Weekend #10 (aka Spring Break Part II): Ireland and Amsterdam

Last Wednesday I left Metz on my insanely long trip to get to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. I left around 1:30pm, took a cab, a train, the metro, two more trains, another cab, a plane (then slept in the airport), another plane, a bus, and then walked for half an hour to get to where I was staying, where I finally arrived around 9am Thursday morning. Oh and for one of the trains, we had a 4 minute layover or something, so if our train had been late at all then we would have missed our flights. Luckily everything went right for once! So we were staying with a girl who goes to Tech but is studying abroad in Dublin, so we met all of her friends there and hung out with them. We got ready and went to the parade around noon, but we couldn't really see the actual parade because there were so many people there. But it was a lot of fun seeing everyone dressed up and having a good time. Oh and we ate green ice cream.

After the parade, Kurt and I went to the Guinness Storehouse. It was really cool, and I think they had some extra stuff going on for St. Patrick's Day - bagpipers, guys with flags, caricatures, etc. We went to the store first and I got a bright green Guinness hoodie, which I'm in love with. Then we just walked around for a few hours, tasting samples, meeting people, getting our caricatures, learning to pour the perfect pint -

Afterwards, we headed back to meet up with everyone else, and then we went out. We went to a club that played all 80's/90's music, then checked out the Temple Bar, which I had heard I had to go to. That place was totally packed though; you walk in and instantly just get pushed through the crowd by people trying to move around. There was barely even room to turn around. So we didn't stay there for very long. We just walked around some more and then headed back around 2am.

We were planning on getting up really early to go see the Cliffs of Moher in the morning, but the bus/train schedule didn't work out. We wouldn't have been able to go see the Cliffs and still make it to Kerry to make our flight on time. So instead we just went straight to Kerry and hung out there for a few hours until our flight. We went to Killarney and had lunch at The Country Kitchen, which was nice and homey. Then we walked to go see Ross Castle, which was really pretty.

The Castle was more just ruins, but the whole area was gorgeous. And there were TONS of swans. After that we basically had to sprint back to catch the bus we needed to take to the airport. We made our bus, then flew to Frankfurt. Friday night we spent taking about 5 or 6 trains (each lasting only about 30 minutes to an hour), sleeping for about 20 minutes at a time. But we finally arrived in Amsterdam around 8am Saturday morning.

We found our Hostel, the Flying Pig Downtown (supposedly the #1 hostel in Amsterdam - it was pretty cool) and hung out there until we were allowed into our room. We were staying in a 32 person room, and we had unknowingly booked double beds. We could have switched for single beds, but the double beds were a lot cheaper, so we made it work.

We walked around and explored the city for a little bit until we met up with the other half of our group, who had arrived the night before. Amsterdam is actually a really pretty city; the canals were gorgeous -

And there are bikes everywhere. The bike lanes are almost as wide as the streets themselves. We went and saw the I Amsterdam sign and hung out there for a few hours. Then we had to get to the Anne Frank House early to wait in line to get in. When we did finally get in, it was worth it. It was crazy being in the actual rooms where this incredible story actually happened.

After the Anne Frank House, we walked around and saw the city at night. The canals of course were possibly even more gorgeous -

We also walked through the Red Light District that night, which was...interesting. Sorry, I don't have any pictures from that :P

Sunday we were planning on doing a free walking tour before our train back to Metz, but we didn't really have time, so we just walked around and bought souvenirs. Oh, we did go back to the I Amsterdam sign that morning to take more pictures on it, which was great because there were way less people there on a Sunday morning than on a Saturday afternoon. We actually got the sign to ourselves for a picture -

After all of that, we headed to the train station and went back to Metz (unfortunately). Every weekend we seem less and less thrilled to return to Metz. I'm really glad I was actually able to make it to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. It was an awesome week!