St. Patrick's Day and more...

We had Monday morning off so I decided to spend a little time alone since the Graphic Design group was coming that day so the group would be doubling. I woke early and ate my toast and orange juice breakfast and set out. My main mission was to purchase headphones since mine died and headphones are a necessity for group travel. I walked to Trinity and took a right, which brought me to Grafton Street and eventually St. Stephen’s shopping center. I walked around inside for a bit and then found an electronics store and bought the cheapest headphones they sold and then I walked back outside. It was such a beautiful day that I decided to get a bagel and coffee from a nearby shop and then sit in St. Stephen’s Green. I sat on a bench facing the pond and watched all the life going on around me. It was so nice to be able to take a break from everyone. The group is made up of a lot of incredible people but I still need time alone sometimes since I am a melancholic phlegmatic. I did a little shopping in the stores close by and settled on a pale green tank top from a store called Topshop. After that I walked back to the Hostel feeling energized and at peace. I ran into the Graphic Design students on the way there, and they looked like they were about to fall asleep from jet lag and traveling. When were got back to the hostel we had a short meeting with our professor and ended up having the rest of the day off. I walked with some of the students to the other side of the River Liffey and did a bit more shopping and ended up purchasing a shirt that I almost got earlier in the day.

Tuesday we met up at 9:30 and walked over to the bus stop and headed to Newgrange. I really did not know that much about Newgrange getting onto the bus, just that the light did something cool on the Winter Solstice. For those of you who do not know what New grange is, it is a tomb that is oriented in a way that at sunrise on the winter solstice the sun shines through a whole and illuminates a path in the floor for roughly fifteen minutes or so. It predates the pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge by at least 500 years. What was also interesting is that the sight was not protected for a long time so there are all sorts of graffiti and engravings on the stone, which originally only had swirled designs.

Wednesday was St. Patrick’s day, which was ridiculous to say the least. I began my day by going for a run. The streets were empty and the gates were up for the parade. After that we were treated to a full Irish breakfast at the café next door to the hostel. I chose not to have the pudding, but the rest of the breakfast was delicious. After that we started getting prepared for the rest of the day’s festivities. I bought a headband with a mini green hat on top and other people bought massive green hats, some with beards attached. The parade started at 12:00 and reached the hostel around 1. The pubs opened at noon and were serving Guinness in to go cups nonstop. The floats in the parade were not like any I had seen before, they were crazier than any parade I had been to, and many of them kind of reminded me of Across the Universe. The parade had an abrupt ending around 2. I walked back up to my room and the people that were in there to watch the parade were dancing in the window for the people on the street. A lot of people stopped to take pictures and videos. We waited until 3:00 and then went to buy beer because that is when the stores were allowed to sell it again and then came back to the hostel. Our professor Jerrod had been walking around and spotted a pub that we needed to go, there was a guy playing a guitar who had the whole pub singing along. We went for a pint and enjoyed the music. There was a dancing competition and we got one of the guys, Nick, to go up and dance and afterwards he was given a sparkly boa. After the pub we came back to the hostel and hung out in the common room until it was time to go out. We ended up at a club called “The Purty Kitchen” which had four stories, loud music and dancing. I was exhausted from the day and did not really enjoy the club. I decided then that I would probably not be going to these Euro Clubs many more times, they are just not really my scene.

Thursday we walked all over the city of Dublin it seemed. We started off at Trinity and looked at the Book of Kells exhibit. It is so crazy to think about someone doing all of the work by hand and it was very impressive. After that we had lunch at Trinity in a room that resembled the Great Hall in Harry Potter and then went to the other side of the city to the Collins Barracks museum. There was an exhibit on Eileen Gray who is an Irish designed that worked with Le Corbusier and had some very interesting furniture. Most of her things had very elegant and simple lines and she also used a lot of lacquer. After that we were free to walk around the museum. I think my favorite gallery was the period furniture gallery, but there was a Chinese art gallery that had some woodblock paintings by Hiroshige, who I learned about in Art History. Other exhibits were Irish Silver, What We Wore, and From Storage; all of them had very interesting things. After that we walked to NCAD to meet up with the Graphic Design students and go to the Guinness storehouse. There was a very cool exhibit on what goes in Guinness and its process. After going through that we went to the very top of the building (the 7^th story) to the Gravity Bar and had the pint the was included in our ticket. The bar was amazing because it was all glass walls and you could see all over Dublin and to the Wicklow Mountains, which is where Guinness get its water. Then we went through the store and then back to the hostel, where I got some much needed rest.