goodness for blue skies!

and of course I found the rugby pitch!!

Temple Bar at night is absolutely stunning! 

Touring the prison!

     The next day we woke up at 3:30 to get our taxi at 4 to take us to the airport. We got through visa check and security very fast and just ended up sleeping until we boarded our flight. We got back into London around 9 and headed back to Atlantic house to basically sleep for the rest of the day.
     So now its Tuesday and Spring Break is officially over. It was such an amazing time and I was so happy that I got to spend it in an amazing place with amazing people.

The sunset on our final night. 

Love,
Susanna

Questions? Comments? Just wanna say hey?
Email Me HERE
Tweet tweet @shigosusanna
Instagram @shigosusanna
or leave a comment down below!!

What am I listening to?