Tales From Dublin 7/11-7/12

The second day here was exhausting. We needed to find a place to stay because the hostel we were at was full for the night. We walked about two miles with our huge backpacks on and checked with multiple hostels before we found one that had vacancy. The hostel we found ended up being 20 yards away from the first place we stayed so we kind of wasted our time. Once we were settled into the new place we went on a search for some grub. We found a place called Fitzgerald’s and we both got the shepards pie. From there we went back to the hostel and fell asleep for 3 hours got up went to the grocery store bought lunch meet and bread made a sandwich in the hostels kitchen met some new friends from the Netherlands and Australia and went out on the town looking for some fun. We went to Temple bar which is a main part of the city with too many pubs to count. We picked a place with the loudest Irish music we could find. It was unreal! Next thing we knew we were singing and doing an Irish jig with a bunch of strangers in a packed full pub! The live band was great. Neither of us could stop smiling we were having so much fun. We started heading back to our place at 3:00. Our friends we had met in the hostel kitchen were almost as crazy as us and stuck by us all night. We had a great time talking about our different cultures and ended up talking with them until 4:30 in the morning! We decided we should probably get to bed since we had a tour bus to catch at 9:30 the next morning. After the short few hours of sleep we got up and took a shower and got ready for our tour. The showers in this hostel are much better than the last. There was actually hot water! So far we had only seen the city and we were really excited to get out into the country side to see the green hills. Our tour was amazing! We went about two hours outside Dublin to the Wicklow Mountains which is known as the Garden of Ireland. On the way we saw beautiful lakes and mountainsides. We passed where they filmed the movie Braveheart. We arrived at Glendalough which is the heart of the Wicklow Mountains and were starving. We ate at a small restaurant that had an old medieval feel to it. After that we began our sight seeing. There was a cemetery with gravestones that were hundreds of years old along with a cathedral that had been broken down in 1219. We went on a hike that took us around two small lakes and a few small waterfalls. On our return we stopped at more historic ruins some of which we had no clue what they were. We boarded the bus and headed to the next destination. We ended up in a town called Avoca which has Ireland oldest working handweavers mill. We took a run through the town, shared a sandwich, and took a quick tour of the mill. While we were waiting for the bus to leave a dog approached us with a small stick and dropped it at our feet. We threw the stick about 20 times and every time he would bring it right back. Justin told him that we had to leave and that we were done playing. He picked up his stick and walk away. It was a very smart dog. The bus then brought us back to Dublin. We went to the grocery store and bought some pasta and tomato sauce. Cooking at the hostel can become a pain when there is 10 other people using the same little kitchen. It saved us money though so it was worth it. It was only nine by the time we finish our meal but we decided it was time for bed. It had been a long day not to mention we had only had three and a half hours sleep the night before.