Day 47: Riding the HOHO

Saturday - July 3, 2010:

We woke up this morning to a (not going to lie) nasty free breakfast... 2 pieces of toasts and jam. That's it. And of course this wouldn't suffice, so we walk to Starbucks before going to see our touristy stop #1... Trinity College.

Trinity College is gorgeous!! I could never imagine going to school here -- it's so pretty! The famous Book of Kells is part of the College, but I don't really know what it is and didn't want to part with 8 Euros to see a library, so some went in to see it but Kasi, Shellie, Becca, Katherine, Michael and I opted out.

We knew today that we wanted to see as much of Dublin as we could and the best way to do this, we thought, was the Hop On Hop Off double decker bus! So we bought tickets and waited for the first bus. We got on the Hop On Hop Off bus tour (HOHO as Lisa Harbarger and I like to call it) and took us to our first stop -- Saint Patrick's Cathedral.

From here we HO (hopped on) and rode it to the Guiness Brewery. Since we did The Jameson Distillery yesterday and none of us were dying for a Guiness, we decided against the tour and took pictures outside instead! Those of us who are going to Amsterdam thought we'd save our Euros for the Heinekein Factory.

HO'ed again but this time we were bummed because we got on a multilingual bus and not a live commentary bus. Buzz kill. So we rode it the shortest distance possible until we got off at stop 21 for lunch.

We walked in the first pub we saw, looked at the menu and stayed long enough to use their WiFi signal for Kasi, Becca and I to order Eclipse tickets on my phone (we had to preorder and were scared they'd sell out. Details to come later) before nixing the bar and walking out. We popped in the next place we saw and it ended up being a pleasant surprise! After a confusing ordering deal, we all got our food and were happy campers. I went with the ham, cheese and tomato panini with vegetable soup (it was an extremely chilly day in Dublin so soup sounded perfect) -- it was a good choice!

After lunch we had one more stop we wanted to make on the tour bus, so we HO'ed and rode it (braving the upper deck, open-air breeze) until stop 10 -- the Dublin Castle. Well, again, we got on the multilingual bus and not the live commentary, so we didn't hear the monotone announcement that we were at our spot. So we missed 10 and had to go to 11. We HO'ed (hopped off) and backtracked to the Castle. Well, we couldn't really find it and a lot of the girls only had eyes for shopping in the Temple Bar area, so we skipped the sightseeing and went straight to Urban Outfitters.

After Urban, a few of us headed to a local coffee shop for a pick-me-up and then powered through on to more shopping on Grafton Street! I wasn't expecting good shops in Dublin (what was I thinking?), but it surprised me!

When we got done it was about time to head back to the hostel to get ready for the night. Now our (Becca, Kasi and I) night plans were different than the other part of the group... I knew we had to be up at 3:30 a.m. for our 4:00 a.m. hostel departure, so there was no way I was a) going out and pub hopping b) pulling an all nighter or c) sitting bored in the hostel/a restaurant. So what option does this leave us with? Twilight Saga Eclipse Special Screening! Yes, the long-anticipated movie does not come out in Europe until July 9th, but there was a one night special screening on the Saturday night we were there. And keep in mind this is an English speaking country and there's no way we'd see it in Italy (I don't do subtitles), so we took hold of this opportunity and went for it!

When the other part of the group went into a sports pub for dinner, the 3 of us went to Subway (yes, don't mock) and then headed over to the Savoy Theatre. Now in America, I would consider this movie premiere a pretty big deal. People mark it in pen on their calendars, wear homemade bedazzled t-shirts showing their mystical alliance and buy their tickets days in advance. Right? Ok well I thought it'd be kind of like that in Dublin. Especially the early-screening, who doesn't like the be the first to see something? So when we showed up an hour early with our tickets and contraband snacks, we thought we were being smart. Wrong. Obviously Dublin'ers are quite the Twihards we Americans are because the movie usher laughed at us and told us we had to wait until 15 minutes before the showing. Bummer, but atleast we get good seats! So we waited and counted down the minutes until 8:10. Once in the theatre, we were blown away by the emensity of it. This place is huge! Like I felt like I was about to go see a Broadway play!

We have 15 minutes to spare until previews start so what do we do? Photo opportunity!

Then the movie begins. And I can't even go into description how good it was because I don't want to spill any spoilers! All I know is that it didn't disappoint, it went with the book, it was a fabulous decision on our part to go see it and I absolutely loved my first (and probably only) movie at the Dublin's Savoy!

We left and were on a Twilight-induced high so we ventured down to the Temple Bar area to walk and people watch. It was quite interesting, the things we saw! Dublin is home to a wide variety of people -- but that is the spice of life, right?

The clock struck 11:30 and we began to mosey back to the Avalon Hostel. The other part of the group was back as well (they enjoyed their dinner and viewing of the Espana Fútbol game!) so we packed up, jumped on our bunkbed and dozed off for a total of 3 hours (not even an REM cycle.. geez Ryan Air...)