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Welcome to St. Patrick's Day in Ireland, Take 2! Last Friday I made my triumphant (OK, maybe not exactly triumphant...) return to Ireland after five years! In some ways it felt like only yesterday that I was leaving after my two months of student teaching there and in other ways it made me feel incredibly old to think that it had been five years. It was a good feeling to be back, and I found many things had changed (at least from the way I remembered them) in Dublin. Some of the major highlights/tours of my trip:
*Guinness Storehouse: Ironically the first time I took the Guinness tour was March 16th, and again I found myself doing the tour the day before St. Patty's Day. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many changes had been made to the self-guided tour. The Storehouse consists of nine floors that takes you from the basic ingredients used in brewing Guinness through to your free pint in the Gravity bar on the top floor. Because of the holiday weekend, we were treated to a couple extra Guinness tastings and smoked salmon on Guinness bread (yum!) before we even reached Gravity. Besides enjoying the 360 degree views of Dublin, we got to listen to a live band playing in Gravity too.
*Viking Splash Tour: This tour was great fun and something I hadn't done before. Riding in a reconditioned World War II amphibious landing craft ("duck"), our tour guide took us all around the city, pointing out sights and sharing little extra tidbits (and jokes). As the name suggests, during the tour we were vikings and when cued were to issue a loud viking roar complete with shaking fists at unsuspecting enemy celts walking in the city. Silly, yes, but also quite entertaining! About 20 minutes of the tour was spent on the water of the Grand Canal where we cruised right past U2's recording studio. The tour was a bit pricey, but I would definitely recommend it.
*St. Patrick's Day Parade: An early start on Saturday paid off with a front row spot to view the parade. It was pretty chilly and windy, but with only a few little drops, the weather was much better than the last time I viewed the parade in Dublin (not surprisingly, it had rained!). The parade was quite impressive with an amazing amount of creativity. It was longer than I expected, but kept our interest the entire time. I did feel bad for one of the marching bands because they told the crowd that the airline had lost their instruments and were just marching along the parade route in their matching sweatshirts. There was loads of great music, dancing and costumes. Very festive!
*Ceili Mor: As I don't speak Gaelic (other than being able to count to 3), I'm not exactly sure how to translate this. However, I do know that it consisted of a stage, a live band and a giant crowd of people dancing in the blocked off street! Yiota and I only arrived for the last hour or so, but we certainly enjoyed ourselves. There was an older Irish gentleman in our part of the crowd who rounded up a random bunch of tourists and was showing us some Irish dances. Great music and great fun!
*Fun Fair: For the entire weekend another street was blocked off for this mini carnival. Although we didn't ride anything, it was fun to watch the little kids on the kiddie rides and soak up the carnival atmosphere.
Some bummers on the trip: Overall, the weather was not too bad by Ireland standards. I didn't use my umbrella once although it did rain a bit while we were in different places. Sunday was was the worst day weatherwise and we certainly got to experience a four seasons day (Ireland is well-known for having days that the weather switches between all four seasons!) complete with snow/sleet/hail. By the end of the day on Sunday the weather had turned very cold and windy. Because of the strong winds, they were forced to cancel the fireworks display scheduled for that night. And, even though Dublin is close to the town of Malahide where I stayed before, I wasn't able to get there. There was so much going on in Dublin, that there wasn't a chance to make the trip to Malahide. I guess I will just have to go back to Ireland again sometime soon!
Overall, a very successful trip to Dublin! The atmosphere there is quite different than being in London and was a pleasant change. It did make me a bit sad that I am living in the UK and not in Ireland... So enjoy both of my new photo albums. One has shots of the sights we checked out in Dublin and the other has the activities from the St. Patrick's Festival.
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