I arrived in Dublin at 8 a.m., went through customs, picked up my suitcase and found Rose outside waiting for me!
We took a bus to her neighborhood and walked across the
Dublin City University campus to her apartment. It was move out day, and they had to be out by 11 that morning. I had the pleasure of meeting 2 of her 4 roommates and a few more friends - all so nice! It was great to see where and how she's been living this year.
After meeting everyone and helping with some last minute trash hauling, we took a bus to the city centre where our hostel was located. Over the 2-week vacation we stayed at
Shining Hostel 4 separate times. The location is fantastic although the building is rather run-down. It worked for us though.
This was my first hostel experience and I didn't really know what to expect. At this one, there are about 10 bunkbeds (20 beds total) in a large room where you sleep and keep your stuff. Each bed has a comforter and pillow sitting on it, and the hostel staff gives you a sheet, duvet cover and pillowcase to use for your stay. Then when you check out you return those items but leave the comforter and pillow on the bed. This was something I didn't expect as a hostel virgin!
On this vacation I traveled like a poor college student for sure! You'll see later that there was at least one night where we didn't stay in a hostel at all, but slept while en route to our next destination... oy!
Back to day 2... we went out to lunch in Temple Bar (I'm not sure if everyone thinks this or it was just me... but I wasn't aware that Temple Bar is the name of an area as well as an actual bar. We had lunch in the neighborhood, not the bar.) Rose showed me around Dublin:
Liffey River
We went to
St. Stephen's Green to relax for a while and 2 of her friends - 1 from France, 1 from Spain - met us there.
We all proceeded to
Temple Bar (The bar this time!) for drinks and live Irish music!
The girls left after a while but Rose and I stayed at Temple Bar, then decided to find another pub and ended up at
Gogarty's. I don't know how I did it... by this time it was well after 3 a.m. in California and I was going on 4ish hours of sleep! But I was immediately adjusted to the time change, thankfully.
At Gogarty's we met some British friends who were in Dublin for a stag party (bachelor party) and spent the night drinking, hanging out and listening to music - first traditional Irish, then regular DJ music.
At the end of the night we also stopped by
Fitzsimon's, but didn't stay long because we had had a lot of drinks by that point! After that we grabbed some food at a convenience store and walked back to the hostel for rest!
Previously...
