Dublin Recap

Dublin definitely had its charms, but as I expected, it wasn't different enough from Chicago or any other big city that would warrant me regretting studying in Limerick rather than going there for the semester. Since Ellen was part of our travelling group, that means that we would have some good food. Over the course of three days I had Mediterranean, Mexican, and Turkish. Very tasty, although the Irish should just stick to pulling pints rather than trying to make a margarita. Over the course of three days we walked around most of the city, including parks, gardens, and a personal favorite, seeing some of the sights on the north side of the city that had so much history with the Easter Rising and other independence struggles. Just as an aside, the Liffey is a river that divides the city into two, separating the more cultured south side from the rougher north side. When we were walking around on Sunday, we noticed the incredible amount of people that had one of four different Gaelic football jerseys on. We stopped one of them to find out what was going on, and there were championship games for two different divisions later in the day at Croke Park, which is the biggest venue for Irish sports in the country (and where U2 is playing next month). We walked down to Croke to see if we could get any cheap student tickets, and for only 5 euro, we ended up with tickets about 15 rows behind one of the goals. Gaelic football is one of the national sports of Ireland (hurling and handball being the other two), and if I had to describe it, I'd say it's a mix of soccer, football, and rugby. 46,000 people packed into Croke, and it was a great time. In the game I saw, Armagh took care of Wexford to claim their division title. Other noteworthy moments: finding a local brew house/pub in Temple Bar and having the best pint I've had all spring, taking a tour of the Ireland Writers Museum, getting back to my hostel on Sunday night to find a woman, already asleep, in my bed, wandering around the National Gallery for an afternoon, and meeting Mike, a guy, fresh from army duty, on a tour of Europe before going home to Seattle, that we spent much of the weekend with (my apologies for the run-on). Dublin photos