Finally our first 10 day break arrived! Yippee! Our first stop was Dublin, Ireland which I was SO excited about since it is one of my homelands! How our plans worked out, we ended up not leaving until Saturday morning, which actually worked out well because it gave us time to pack and hang out with Brinberg before he left for a couple weeks. So, like the classy people we are, we ended up hanging out at Coyote Ugly again. The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a shuttle at 6:30 AM to head to Milan Bergamo airport. We were flying with RyanAir which our teacher told us was like “flying in a Greyhound bus”… I didn’t think it would be that bad… but boy was I wrong. (1) You have to pay to check a bag— and you basically have to unless you are superwoman, like some of the girls on this trip, and pack everything in a hiking backpack (2) You reach the weight limit VERY fast, I had to take stuff out of my suitcase on both flights -__- (3) I have ridden on planes at least twice a year ever since I was born (literally) and I have never gotten motion sickness or nauseous while riding a plane…. Until now. While taking off, I thought we were going to rocket launch into space because we took off so fast and the plane was like rattling. I felt like I was going to get sick for about 20 minutes after we took off. The actual flight wasn’t that bad until we landed, when the pilot decided that we wouldn’t gracefully land, we would just drop and hit the runway instead… who taught these pilots how to fly??? 

After we get to the hostel (Four Courts) we grab some lunch and then go with Gina to get her FIRST tattoo! She got a small four leaf clover on her ribs for her mom who was born on St. Patrick’s Day! And such a small world — the man working at the tattoo shop was from Alexandria, Virginia and his dad basically rebuilt the waterfront area in Old Town Alexandria!! WHAT THE… so crazy! Just like all the people in the tattoo shop, everyone in Dublin is SO nice and so willing to help you out with whatever you need! Such a nice change from the rude Italian people we have been encountering… That night we ended up going out to the Temple Bar area, which was about a five minute walk from our hostel (so convenient!). The Temple Bar area is a couple blocks in the eastern side of Dublin filled with pubs (hehe Publin) and restaurants and has a lot of Dublin’s nightlife. One of the best parts about Dublin was that basically EVERY bar had live music every single night and all the performers were amazing! I also got my first plate of fish and chips that night and it was phenomenal. I ate at Leo Burdock’s Famous Fish and Chips that over a hundred different celebrities have visited in the past. YUM!

 The next day, we were ready to take on Dublin and see what it was all about! We started out doing a free walking tour, but since we have very short attention spans and get bored very quickly, we stopped about half way through. After the tour we got fish and chips again (I wasn’t complaining) and then we went and saw Trinity College (which was beautiful!!!) and St. Patrick’s Cathedral (that was beautiful too, but after having seen almost 50 different churches/ cathedrals over the past month or so, they are all starting to blur… oops). On Sunday, it was also the Wales vs. Ireland Rugby World Cup game. There were fans everywhere, which were decked out in spirit wear! And the sport of rugby is no joke! For those of you, who don’t know how intense it is; imagine American football without the padding plus more aggressive tackling and basically beating up other players…. As you can imagine, the players have fabulous bodies :) We ended the day seeing Kilmainham Gaol, the old jail in Dublin that was used for a couple decades before being shut down in the 1920s. It was so interesting hearing all the stories and seeing how the prisoners lived. That night we went out to watch the Super Bowl (wooo Giants!) but I had to call it an early night because I was exhausted from all our activities. The next morning we woke up and went to the Guinness Factory which was very cool. We learned all about how they made the beer and then got a free drink at the end in the Gravity Bar which looked over the entire city of Dublin! We are living da lifeeeee :) After the tour we booked it to the airport for our flight to London! Helllllllllo Prince Harry!!!