Dublin, Ireland & Brussels, Belgium

Dublin

Anna, Carol, me, Kate

From left to rt: Kate, Amy, & me.

The Guinness Factory

My complimentary pint (notice the 4 leaf clover drawn in the foam!)

Trinity College

Amy & I in the Trinity Library

With Aunt Anna

Brussels

Chocolate covered strawberries in Belgium!

La Grand Place

La Grand Place at night

Imitations of Le Mannequin Pis

On Saturday November 8th I left with my friends Evelyn, Sean, and Natalie to go to Dublin, Ireland. We took the train to Biarritz and then flew with Ryan Air directly to Dublin. Evelyn and I stayed in the city center, close to Grafton Street, for one night and then stayed with our family friends Kate & Amy for the rest of the time. The night we got there it was pouring rain so we decided to go to a pub since it wasn’t the best day for sight-seeing. We had fish & chips and Irish sausages, and of course some Guinness. When we walked out the pub to go explore the areas around our hotel, it was already dark out and only 4:00pm. I was amazed by how early it gets dark in the winter time in Ireland. That night we went to UCD (one of the main universities in Dublin) and met up with Kate & Amy. We’ve known each other forever, since our mom’s were best friends growing up. Some friends from Kate’s international business masters program were having a party at their dorm. All of the international kids live on campus, but if your family lives in Dublin it’s really hard to get on-campus housing. She had friends from Hungary, Spain, and the Netherlands. They had a really cool set-up in their dorm because they have a huge kitchen and a seating area where they could eat together. It was like a mini restaurant with at least 10 big tables. It definitely had a very social feel, and they said that it’s not uncommon to have parties there all the time. Later that night we went downtown to Temple Bar. There were definitely a lot of young people out. Since there are so many colleges in Dublin there are a lot of people who are in their 20s that frequent the pubs.

Sunday was the big sight-seeing day! We started off the morning with a Starbucks. They don’t have any chain coffee stores in the south of France so it was actually nice to be able to get coffee “to go”. Evelyn works at Starbucks at home, so she wanted to stop there to get an Irish Starbucks mug to bring back to her boss. Since all Starbucks look the same it felt like home lol. With our coffee in hand we caught the big green tourist bus by St. Stephen’s Green. We rode the bus all around the city, taking advantage of the rain-free morning. At the Guinness Factory we decided to hop off the bus. It was incredible- like Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, only for adults. While waiting in line, we watched Guinness commercials that were playing on various TV screens. There were a lot that I had never seen before so that was entertaining. The Guinness Factory had a total of 7 floors. As you ascend to each floor, a different part of the Guinness making process is described. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about Guinness! We even got to taste a new type of Guinness that is only available in Ireland in the tasting room. It was good, but I prefer the original. We finally completed our tour and stopped at the “Gravity bar” to get our complimentary pint of Guinness. The entire room was enclosed in glass, so that you could see all of Dublin. We had a great view!

Upon leaving the Guinness factory we rode the bus around the city a little more, had a late lunch, did some souvenir shopping, and then Kate and her Dad picked us up from our hotel and we went over to their house for dinner. We definitely needed a chill night after the night before and a fun-filled day of touring adventures!

The next day we took the DART into to town to meet Amy at Trinity College. She had a class early that morning and met Evelyn and I afterwards to give us a tour of the campus. We went to see the book of Kells and saw the famous Trinity Library. The book of Kells is one of the oldest manuscripts that was transcribed by Celtic monks around 800 B.C. It was embellished with ornate Celtic swirls and designs. After examining the book, we went up stairs to the original Trinity College library. It looked like something out of Harry Potter. It’s not open for studying and you’re not even supposed to take pictures.

After finishing our Trinity tour we went shopping on Grafton Street and O'Connell Street and then met up with my Aunt Anna. She was nice enough to drive up from Limerick for the weekend. She took us to lunch at the Shelbourne Hotel, across from St. Stephen’s Green. This is one of the oldest, most celebrated hotels in all of Ireland. Anna said, “If Obama came to Dublin this is where they would have him stay” Haha. It was definitely a treat! I ordered a cheese burger and fries. I haven’t had cheddar cheese since I left the U.S., since you can’t get it in France, so it was really exciting! After lunch we went upstairs to the Constitution room. This is the room where the Irish Constitution was written, which is part of the reason why this hotel is so famous. Then we went to visit my mom’s cousin Penelope. She is in good form and it was a lot of fun to see her again! :) That night Evelyn, Kate, and I went to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It’s been out in Europe since October, but I thought that seeing it in french would take away from it, so we decided to see it in Ireland in English.

We left early the next morning and took a Ryan Air flight from Dublin to Brussels.

This is where the story gets good……………

So our plane from Dublin to Brussels arrived 25 minutes late. We had to catch our connection flight from Brussels to Pau, but they wouldn’t let us because we had to be through security and checked-in at least 40 min before our flight. We missed it by five minutes!
To make things worse, there were no other flights going to Pau until Thursday; it was Tuesday morning.
Now we had two options. To take a 15 hour train back to Pau and this was not cheap. They also wouldn’t have let us use our Carte 12-25 (discount card) since we weren’t in France. Our other option was to book a flight for 11:20 Thursday morning and to enjoy our time in Brussels.

As you probably guessed, we chose the second, more appealing option. We found a hostel and then went out to explore the city. I had never been to Belgium before and it was way cooler than I expected. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, which was evident from the cleanliness of the city and by the amount of locals’ fine dining on weeknights. They mainly speak French in Belgium, even though it is historically Dutch-speaking. Presently, they speak mainly French with a mix of English and Dutch. Sometimes when we would try to talk to someone they would be speaking a French/ Dutch combo which was really difficult to understand. They also have a very different accent. Even in the airport the guys working at the ticket office were making fun of me for talking with a south-western French pronunciation. In the south of France everyone pronounced “Oui” like “Way” instead of “Wee”.

Even at the tourism office, the people working there said, “so you’re from France, you have a very interesting accent.” And I replied that’s because I’m American!
It was also confusing because they say certain numbers differently in Belgium. Par exemple, en France they say “quatre-vingt-quinze” for 75. Par contre, en Belgique they say septant-cinq. Quel bizarre !!

That night we walked around the city, ate some Kebabs for dinner, and then discovered a famous Belgium bar that has 2500 types of Belgium beer. All of the tables were beer barrels, and there were serving trays with names of different Belgium beers on the ceiling and the walls. Originally we were sitting up stairs and these two guys came up to us speaking in some crazy language and I had no idea what they were saying. They went on for at least minute, and then after realizing our perplexed faces they said, “Oh, you don’t speak Hungarian?!” Haha. It happened again later when this elderly lady was trying to tell us something. Everyone speaks so many languages there, it was pretty confusing.

The next day we explored the city!! We went to all sorts of Chateaus and my favorite location, La Grande Place. The architecture in Brussels is incredible! Every block there is a huge church or monument. It was way cleaner and the buildings have been better preserved than in France. Maybe that’s why it’s the capital of the European Union! We also went to see” Le Mannequin Pis”, which translated to “the little boy who pees”. This statue had so much hype about it all over the city, but was kind of a let-down. It was pretty funny, It’s a fountain where the water comes of this little boy statue so that it looks like he’s peeing. I just thought that it would be bigger, since even in our hostel there was a copy cat of Le Mannequin Pis that was as big as, if not bigger, than the original. After seeing that fountain, we got Belgium waffles! Yum! They were amazing. Good thing I’m not studying abroad there because I would eat them every day. Lol.

That night went back to the Belgium beer tavern and met a bunch of Americans who are studying in the Netherlands. A lot of them spoke Dutch and a little french. They were definitely fun to hang out with and to discuss our different abroad experiences. The amount of Americans that are studying abroad in various countries amazes me! There are so many of us over here when you think of all of the abroad programs and all of the different countries that you can study in. C’est incroyable!

I would definitely recommend going to Belgium. Overall I had a great trip! It was even better because it was an extended vacation that was not planned and everything we did there was totally spur of the moment. We definitely made the best of what could have been a bad situation! Ireland and Belgium were amazing! :)