Joy's Adventures of her First 2 Days

When I first arrived in Dublin I was a bit nervous, since I was alone, but it turned out to be just fine. I met a girl from Canada named Aviva, and we wandered around the city. We saw Christchurch, St. Patrick's, St. Paul's, St. Catherine's, and St. Augustine's cathedrals. We did not go inside them all, as that would be quite expensive, but we took lots of pictures. These churches are also in very different parts of the city, so we got to see a lot of the area, which helped today because I knew where I was at all times. The nice thing about the churches here is that they are the tallest buildings in the area and can be seen several streets away. That helps with directions a lot. In order to fight the jet lag, Aviva and I also strolled down the Liffey River and around the Temple Bar area. We had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant before falling asleep in the hostel.

Today I woke up, had leftover Chinese for breakfast, and walked to the apartments everyone is staying in for the trip. Upon returning, I checked out, got into a conversation with the man at the front desk at the hostel, and somehow ended up pointing out the location of the apartments on a map of the city and how to get there so that he could visit his parents when they stay there in a few weeks. Less than five minutes later I was horribly lost. I took a wrong turn on Dame Street and ended up walking with my duffel bag through a deserted residential area of town. I was wandering around for about a mile when I spotted St. Augustine's Cathedral, which I knew was very close to the St. Augustine Apartments. The only problem was that when I turned on to a street I thought would take me there it ended up winding away from the cathedral. Some minutes later I found myself on a street with some interesting graffiti, and then a taxi pulled up and asked me if I wanted a ride somewhere. Then, I looked around the corner and saw the street that the apartments were on, politely declined the taxi driver's offer, and finally made my way to the apartments.

After finding out that check in was not for a while, I decided to walk around the city some more. I walked by St. Aoudin's Cathedral and noticed that it was free admission, so I walked in. When I was looking around the church a nice old Irish woman asked me if I would like a tour. She assumed that the other girl lookning around the church at the same time was with me, so she told us about how it was the oldest church in Ireland (about 800 years old), about its importance in the community, and about all the symbolism found on the monuments. When the tour guide left to get us maps, Roberta introduced herself and we decided to walk around together. Next, we went to Trinity College, down Grafton Street, and around Stephen's Green. She wanted to know all about America, and she told me about Italy as well. Then we went to Temple Bar and shared a pot of Irish tea. After that I met up with the rest of the group, had an orientation, and went back out into the city with them. I'm pretty excited for eggs tomorrow for breakfast, which we got at the supermarket while we were out. We also went to the Brazen Head, which is a pretty old pub and enjoyed a pint of Guinness while the Norwegian choir at the next few tables entertained us with drunken singing (which was still way better than I could ever hope to sing). We saw the Norwegian choir again at a hotel pub later on that featured Irish music and dancing. All in all it has been an interesting experience so far, and I look forward to tomorrow's tour, which features the book of Kells.