Dublin

For the second half of my spring break, I went to Dublin for 4 days which was nice because we had enough time to see a lot of sights without rushing around.  It wasn't as cold as I expected and a bunch of Irish people mentioned that they were unexpectedly having really good weather in Ireland this year.  Everyone that we met in Ireland was really friendly, which was a nice change from Italy, because sometimes people don't seem like they are in the best mood.  We got to the hostel in the morning and found out that we were in a 16 mixed person room.  Not only was it 16 people but my 4 friends and I soon discovered that we were the only girls in the room and the rest was 11 Spanish boys and 1 French boy.  They were around our age though so it turned out ok.  We ended up making friends with them and doing a bunch of sightseeing together.  Besides that,  I don't think I would choose to live in that situation again.
First we walked around our neighborhood, which was the medieval section of the city and saw Christ's Cathedral and the Dublin Castle.  Both were really beautiful and were totally different from Italian architecture.  The Dublin Castle also had a beautiful garden in the back that we sat in for a while.  After that we walked over to St. Patrick's Cathedral which had another really nice garden with pretty flowers.

Christ's Cathedral

 Dublin Castle

St. Patrick's Cathedral

That evening we went to the Guinness Factory.  We got lost finding it though and it closes at 5.  We made it at 4:50, just in time.  The Guinness Factory was really cool inside.  It was huge and the outside of the building is apparently shaped like a pint of beer.  Each floor had different facts about how Guinness is made and had huge metal and wooden barrels all around.  There was even a big waterfall.  I thought the whole concept was kind of corny and overdone but it was still cool to see.  At the end of the tour we got to go to the "Gravity Bar" which is the top floor of the building and it is all glass so that you can get a really good view of Dublin.  At the Gravity Bar everyone gets a free pint of Guinness.  I was kind of reluctant to try it because its really dark and heavy but it was actually really good.  Maybe I just thought it tasted better though since I was actually in Ireland.

The next day we hung out with the Spanish guys all day which was a really interesting experience because we were struggling to understand each other the entire time.  We went to Trinity College, which is the famous college in Dublin, and walked around the campus which was really pretty.  I didn't really understand why it's a huge tourist attraction though because it just looked like a normal college campus.  I guess it is like the Yale of Ireland though so its really famous.  After that we went to one of the National Galleries in Dublin.  There are a bunch of National Galleries but the one we went to ended up being an animal museum which was one of the most random museums I have ever been to.  It kind of reminded me of the Pea Body Museum (not sure if that is spelled right) because there were stuffed animals set up everywhere and a lot of skeletons of whales and giraffes.  However, it wasn't set up in nature scenes like the Pea Body - it was just thousands of animals standing together around the rooms.
After that we went to the Leprechaun Museum, which I thought was really stupid but everyone else wanted to go, which is a museum about Irish legends and myths.  The concept was cool except the inside was really corny.  One room was supposed to make you feel like a Leprechaun and had huge furniture.  Another room was decorated like a rainbow.  I actually think the museum must be for children because I don't know why an adult would enjoy it.

On the third day we went to Kilmainham Gaol which is an old prison where people were executed during a famous revolt in 1916.  I thought it was really cool except all the tours were booked for that day so we didn't get to go inside.  We even begged the people at the front desk but they said no.  If I ever go back to Ireland I will definitely take a tour of the prison.  After that we went to a Wax Museum which I thought was another giant waste of time but whatever.  Parts of it were cool because there were rooms with each decade of Irish history but all the wax people freaked me out so I felt really weird the entire time.  And it wasn't like a Madame Tussaud wax museum because it was just random people everywhere instead of famous people.

Kilmainham Gaol

Other than the two weird museums, I really liked Dublin.  There definitely isn't as much to do there in terms of sightseeing as I expected but it was really quaint and homey feeling - a nice change from Barcelona.  Also, in Ireland most of the doors are painted in all different colors so I took a lot of pictures of those because they were so pretty.  Going there made me want to explore Ireland more because I wish I had had time to see the Irish countryside.

Flat Stanley at The Temple Bar