May 19th

Today we went on a free tour through New Dublin, and our tour guide Chris was a very funny and knowledgeable 18 year old who told the history of the city in a very fun way. The tour was well worth the 3 hours and the walking because it was so informative and we gave him a little tip after (since that's how they make any money). We walked around Temple Bar area some before meeting up at the beginning of the pub crawl that was organized through the tour company we went with earlier. We met a whole lot of awesome people on the pub crawl and had a wonderful time! Ryan tried to beat our Irish guide in speed drinking. They each picked a pint (so Chris chose Guiness and Ryan chose Coors Light - each guy thought that was the beer they could chug the fastest) and it turned out that Ryan beat Chris with the Guiness and though the cold of the Coors was making them both massage their brain freezes, Chris finished the Coors before Ryan. I have this all on video and it's pretty funny :) We came back to the hostel to bed and we had two new roommates, Sam and Lauren from Australia. We attempted showers again, but the hot water is certainly not reliable!! So we smell a little bad :P

- Sara

May 20th

Home - 3:23 pm

Dublin - 8:23 pm

Last night, we made reservations to take our free day trip (28 euro value included with two nights stay). We left at 8 am on a bus and visited Glendalough, Wicklow and Kilkenny. Glendalough had a neato park we stopped at with a lake and old monastery and cemetery in the valley of the hills. The weather was nice and the sun actually came out (which when the AC went out on the bus made things very very warm) and I'm just so glad it wasn't cold and rainy! Lots of beautiful scenery driving through the countryside with farms of sheep and just pure gorgeousness. Kilkenny is SUCH a better city than Dublin. It's clean, and beautiful, and a lot calmer. We visited Kilkenny castle and decided to pay the 2.50 euro each to go inside and it was well worth it. SOOO cool and beautiful there. We're planning on going to Cork probably tomorrow and we might take the train there and then the train back up to Kilkenny to stay our last night in Ireland before heading off to London.

- Sara