Part 1: Dublin

My first impressions of this city were not great. Our hostel was kinda bleh. Walking around was kinda boring. We got on a city tour bus with an automated guide, and I fell asleep.

Ireland is supposed to be gorgeous, but we didn't see any of that in the city. So we decided to take a tour to the Cliffs of Moher, which is at the opposite end of the country.

Good choice. Our real-person guide was über Irish, gushing with equally useful and pointless information about the country's culture and history. The trip was several hours long, so we got more than an ear-full. We took in the scenery as we learned about the sport of hurling (gotta start when you're four years old), President Obama's irish roots (we drove through his ancestor's town) and how to avoid pissing off fairies (basically, just stay out of their way. And they like to steal little boys from their cribs, so that's why little Irish boys are dressed like little Irish girls).

When we finally arrived to the Cliffs of Moher, our guide instructed us to close our coats as completely as possible. It's entirely possible that the wind can whip through loose coats and suddenly turn them into parachutes! When we finally got up there, I believed him. The wind was frightening.

We were lucky to evade fog, so we could see the cliffs perfectly.


There was also a tower that I wished we could have gone up in for a better view. This man-made thing looked really strange against the backdrop of the nature-made expanse.


My favorite were these girls, who were on our tour. They kind of weren't that smart. Maybe they didn't hear the parachute warning, or they did, and thought they were immortal.


After the Cliffs, we made one last stop to check out the Burren (sidenote: totally thought the guide was saying "The Barn" because of his accent. I was quite confused, and was thinking, 'how cool could a barn really be?')




Here, I took the only up-close picture of Jake and me of the whole trip.


And those girls were still doing really intelligent things. As if losing your footing wasn't totally easy because there were a million cracks and jagged rocks.


Afterwards, we hopped back into our totally sweet tour bus and headed back to the city.


Back in Dublin, we hit the pups, where Jake drank Guinness (ick) and I drank cider. We both dislike The Beatles, but still sang along to live band's rendition of "Hey Jude" at Temple Bar. I concluded that the city of Dublin is not that bad. But the country side is better.