Caity's Visit

Caity, my friend from high school who is studying in London this semester, came to visit for the weekend. She got here late Thursday night and stayed until Monday afternoon. On Friday we went to that St. Brigid's day mass in Trinity that I talked about in the last post. It was cool to go to a mass in Irish, and I actually recognized a few of the words. My favorite part was the homily when the priest said something like "Today is St. Brigid's day. She was important," and then he sat down. The masses here are so different from America.

After mass we walked around the city centre. We went in a few shops on Grafton Street and O'Connell Street and were looking to buy some cute boots so we wouldn't look so American. I bought a backpack for my trips, and the backpack salesman was pretty hilarious. After that we went to Number 29 at Merrion Square. That is a Georgian home that is decorated with the original furnishings, and they give house tours every day. I thought it was cool since the house had the same layout as our O'Connell house, so it was interesting to see what it would have looked like in the past.

That night we went out with Kelly, Livia, and Vic. We went to see P.S. I Love You, since parts of that movie are in Ireland. It made me really want to go to the Wicklow Mountains. I loved the part when she mispronounced Dun Laoghaire since I also had no idea when I got here. The movie was so sad, I seriously cried through half of it. It cost 9 euro ($13.50), so that was a little crazy.

After the movie we did a Temple Bar pub crawl. We started off at a pub right next to the Ha'Penny bridge. They had live Irish music there which was really fun. I also found a good beer there which is great since beer is a lot cheaper than real drinks. It's called Bulmer's Vintage Cider, and it's really sweet and good. After that place we went to a bunch of pubs in the Temple Bar area. The actual Temple Bar was packed, and we had trouble just walking through it. Another pub had live music, but they were playing American music like "Sweet Home Alabama". We met a guy from Amsterdam there who we talked to for a bit. After that we went to Mssrs Maguire which is a fun pub since it has dancing. We ended up in our old favorite, Doyle's, which was also extremely crowded.

The next day we went to Dublinia Medieval Viking World, which was on Caity's list of places of interest. It was a fun little museum, and we took a ton of pictures looking like idiots posing with the various props and figures.

After that we took a tour of Dublin Castle, which I really loved. The one part of it is just a mansion, and the connecting part is an actual castle. I didn't realize that government meetings and the inauguration of the President happened there. They also have a throne room with a throne that King George IV and Queen Victoria sat on. After the tour of the mansion part, you go undergound and see a castle wall built by the Vikings. You can't go in the castle part because that's where they film The Tudors. Once I found that out, I realized I need to go back and try to find Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

That night we did another pub crawl with all of the ND people. My favorite part was when two guys from Northern Ireland were hitting on us. Their strategy was impressive - they said they were betting on whether we were from Ireland or America. They actually exchanged 5 euro to make it look more authentic. They were cute, but really chatty. We left them when the group was leaving to go to the next pub.

The next day we were going to go to the National Botanical Gardens, but it was really rainy, cold, and windy (Caity came on the coldest weekend since I've been here), so we just went into the city. We went to the National Gallery and looked at all of the art, then we had lunch.

That night we went to the O'Connell House for the Super Bowl gamewatch. The free pizza was good and it was nice to see an American event with the game and commercials and music. I was really excited that Tom Petty did the halftime show, but I thought he looked a little creepy. I'm usually disappointed by the commercials, but I liked the one with the horse training and the ones with the baby. The game itself was disappointing until the end. I was rooting for the Patriots (even though I'm a new Giants fan) because they've been amazing all year so I thought they deserved it, but by the end of the game I didn't think they deserved it anymore. The end was amazing - very exciting even though it was on at 3am here. Yay Giants!

The plan was to sleep at the O'Connell house that night since the game was over around 3:30am and the buses stop running at 11:30pm. It was really cold in the house though, I think because it is usually closed on weekends. Caity and I woke up at 6:30 and were freezing, so we took a bus back at 6:45am. As we got to the bus stop the bus was dropping someone off, so Caity ran up to the bus and banged on the door. It was hilarious but great since it was cold and we would have had to wait another 20 minutes if we missed it. We got back to my room, put the heat all the way up, and slept past noon.

The next day we just hung around UCD, and Caity left around 4. It was a fun weekend, and I'm really looking forward to visiting her in London in March.

Sorry this is the longest post ever, I'm writing it in Ethics class right now which is incredibly boring. :-)