A Dreary Day in Dublin

Hi there! I'm Ashley, and I am a Psychology major at CSS. I will be graduating this upcoming December, and honestly I don't really know what I'll be doing after (I'll eventually go to Grad school, but I'm not sure when). I came on this trip because traveling is probably my favorite thing in the world. I love being able to see firsthand other cultures and places filled with so much history. 

Speaking of traveling, Emily and I took a weekend trip up to Dublin, Ireland beginning today. Well, more accurately last night. To start off, we took a bus to the Stansted Airport at about midnight last night, so we got to the airport at about one, and had to sleep on the hard tile airport floor because we couldn't even get through security which didn't open until about three. After we got through security, we didn't get told what gate we were flying out of until about 15 minutes before we could begin boarding. This was super frustrating, because we had to basically run across the airport to get to our flight on time. Moral of the story-don't fly out of Stansted, it's pretty awful. 

Once we got to Dublin, and found the place we were staying, we went to the zoo. If anyone ever finds themselves in Dublin for some reason, I would highly recommend the zoo. They have so many different animals there, it was a ton of fun. One thing I found funny was that they had a wolf exhibit, like the wolves we have back home. They also had flamingoes, elephants, Tigers, giraffes, a ton of monkeys/other primates, and many other animals. 

Since it was a little chilly many of the animals weren't super active, but it was still a great day. The lemurs all cuddled up in a giant pile to keep warm, which was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. One of the gorillas had a blanket wrapped around it like a little shawl, which was also pretty adorable. 

After the zoo, we accidentally ended up taking a five hour nap, after which we went out to eat and have a drink. We ended up at a place called BoBo's, which had probably the best burgers I've ever had. They were huge as well; they were easily the same circumference of my hand with my fingers spread out (the picture doesn't do it justice, it was enormous!). 

In all of our outings today, I did notice that London and Dublin are more different than I thought they would be. London is a lot cleaner in general, whereas Dublin seems a little more run down almost. The people aren't as friendly here either it seems, but we did run into a few very friendly people. Transportation is a lot harder here as well, because there's no tube we're stuck either waking, taking a bus, or a cab anywhere, which can get expensive. So far it's a nice city though, but we'll be able to see more of it tomorrow!