Dublin Bound

After a day well spent in Cologne (and 29 Kolsch beers later…), Amanda and I took our first (ever) Ryanair flight to Dublin. Although the plane is packed tighter than a sardine can, we both agreed that the experience was definitely fine, especially given the cost. The one thing we were terrified of was if our bags were oversized. So, we purchased a small duffel bag for each of us (30L) and just found a way to pack 10 days’ worth of clothes, jackets, shoes, etc. in it! We arrived at our hostel at about 1:30am and of course the first order of business was to have Guinness.

The next day we left fairly early to find our AirBnB, which was where we would be staying for the next two nights. After about an hour of searching, we finally found it. Honestly, it looked like a drug house that even addicts would avoid. The entire apartment was not very clean, the roommate was weird and it had an unidentifiable smell at all times of the day. In the end, it served us fine since we spent most of our time out in the city. We began our two day stay with the city walking tour, which was a great way for us to be introduced to some of Dublin’s history. That night we went out for some traditional Irish food, found some live music and killed a few more Guinness’. The next day (New Year’s Eve) we went out to the Guinness Storehouse for a quick tour and a free pint at the top of the factory. The top of the factory was probably the best part of the tour since it was a room completely surrounded by windows, which gave a great high level view of Dublin. That night we joined the big pub crawl (150 people); we went to 5 bars and ended the night at a 7 story club! Surprisingly both of us didn’t have bad headaches the next day, which was great because we had to catch our bus to Galway around lunch time. We were not sad to leave our AirBnB – we both agreed that the only renovation that it needed was an uncontrollable fire.

Make sure to check out the beers slayed page; you’ll see all of the beers we got to sample in Ireland. One thing that caught us by surprise about our time spent in Dublin (well, really, all of Ireland), is how expensive it is. We expected Guinness to be cheap (since we could see the factory from the bar windows), but it still cost 5eu. The same goes for whiskey – we couldn’t find cheap Irish whiskey anywhere.