La Familia Brown: Getting Down in Dublin!

Last weekend was a real highlight for me on our trip. We finally got to Dublin! I've been wanting to go to Ireland for so long, and finally we had our chance. It was just a quick weekend trip, since Rosemary had to go for work, but we still managed to cram a lot in!

Friday
Our flight arrived pretty early, so once we got checked in to our hotel, which was the lovely Conrad Dublin, we went straight for the Guinness Storehouse! We got our hop-on hop-off bus tickets and we were off! The storehouse is awesome. It's seven stories of Guinness history and memorabilia. The best part is the Gravity bar on the 7th floor where you get a free pint of Guinness! The bar is all floor to ceiling windows so you get an amazing 360 view of Dublin. You can see for miles.

After our bellies were full of Guinness, we got back on the bus and rode it around for the rest of the tour. We had a nice dinner on Friday night and then went to bed. We were all pretty tired from getting up at 5 am for our flight.

Saturday
This was our super tourist day. We got back on the bus and saw all the major sights in town and then got off the bus to tour Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced jail). The jail was really interesting. It's where they executed a lot of the rebels during the wars for independence against the British. After the jail, we really worked up an appetite so we had lunch at Ryan's pub! It's been in business for about 125 years and let me tell you, Ryan was VERY excited to eat there. We had some awesome, Irish style pub food and of course, more Guinness!

After lunch we went to Trinity College, which was on my must-see list. It's a beautiful campus, built in the 1500s. But the highlight was seeing the Book of Kells and the amazing collection of 200,000 old books in the Long Room. The English teacher in me was having a field day! After that, we went through the bookstore where I got some books on Irish history and some posters for my classroom! Yay! No more naked walls!

After Trinity College we walked around Grafton Street which is the main shopping area in Dublin. Lots of great stores and entertaining street performers. Unfortunately, it started raining on us so we had to run for cover in the mall.

Dinner on Saturday night was awesome. We went to the Arlington Hotel where they have a dinner show featuring Irish musicians and dance. We loved it! The three musicians were hilarious: telling jokes, drinking while playing and changing the words to some traditional pub songs to make them even naughtier. It was right up my alley! And of course, the dancers were awesome. I can't get enough of the Irish step dancing! The dinner and show lasted around three hours, so it was definitely money well spent.

Sunday
This was sadly our last day in town and the weather was pretty miserable. It was cold, windy and rained most of the day. We did manage to take a river cruise down the River Liffey which was fun. Other than that we just walked around seeing some more of the city. We all got so cold at one point that we all bought Ireland sweatshirts. It was cool though because it totally made us look like locals...