New Thing #81 - L/S/I, Day 11 - Galway to Dublin

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Leaving Galway today, and I'm not ready to leave. I fell in love with this city, just like Edinburgh and I wasn't ready to say goodbye. But, we would be making our final train ride to Dublin in the afternoon, and wanted to get in some more sightseeing before we left. Breakfast was the same. Shocking. And there were fortunately less people in the bathroom this morning. I guess they were still sleeping after their late night shenanigans.

Common room in the hostel.

Looks like a college dorm room.

Kitchen. Very similar to Edinburgh where you could cook your own food.

Dining area.

Read it. It's pretty powerful.

Looks just like a dorm room hallway.

I wonder if the stalls in the boy's bathroom are blue.

Piano for your hipster pleasure.

In case you want to play some instruments. Or exercise your core. Flat Nate is still deciding.

We had three of these bunk beds in our room.

We spent the morning wandering around, shopping and enjoying the day. It turned out to be absolutely beautiful, even to the point where we could TAKE OUR COATS OFF! Why couldn't it have been that nice last night when I was wearing leggings?!

Galway is known as the City of Tribes, and these flags were an homage to the tribes.

We found the home of the claddagh ring!

River leading out to the Bay.

Galway Bay.

Stop looking at me swan.

It was so freaking pretty outside. Seriously. Loved it.

Where nerds go to eat pastries?

I love the hours. Please note that it was after 11 when we stopped by to go in. They still weren't open.

Me and my wee sheepie. I'm not sure if I ever said that we started to call Nikki our wee sheepie. No, it doesn't make sense. Just go with it.

Lunch. A normal sandwich. Pretty good. And no fries!

These guys were pretty terrible. Off pitch and terrible. They looked adorable though.

Gelato!

In case we were looking for a pizza option. I wish we had just looked at the menu to see what kind of Irish pizza toppings they offer.

Whew. I was looking for a Quizno's.

In Eyre Square. Everyone was out and about on this gorgeous day.

My lovely traveling companions enjoying the weather.

Sky rats.

Lots of peeps.

Eventually we had to leave, so we headed to the train station two blocks away and hopped on the only train in the station. This was a nice change of pace from all the other crowded train stations we've been in. It was a really clean station and the train was pretty nice. It's too bad they didn't have a train from Shannon to Galway because that would have been preferable over our bus ride from Sunday.

This train even had our names above the seats!

Pretty nice train!

Looking more interested than I probably was.

More random Irish countryside.

The ride to Dublin was fairly smooth and uneventful and went pretty quick. Despite being bummed to leave Galway, I was excited about heading to Dublin. It's such an iconic Irish city with so much to see and do. When we arrived, we hopped on the rail line to head over to our final hostel. The rail reminded me of the Metro in StL or the L in Chicago. It wasn't crowded, so we didn't feel smooshed with our luggage like we did in London. It was a quick ride and we were stopped only two blocks from the hostel.

The Generator Hostel was pretty cool with a very modern eclectic vibe to it. It was also directly behind the Jameson distillery. :) We would be getting another private room with a private bath, and we couldn't be happier. After the shenanigans in Galway, I was ready to not have to fight for use of the showers. After checking in, we were given our keys and headed up the elevator to our room only to find that our keys didn't work. We each tried the key cards....fast and then slow. We tried different intervals and the green light never came on. Nikki went down to the front desk and I'm sure they thought we were idiots because we couldn't work a simple key card. So, they sent up one of the employees and he had the same problem we did. They thought that the battery in the electronic part attached to the door was dead. He somehow used his master set to get us into our room but told us they will have to come and fix it. Since we're headed out to dinner soon, that's no problem. They do eventually get it fixed and we can actually come and go as we please.

We somehow managed to get the handicap room so Brenda picked this lone bed in the corner.

Loved the bunk beds. There was actually another set across from this one, so we each got to sleep on the bottom bed.

Handicap room equals handicap accessible shower! That partition never wanted to stay up though.

Smallest. Sink. Ever. I kept trying to figure out why there was always water on the floor beneath it, and I realized after the first time I washed my face that there was nowhere else for the excess water to go. I think my face was bigger than the sink.

Nikki was pretty stoked for this room. It was huge!

Because we're pretty much always hungry, we freshened up and headed out to find something to eat. First on our agenda was The Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub, and a recommendation from good ol' Rick Steves. The weather ended up being pretty nice outside, so we were able to enjoy some food on the patio. Nothing like waiting over a week to finally be able to eat a meal outside.

This place was pretty cool.

Outdoor seating!!!

Pretty stoked.

People were smoking right by us. That kinda sucked.

First Harp of the trip. Delish! I love me some Harp beer.

Chicken wrapped in bacon (disgusting bacon) with mashed potatoes AND roasted potatoes and veggies. It wasn't terrible except for their poor attempt at bacon. It was still kinda raw and spongey. Not crisp or anything. :( I do like how they gave me two different kinds of potatoes though.

After dinner we made our way to the famous Temple Bar District because why not? It's a Dublin staple after all. And of course we had to go into the actual Temple Bar and have a Guinness. We listened to live music there, chatted up with some locals and had a pretty damn good time. The beer helped out a lot.

Streets of Dublin.

Kind of a cool thing to do around benches.

There were lots of bridges near where we were.

The River Liffey.

More locks!

Temple Bar District. Lots of personality here.

Boom. Had to.

Classic Irish picture right there. Guinness and Temple Bar.

The theme for our trip. Photobombing each other's cameras. A hippie wee sheepie?

A hairy coo?

Duck face and surprise face.

Mean face and mean duck face?

Yes. This is happening. I'm glad it was recorded for posterity.

Trying to come up with the international symbol for ONE faucet (not two like those silly people have) AND the Dyson air blade to dry your hands. It looks way dirtier than it was.

Beer is delicious.

Mah friends.

We may or may not have been a bit drunk at this point. We managed to walk back to our hostel and realized it was a pretty damn far walk. We did have enough sense to decide that we needed to pick up snacks for our final tour tomorrow, so we stopped at a small convenience store. The options were pretty slim, but I did manage to pick up some Pringles and rolos. Quite the combination, eh? Not exactly my snacks of choice, but hey, when in Dublin. Amiright? We also stopped at a late night pizza place for Brenda to pick up a snack of her own. It pretty much burned her mouth right off, but eventually I think she found it to be quite delicious.

This girl was pony-walkin' all over the country.

Nikki couldn't wait until tomorrow for her snacks. And she may or may not have spilled half of her knock-off Funyuns on the sidewalk.

We had a damn fun night and I was digging Dublin's vibe. We'll get to see more of it on Thursday though.