How do 8 people all oversleep?

The group in front of the Guinness factory

What an interesting morning we had! Our whole group overslept and woke up 15 minutes before we were supposed to catch our bus to Dublin. Some of us were pretty much packed so we threw on some clothes and headed to the bus in hopes of catching it. That didn’t work. We were five minutes late and the bus left without us. Luckily they let us catch the 10:15 bus without having to pay again. So we waited in the coach station for an hour. As I was waiting I realized I had left my iPod in the room. So I had to run back and grab it. It wasn’t fun being so rushed but everything turned out alright. We got on the bus and made it to Dublin three hours later. We walked a bit of a ways to our hostel which was a nice hostel. It was called the Four Courts hostel and we all got a room together with our own bathroom. After we dropped off our stuff we headed to the Guinness factory which was so much fun! The factory was a lot bigger than I thought and it looked really cool. At the end we each got a free pint of Guinness which was great! Funny story – at one point I went to the bathroom and when I came back the man at the bar got on the microphone and said “There is a girl here who forgot to tell us it was her 21^st birthday. And that girl’s name is Nickie!” Kevin had told him it was my birthday and it was so funny! Of course I just started cracking up and once people realized it was my “birthday” they all started clapping. Of course my face turned bright red too. He gave me another pint of Guinness and throughout the time we were there people just kept giving us there tickets for more beer. A ton of people came up and wished me a Happy Birthday and gave me their ticket. It was great! And so funny! We ended up getting 18 free pints between the 7 of us. It was so much fun!

First of the many free Guinness!

After the factory we did some souvenir shopping. There was a free BBQ for those staying at our hostel but I didn’t go because I really wanted to shower. Looks kind of go out the window on long trips like this so I was in desperate need of a shower. Everyone else who went said the BBQ was kind of lame anyways. That night everyone took it pretty easy and hung out at the hostel for a bit. Some of us wanted to go out so Dan, Sean, Jeremy and I went to find a good bar. We went to the Brazen Head which is the oldest bar in Ireland. It is from 1198. There was practically no one there so we left and tried to find another place. The second place we went to had live music which was cool but the place was packed. There was no room for us so we left. Finding another bar was kind of a bust so we headed back to the hostel. We ended up playing pool, foosball, and darts at the hostel. It was actually a lot of fun. We went to bed pretty early because we definitely didn’t want to risk missing our bus to the airport in the morning! It was really sad having to leave Ireland. I really enjoyed my time there!