Dublin - shopping for the budget traveler

We arrived in Dublin early last friday morning (wow only a week ago!) and took our time getting through customs, going to the ATM, and finding the bus to the center of town. We went up to a very friendly lady at the tourist information desk who helped us with a city map and led us to buy a three-day transportation pass. The pass included a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Dublin as well as transportation to and from the airport and endless travel around the city. After weighing all financial sides of the matter, asking about ticket prices, and comparing spending prices we decided to spring for the pass. 

After a delicious breakfast at a small cafe (beans, toast, eggs, ham, bacon, and coffee/tea all for 4.95 EUR!) we quickly realized that Dublin was going to be the perfect city for the budget traveler, which all of us, being college students, are. 

After dropping our things at a luggage room in Brown's Hostel (not recommended for future travelers, cheap but you pay for what you get) we set off for our hop-on-hop-off bus tour. We sat on the top of a double decker bus and enjoyed the city from a new vantage point. The great thing about this tour is you can get off whenever you see something interesting and another bus will be just around the corner. We did just that, getting off at the beautiful St. Stephen's park.

The park was filled with couples (did I mention this was Valentines weekend?) and families with children, and from the moment we stepped in: college students with cameras. Everyone that I traveled with on the trip to Dublin, not only had a nice camera but also seemed to be obsessed with taking pictures, and boy did we take a lot of them!

Above: the girls I will be living with next semester, minus Caitlin who was at the castle in the Fall. We are posing on one of the beautiful bridges that ran through St. Stephen's Park and enjoying being quite silly after very little sleep.

Below: An artistic picture, set up by Cher, also in the park. It took about a million trys, but in the end we had our entire group off the ground. 

We hoped on and off several more times, stopping at the Guinness storehouse and seeing many of the beautiful castles and cathedrals in Dublin. Our tour ended back in the center of town where we enjoyed American food at Eddie Rockets a cute little diner were we were all appreciative to enjoy burgers, fries, and sundaes, not the typical menu of our dining hall back at the castle. 

We also went on a Pub Crawl, which took us to several of the lesser known pubs in Dublin and we met some fellow travelers from Boston.

On our second day in Dublin we journeyed away from the city to the small fishing village of Howth, recommended to us by the lady at the airport, which I will blog about in a different post. 

And on the third day we lost the majority of our group, most people had to return to the castle for classes, but a few of us had a schedule that enabled us to stay longer. The four girls left enjoyed shopping and a few last minute sightseeing opportunities. We went to an irish marketplace and also bought colada rings from a street vendor. In addition to that we also walked down Grafton Street, Dublin's biggest shopping street and stopped at a store called Penny's in the center of town were we found shoes for 2 EUR and bathing suits for 9 EUR, quite a deal compared to the USA.

We enjoyed an irish dinner and then turned in early so we could wake up in a timely fashion to catch our flight back to Well.