This past March, my friends and I decided to travel to Ireland for our college spring break. The reasoning behind our decision is not one grounded interest in the country or fascination with its culture, Dublin was simply the cheapest international flight we could find from Boston in the week we had been given for spring break. In all honesty, we really lucked out with the timing of our spring break, which was from March 2nd through March 9th, and fell on the weekend before Saint Patrick’s Day. This meant we got to experience all the touristy spots while they were not super busy, but they were all decorated with Irish flags and people were already beginning to celebrate like Saint Patrick’s Day had already arrived.

The first day we were in Ireland, we took a red eye flight from Boston, again the cheapest flight we could find, and arrived in Dublin at around 11am, except for us it was 5am and we had only gotten around 4 hours of sleep on our Aer Lingus flight. It is important to note that we did not have an unlimited budget for this trip. We were three broke college students who just wanted to explore a new country as cheaply as we possibly could. We did end up booking some excursions ahead of time but those were for another day, today we just wanted to explore Dublin and see what we could find. 

After arriving at the airport, we taxied to our hotel. We had considered staying at an Airbnb but figured as three 20-year-old college girls it was probably smarter for us to stay at a hotel where you need a key card to access the elevator (my mother was extremely pleased with this decision). We stayed at the Moxy Dublin City hotel, which was a location we ended up loving as it was walking distance from Temple Bar and all the museums and parks, we wanted to visit but also was far enough outside the party scene that we weren’t kept up at night with the noise. We shared a hotel room amongst the three of us and found a room that had three single beds in it, which worked amazing for us as we were freshman in college and that’s what we had been sleeping on for months at school anyway. 

At this point, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for at least three hours, but my friends insisted that if we wanted to beat the jet lag we had to get up and go. This was my first time traveling through as many time zones as we had gone through, so I didn’t fully grasp the concept of jet lag, but I am so grateful that we did because we adjusted to Dublin time super quick. So, we left our hotel with no destination in mind and went in search of food. Unbeknownst to us, we ended up walking directly into the Dublin Spire, which quite literally just appeared in front of us as we were crossing the street. We stopped for a photo op but, this might be a controversial opinion, we were honestly underwhelmed. It was like “oh cool a giant metal stick, did we find a restaurant yet?” Anyway, we kept walking and stumbled into this adorable street market. We, again, stopped to take photos, and then found a shopping center with food places inside and went in. We really didn’t care what we ate, as long as we got it quickly, so we went into this fast food place called “Shake Dog” and got chicken tenders, and finally made a plan for the day. 

We hadn’t done an exceptional amount of planning for this trip, outside of the excursions and tours we had already booked, but we had made a list of all the things we wanted to see in Dublin. This made planning the day super easy as we could simply pick a few places from the list. We decided to walk to Trinity College and see if we could get into a science museum they had advertised (spoiler alert it was closed, and we ended up walking through a rugby game where we asked for directions and were in turn asked to donate to the team). We saw that we could walk through Temple Bar to get there so we followed our GPS through Temple Bar street and to the college. Temple Bar was lively, as people filled the streets and headed into the pubs for a pint (it was like 1pm but we don’t judge in this house). The top of the bar was covered in string lights and when we eventually would come back in the evening, we would see it light up the whole street with music seeping from its doors. The whole street was picturesque with its cobblestones, lights strung from building to building, and live music from all the bars flowing through the street. Eventually, we made our way to Trinity college. 

When we finally arrived at Trinity, we were amazed at the buildings and the gorgeous setting of the school. Coming from our new and modern university, thinking of studying at Trinity was a difficult task. It was so different from anything we had experienced, but it also seemed homey in a sense. We once again took a bunch of pictures (you’ll see this trend a lot throughout this trip) before heading for the science museum. Now at this point, we were absolutely DRAGGING, it was around 2:30pm and we just wanted to go to sleep. When we discovered that the exhibit we were trying to see simply didn’t exist anymore, we shifted our focus to finding a coffee shop as soon as possible, and this was good timing as minutes later the sky opened up and it started pouring. We managed to find a spot and escape from the rain pretty quickly, but it was still a bit startling. This coffee shop was where I tried matcha for the first time (wild place to try it for the first time, I know) but I came back from this trip loving matcha! 

After we finished our drinks and the rain seemed to be letting up, we chose our next destination off our list, Saint Stephen’s Green Park. On our way there we stumbled across the National Library of Ireland, and though the library itself was closed to the public (it was a Sunday) there was a small museum gallery open. This gallery was a display of a bunch of works by James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. It was cool to see so many original sources from these authors and learn a bit about them, as I had known nothing about them before this trip. Once we had seen the gallery, we wandered across the lawn to the National Museum of Ireland, which was open to the public and most importantly, was free. We spent some time touring the museum but, in all honesty, we were so exhausted we didn’t really know what we were looking at. They did have some amazing Viking memorabilia, which informed us a bit about the history of Vikings in Ireland and was a point I was particularly interested in. However, we would have to approach that interest later as the only thing any of us were thinking about was sleep. 

After leaving the National Museum, we finally made our way to the park, which was adorable and filled with people enjoying the sunny day. There were tons of fountains, flowers, bridges, and monuments in the park that made it enjoyable to walk around, or in our case, fall asleep in. My friend Seleena and I briefly sat down at one of the fountains to rest and promptly fell asleep (shoutout to Arushi for making sure we didn’t fall in). 

At this point, it was around 4:30pm and we checked the weather and saw rain was coming in, so we called it quits and walked back to the hotel. When we got back, I promptly crawled into bed as my friends freshened up for dinner. We decided to use the vouchers we had been given and to eat dinner at the hotel. Got to say, can’t recommend the food at the Moxy. We got a few appetizers to share because we weren’t super hungry, and I’ve never seen a more interesting take on nachos in my life. Now they get points for creativity, but whatever they served as guacamole most certainly had no avocados in it. Also, their ketchup was weird? I don’t know how you do ketchup wrong, but it was definitely not right. I know I’m from Pittsburgh and a bit of a ketchup snob, but it was WEIRD. 

And with that our first day in Dublin came to a close. This trip is one I’ll remember forever. We managed to cram so many things into such a short amount of time. We saw natural wonders, learned about the bountiful history, and ate delicious food (not including whatever they served at the Moxy). I am so grateful that I was not only able to go on this trip but that I went with two of my best friends in the whole world. I know there’s always concern when a trip makes it out of the group chat if the friendships will survive, and I can safely say that it was never a concern on this trip. If you want to learn more about what we did, what we learned, and more importantly what we ate, then keep reading the Irish Chronicles!

With Love,

Ashley