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Kya Travels
We got up today and went to take our clothes to the laundromat. (Ended up with 10kg of washing!!) We left that with them and headed back to the hostel, where we waited in the common area for a guide to come pick us up for a free walking tour of Dublin. The guide who picked us up was Juan, who was from Northern Spain. He took us along the river and up to the meeting place, where there were HEAPS of people! There was probably about 100 people there! Luckily, we were getting split into groups, two English speaking groups, and two Spanish speaking groups. Obviously, Juan took one of the Spanish groups, so our new tour guide was Rob. He took us all around Dublin, and gave us quite an in depth history into the city and Irish history. I learnt how to say my first Gaelic sentence - Céad Míla Fáilte - meaning 100,000 welcomes! I can add that to the one Irish Gaelic word I already know, Slionte, meaning cheers! (Or, literally, 'health') On the tour we went to Dublin Castle, which isn't really much of a castle anymore, but is still a big political building. It's been the centre of many big milestones and events in the history of Dublin. Rob had lots of cool stories to tell us about it! Then we went into the yard behind the castle, where we learnt a little folklore, about leprechauns and faeries and that kind of thing. There's actually a tree in Ireland somewhere, that they diverted a whole motorway around, because of the myths and legends of the faeries! We saw a big pretty Protestant church, and learnt about the archeological discovery of an entire Viking village behind it, in the 70's, and how developers paid off the government to let them build on the site, despite a 30,000 strong protest! That's a real shame, but apparently there's a lot of the artefacts that they dug up in display in one of the museums. We had a break in temple bar, where we got some food at a kebab shop, and met someone who we THINK may have been a big politician from somewhere... his name was (maybe) Ali Hussain... (Possibly Kuwait?). We continued the tour on the north side of the river, where we saw the giant statue of a man named O'Connell. This section of Dublin was part of one of the big rebellions, and you can still see bullet holes on both sides of the statue. (O'Connell himself had four bullet holes in his chest!) Then we moved on to see Trinity College, and learn about its history. We went to the Dublin Gardens, which had a statue of Wolfetone at the entrance. We heard some horror stories about his life (and gruesome death) and learnt why the Irish flag is what it is. Green for the Gaelic Catholics, orange for the British Protestants, and in the middle, white, for peace between the two. The flag was designed by some French ladies, after seeing all the death, famine and war that the Irish were facing, and given to them as a gift. The tour finished there, and we went for a quick walk through the gardens, following Rob back to a pub called O'Neills. There were a few people from each of the tours that came back to hang out for a while. We got a drink, bought tickets to the pub crawl that night, and watched the tennis (Nadal v Djokovic), but had to leave when it was 5-5 on the fifth set! We went to pick up our laundry and headed back to the hostel to sort it out, and pack up our bags for the next day. After we finished up our packing and had a bit of a rest, we headed out to a place called The Workman's Bar, for the start of the pub crawl. We got a token for a free drink, and I had my first Guinness in Ireland. I don't know if its just cos I've been drinking a few darker beers lately, but I did really enjoy it. We chatted to a bunch of people from Madrid, and one of the tour guides, and started to get to know a few people. Every time someone new rocked up, everyone in the room greeted them with a cheer. There ended up being about 50-60 people there. After an hour in that pub, we headed out to the street, where Juan and one of the other tour guides got up on a window sill to talk to everyone, tell us where e next pub was and what time to meet again. They did that between each of the pubs, and had a bit of a laugh with everyone. They were pretty funny. After Workman's we went to Trinity Bar, then to a place called Porter House, where there was an irish band playing. They were very cool, and one of the guys was playing an instrument which I think was called an illin? It was quite similar to bagpipes, except you use only your arms to play it. The bag was under his elbow, and he used both hands to control the notes.. I dunno, it's pretty hard to explain, but it sounded amazing! A bit later the other band members left and the Iddish player did an acapella piece that was really beautiful and moving. I'm pretty sure it was a traditional folk song, but I need to find out exactly what it was! After porter house we went to a place that I can't remember the name of... (I may have had one too many Guinnesses by that stage!) There was a band playing there too, who were more of a rock band. They were a three piece, and they were all amazing, and made it look very easy! After this place we went to get a felafel. Lyle stayed on at the next, and last, pub, but Darren and I headed back to the hostel and went to sleep. In the early hours of the morning, I'm thinking almost 6am, Lyle wandered in with the guy from the hostel, who shone a torch in our eyes, asking if we knew him! Lyle didn't have a key, and didn't have any ID on him, so the guy didn't believe he was staying in the hostel. We found out the next day, that Lyle thought he'd lost his wallet, and had even been to the police station and everything! But we found it in his bed.... So we think we had come back to the hostel, put his stuff down, forgotten he'd put his stuff down, and thought he'd lost his wallet, so headed out to look for it. Then forgotten he'd even been back in the room! Oh, drunk Lyle, I wish we had put a camera on his shirt or something so we could have seen what happened!!
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