Dublin. Heard of it?

Some people are jet setters. Some people are planners.
Corrine and I are bus setters and fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pantsers.



We were trying thinking of some fun weekend plans.
Our conversation went something like this...

Corrine: Dublin?
Molly: Sho thang, babe.

So after my last class on Friday I went back to the apartment, unpacked my text books and put a pair of pants, a guidebook and a toothbrush in that book bag. Then I knocked on Corrine's door. Then we walked to downtown Galway and found a bus ticket to Dublin. We were settled in our bus seats in a half an hour. Dublin time.

We made it there in about 3.5 hours and got to see night set on the famous city.


We got off of the bus and got delish sandwiches. We roamed the city streets until we found the city bus that would take us to the University of Dublin. We got on the double decker bus. Little did we know that our weekend would teach us much about city buses. We heard a man say that we was going to get dropped off at the University, so we got off the bus when he did. We walk a ways until we found the dorm where we would be sleeping. Corrine's friend, Lauren, let us in and showed us around her dorm. Corrine and I were tired so we watched The Prince and Me, then went to sleep on tiny leather couches. We were saving our energy for exploring the next day.

Saturday: our big day in Dublin. It began, in staying true to the theme, with a bus ride. We decided to get off the bus at a place that looked cool. We treated ourselves to a nice breakfast/lunch. We sat in lounge chairs while we ate. Needless to say it was a good time. We walked around Dublin. Big stores, old buildings, important monuments, Green parks, charming shops. We saw the places where the movie Once was filmed.

We were trying to get to the Guinness Storehouse, but we couldn't find the bus that would get us there. We looked and looked, enjoying the walk along the way. It was late and we were tired, so sat down to develop a plan, thinking we would not make it to the Storehouse before it closed. When we sat down we saw a sign that told us we would make it there in time, literally. Corrine saw a sign that said Guinness Storehouse and had an arrow pointing down the street. Apparently, if you roam around enough and walk far enough you don't even have to take a bus to get places.

The Storehouse is a really snazzy storehouse/museum/shrine to Author Guinness and all things Guinness. The museum part is 8 stories and shaped like a pint of Guinness (I'll have to show you a map of it for you to understand). We learned all about roasted barley, 9,000 year contracts, hops, advertising, barrel making, and the dreams of a man who believed in a beer that is as dark as the night. At the end of the tour we got to have a pint at the Guinness "Gravity Bar" where you can see all of Dublin.

Ok, this blog entry is getting too long. The only people to have read this far are probably the women in my family and maybe Sally. I'll speed up the rest. That night Corrine and I met up with my friend, Emily, who is part of a group starting a church in Galway. We went to a prayer meeting for Dublin though a group called 24-7 prayer. It was really good. Here is some info about the organization if you are interested.

The rest of the time in Dublin: bus, talk to people in dorm, sleep on little sofa, get up, bus, discount shopping (my first clothing purchase in Ireland), cafe food, roam around to find another bus, get on return bus to Galway, sit in a little town that is having a horse show for an hour, make it back home. We decided that Dublin was fun, bustling, and epic but that Galway is the place for us.

ps -- Because I just can't get enough buses, today I took a Galway city bus to visit with some friends at their house. They told me to get off after the graveyard, but it was so misty and foggy I couldn't see out of the bus windows. Long story short, I ended up walking past a huge foggy graveyard at night with no people around.