What started off as a nonsense idea in Starbucks in an October lunch hour turned out to be the best trip of my life. And this is why:
My friend Emily first suggested that we visit the Irish capital, so that we could basically ‘get drunk and meet Irish men’. Being carefree twenty one year olds it sounded like the perfect idea. Within two weeks, we had booked our flights, hostel accommodation and were at the airport. I knew it was going to be a giggle from the moment my bag got stuck in the little box where you check if it’s the right size, and took three people to heave it out. It was mid afternoon by the time we had got off the plane and taken a bus to our hostel, one of the quite nice ones right on the river Liffey in the heart of Dublin, good staggering distance from all the pubs and bars.
As we’d only be there for a few days, Emily and I decided to make the most of being in one of the most fun cities in Europe, unlike the German girls in our dorm who mostly stayed in bed and watched films on their laptops every day. (Really?!). Our first night was spent trying out many of the Irish pubs in the Temple Bar region, which is pretty expensive but you can find some real little gems. A pub that I later returned to was the Oliver St John Gogarty (which is hard enough to say even if you’re sober), which was so over-the-top Irish for words. We’d chatted to lots of people, but the nearest thing we got to our target of chatting up Irish men that night was me being approached by who I can only describe as Roy Walker from that 90’s show Catchphrase.
The next day, Emily took a coach trip to Belfast, which I really wasn’t bothered about, so instead I amused myself by walking around Dublin. There were lots of individual shops, record stores and vintage boutiques which were right up my street. Because it was raining pretty heavily by lunchtime, I went into a few coffee shops and pubs hoping to bump into an amazing Irish guy who would offer to show me round the city. But no. Instead what I got was quite different. I got lost. Wandering up and down the same street about three times in the drizzle was not my idea of fun or romantic. Or remotely film like (unless you’re thinking of Bridget Jones, as by this time my hair was rather damp and bedraggled.) However, outside the Gogarty pub (which I said I’d come back to) was a guy who had been sitting there every one of the three or four times I had walked past. He obviously wondered what the hell I was doing, and the last time I meandered by, he called over to me. I explained my situation and he told me his. The previous night, he’d generously (and rather foolishly) lent his last 30 Euros to two English guys he’d met in the pub and was waiting outside their accommodation to get it back. I joined him under the pub’s canopy and we sheltered from the rain, drank whiskey and talked about life. His name was Tanner and he was a real life Texan! (Maybe this was even better than the Irish tour guide I’d hoped for). After hours of staking out, the two men returned. What Tanner had failed to tell me is that they were like a father-son, Northern version of the Kray twins. We traipsed round Dublin with them trying to find a bank or cash point that would take their English bank cards, but, to cut a long story short, Tanner didn’t get his money back and he ended up crashing in our hostel (the less said about that the better).
The next day Emily was back and on our to-do list was a visit to the Guinness and Jameson factories. We decided to visit them both in one day in order to get maximum effect from the couple of free drinks we were allowed at each place. The Guinness storehouse was a massive, modern glass place and the Jameson distillery was quite the opposite, which personally we preferred as it was much less commercial (and we got more freebies). We were slightly tipsy by the time we’d walked to the latter; Emily got chosen to do a whiskey tasting activity, and we both got free cocktails. By some miracle the lovely glass tumbler they were served in, lime and all, found its way into my bag (strange how these things happen!). That night we went on the hunt for more Irish men. We went on a pub crawl through Temple Bar, saw a wonderful acoustic Irish singer (more about him later) and then met some Norwegian guys who confessed to looking like Tom Sellek and Hulk Hogan (still not quite sure what that was about). We then went to a rather posh looking bar and started chatting to a group of Irish guys (yes!) because they’d stopped us after hearing our Essex accent. Unfortunately, they were all pretty old and on a work’s do, which we basically crashed. We spent our last five euros on mojitos which were pretty much all ice, so we had a better idea, and ended up in an ice fight with about eight thirty-something Irish businessmen! But it was a step closer to our goal after all. Time was running out to find some Irish hotties!
Another activity we did included looking round Dublin University (which if you ask me was a cheek to charge 10 euros for) although Emily rather fancied the tour guide of this one. On our last day we went on a coach trip to the Wicklow mountains, accompanied by a non-stop chatting, extremely camp tour guide, who I’m still not sure ever passed his coach driving test. Our worries were heightened when he told us he’d only crashed once whilst driving us all up a mountain and stopping to drink whiskey with us at various points on the tour. When we stopped at an Irish pub a few hours into the trip, the guide stole a chocolate bar so that he could grate it on top of my Irish coffee (must be a crazy Irish thing), and we sat down to enjoy our liquid lunch. We’d made our own rolls using the jam from the hostel’s breakfast buffet. (We’re students, don’t expect us to pay over a tenner for a bowl of Irish stew thank you). We got chatting to the only person on the trip who wasn’t part of a twosome, an American soldier, who was rather lovely. Unfortunately, still not Irish, but we had a giggle and he was rather attractive, a step up from the ice-fighting businessmen last night.
We planned to go mad on our final night. Therefore we stocked up on Tesco rosé and nibbles and drank a bottle each in the hostel lounge area. The eventful evening started right there, where a strange old man decided to do his own concert especially for us, seeing as no one else there was bothering to pay him any attention. He serenaded us with Irish songs (albeit sung terribly) which was the perfect accompaniment to our drinking. We then went to a pub a couple of buildings down the road, and in true Laura and Emily style, did karaoke, with the new addition of some Swedish men we met and who’d taught us how to swear in Swedish, which is always handy. Luckily for me, when I’d asked for a Jameson and lemonade, the barman had left a bottle of lemonade on the bar, which I took back to our booth and topped up our drinks with which definitely enabled us to be up until 8 in the morning! (Well, one of us). After leaving the bar, after realising that the Swedish men were not from 80s pop group A-ha, Emily spotted the acoustic Irish singer from the previous night outside another pub (I told you he’d be back). We went over and chatted to him and he invited us to come in and watch his gig. He had a great voice and we sang along to a few of the Irish songs we’d picked up during our adventures. This was a great end to our trip, apart from the fact that for Emily it ended with her head in the hostel toilet and for me the night was only just beginning…..