It's been a very busy summer, but it's time to sit down and crank out one of the many missing chapters from this past year's adventures: the time two lovely ladies and I took on Dublin, Ireland. First, I must go back and introduce the protagonists of this trip...
Once upon a time there were three very different young women who happened to cross paths on the greatest adventure of their lives in the little mountain town of Ubrique, Spain. They each had very different personalities:
Kendra was tall, beautiful and had magical eyes that enchanted all the Spaniards. She was hardworking and dedicated to everything she did and was always friendly and thoughtful... really, she thought a lot, about a lot of things! She kicked ass at futbol (and futbolin!) and she really liked glitter.
Seana was equally as tall and beautiful and a little bit mala, in the best way possible. There was never a dull moment with her and you could always count on her to tell it like it is. She was full of surprises and random knowlege, like how she remembered the birthday of every person she's ever met, memorised all the trees on her university campus just for fun and finds giraffes to be the most interesting animal because there's none like them.
And then there's me, Sarah, who is admittedly indecisive but often optimistic. I was dubbed the "fairy cupcake princess of friendship" or something like that.
What these three girls had in common was there sense of adventure and their love of new people, places and things. Despite our differences, when the three of us came together, we balanced each other out perfectly. The result? Pure awesomeness and fun. Thus was born "The Guiri Marcha." I think when you meet someone who can share what you're going through, feeling out of place in such new and different surroundings, you form a special bond that goes beyond friendship. I can honestly say these girls became my family while in Ubrique and my experience wouldn't have been the same without them.
But enough of the mushy stuff and back to awesomeness and fun: The Guiri Marcha made a lot of friends and had many great times in Ubrique, but one day Seana suggested that we get away for awhile, just the 3 of us... so we made plans to have Seana's birthday celebration in DUBLIN over February break! It would turn out to be one of the best trips ever.
We're all pretty easy going and carefree, and we all have experience with traveling, so we arrived and got settled in sin problema. We stayed in a quaint little hostel right on the River Liffey that had a delicious free breakfast every morning. The location and ambience were great and there happened to be a rugby match versus Italy that weekend, so we met lots of rugby fans - Irish and Italians and foreigners alike! Our roomates were a bunch of girls traveling from Scotland... they were so crazy and fun! They had discovered some sweet Irish flag capes that we would later purchase to scandalize the St. Patty's Day celebrations back in Ubrique.
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| The River Liffey |
I can't remember the details of what happened on which days, but here are some of the highlights of the trip: meeting Seana's friend Ben who was so great and an excellent tour guide; walking around the beautiful Trinity College Campus; touring the Guiness factory and then spending a large amount of time enjoying our free guinness in the glass room with the 360 view of the city; discovering some interesting Irish artists at the gallery; enjoying brown bread and soup; more guiness and "foam on your shrone"; meeting the friendliest people everywhere we go (no language barrier, here! though the accent can throw ya off); making a "birthday buddy" for Seana only to ditch them one bar later with the infamous "Plan C" (pretending to see our friend Clint, acting surprised and "running after him" out the back door and out of sight); hanging out with Oscar Wilde in the park; admiring how GREEN the grass is and watching adorable children play in it; accidentally getting drunk in the early evening and proceeding to eat about 17 plates of sushi and attempt to speak Spanish with our Mexican waiter; Seana scoring an interesting date to the zoo; attempting to speak Gaelic and failing; screaming the word "doirty" (which is actually dirty with a terrible Irish accent); searching high and low for a real Irish Pub called Morgan's and being disappointed to only come across The Morgan cocktail bar; the real Temple Bar; meeting some guy named Daz, and receiving the nicknames Saz, Shaz and Kaz; screaming every Irish actor's name we could think of in the hopes that we'd stumble across them.....
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| The Perfect Pint |
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| Trinity |
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| Georgian Doors |
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| Oscar |
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| Kids at heart |
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| Birthday Phil |
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| Foam on our shrones |
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| I don't know why |
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| Sushi... did we do that?? |
AND... surprise highlight of the night: celebrity spotting Mark Wahlberg on our way to Dicey Riley's nightclub. Kendra walked up to him and gave him dos besos without even saying a word. It actually worked, despite the bodyguard. Seana told him he was so handsome in person, and also got a kiss on the cheek. I laughed and attempted to get photo evidence. It was one day later when we were recounting the story to some dude at Temple Bar and he mentioned that he saw some paparazzi photos in the paper... when we got back to the room, I did a little internet browsing on my phone just out of curiosity. I made the mistake of saying "OMG Don't freak out" and both girls literally scaled my bunk bed to see what I was talking about: We had been paparazzi-ed with Marky Mark. I don't think I'd ever seen girls climb so fast or scream so loud.
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| Paparazzi with Marky Mark |
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| Seana is star struck |
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| The aftermath |
We had such a great time in Dublin, we didn't want to leave. We had planned on taking a trip to the Irish countryside one day, but decided just to relax and explore and enjoy our time in the capital. It was a perfect trip. Should the Guiri Marcha reunite someday, I think we'll go back for round two.
