My week that I spent with Megan was so much more than I could've asked for. On Sunday night, John made another "Family Dinner" for everyone, including Meg. We all ate spaghetti and meatballs together, and laughed and joked for the entire night. Julia and Kelsey brought over their Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and shared it with everyone, I ate the peanut butter kind as we watched a movie and hung out for the night. Megan loved the idea of a family dinner, and offered to make Enchiladas as a cover for my family dinner that would be coming up, so obviously I jumped on that offer.
On Monday, Meg went into the city center with my friends Brian, Kelsey, and Julia while I went to class. I met them in the city at Merrion Square Park right after they got back. Apparently they'd tried to go to a few museums,
and the only days that museums are closed is on Mondays (typical luck!) They were hanging out in a park after eating lunch when I met up with them. We decided that we were in Ireland, after all, so we went golfing! We hopped on the bus and drove an hour outside of the city. It was a great plan, until the bus dropped us off on the middle of a highway... As it turns out, the last twenty five minutes of the trip were supposed to be walked, and down a highway for part of it nonetheless. We all laughed at how we would react to people walking down the highways in our towns, and nobody really came out with anything good. When we arrived, the sign read that there was also a nursing home, which made us slightly nervous. Where did we walk to? We walked through the gates and found a beautiful course, with in fact, a nursing home off to the side. The clubhouse was a large stone building, and the sun was shining brightly on the fairways, as a rolling hill could be seen on the horizon. We were told to "go see Pete" about the driving range, but of course we had no idea who Pete was, or even where he was, but we followed the signs to the range.
Meg and I split a bucket of balls, and we had a great time. We laughed a lot about Meg's slightly questionable driving talents, which usually included a 360 spin before contact with the ball happened, but that only made it more fun. Her talents matched Julia and Kelsey, so everyone around us loved the show of raw talent we had to offer (not!) The number of times that the golf ball or club hit the side barrier is actually uncountable. Let's just say that when the bucket was gone, we weren't exactly running for seconds! We made the walk back to the bus stop, and agreed that we would try the club that we had heard so much about when we got back. Meg and I ate a white wine and garlic pasta that she made with garlic bread, then headed over to meet everyone to go out. On the night bus, we ran into very rowdy French students studying at DCU, who were chanting, stomping, and cheering so loudly that the bus driver literally stopped the bus three times and said everyone would have to walk if they kept it up. He ended up getting mad and drove the bus far away from where we were going, and we had to walk over a half hour to get to where we were going. Meg wanted to take pictures, so we were taking "selfies" to send, when a french kid noticed and screamed "She's snapchatting us!" Meg tried to defend herself, but they were too amused with themselves to listen to anything. Either way, we got the "selfie" beneath the golfing pictures, I just wanted to let you know how much trouble we got in for taking it! We went to out to the infamous "Coppers", and quickly learned why we had heard so much about it. We had such a fun night, certainly one of my best in Ireland so far!
So now it was Tuesday, and we were not waking up to fulfill any of our morning plans that we had so
eagerly developed the night before. There were free pancakes in the International office starting at 10 am, but that wasn't helpful since we woke up at noon! We were still laughing about our experience at Coppers, so we were completely fine with it. After egg and cheese bagels and hamburgers, we headed down to the city to explore. As we were walking down Grafton Street, we found a brass brand playing Beyonce, which she loved. We stood there for a while, just enjoying the band as they drew a crowd. We explored everything, from Grafton Street to down the River Liffey, and decided we would get dinner in the city while we were there. We found an awesome authentically Irish place called the Hairy Lemon. Interesting name for a pub I thought, but everything sounded delicious, so we went for it. We got a tiny window seat as the place filled in, and it was
perfect. Our waiter was hilarious and told jokes the whole time, and really made the experience as well. We were caught between a couple of good options, but both caved to the Beef and Guinness Pie pictured on the front of the menu. We certainly didn't regret it though, it was amazing and had been cooking all day according to the waiter. It melted in your mouth. Megan's dad gave her money for us to go out to dinner, so this was the time. I was so appreciative! We were so stuffed after, so we decided to walk around some more before we called it quits. As we walked around, we decided that naturally we needed dessert. With us, I guess we should've known that was coming. I told her about the crepes that I loved on Grafton Street at Gino's, and how they also had waffles and gelato.
It didn't take too much to sell her on the idea, and I was excited again! I made her order the nutella crepe, and it was no mistake. We walked down to O'Connell street past the live music and sat on the O'Connell statue and looked out at the river and laughed and joked. We headed back around 10 and watched the Wolf of Wall Street on my laptop before crashing for the night.
So now it was Wednesday. Today was a busy day with classes, so Meg went to the city to explore and check off some of the tourist boxes that had to be done. She covered a lot of ground, including Trinity College Library and the book of Kells, which is something I still have to cover. When I got out of class, we went to the store and picked up tortilla chips and a couple other goods to prepare for our family dinner night. I was just as excited, if not more, to have the enchiladas as everyone else was. It was quite the feast, including guacamole and everything. Again, we hung out after. Oh, it was also Ash Wednesday, which is why we have crosses on our foreheads... And here we were eating chicken enchiladas. Not good! After dinner we ate some of the apple tart that I had picked up, and Brian went and bought Digestives for us all for dessert. (Digestives are just cookies, don't be concerned, I know I was terrified eating them!). We laughed at the apple tart, let's just say there was a reason that it was only 1.50 for the entire pie... The meal was incredible though.
On Thursday morning, I went to my 8am class and at 9 when I got out we left for a day trip to Howth,
an island on the coastline above Dublin. It was a very foggy day, but it was still beautiful. We walked along the shoreline and took just as many pictures as you can imagine the typical tourists would of such an amazing place. We were looking for the cliff walk, when we met a local. He asked where we were going, so we explained. He told us how to get there, but followed up with a story. He pointed to the ruins of an old church on the hill, and told us that a couple of years ago there was really bad flooding, and all the coffins were washed above the ground and onto the streets. We were shocked, and he said there were bones floating down the streets. Still stunned, he ended his speech with a mocking "so be careful!".
That's when I knew, we had just been "slagged", but Meg wasn't aware and neither was I. As it turns out after some research, there actually were a couple of coffins that did wash up, so I didn't feel so bad. We still got slagged though. We did the cliff walk, and it was amazing, but we were tired by the end! We finished back in the village, and met a dog. He followed us for the entire evening, no matter where we went he went with us. If we turned down a street, he would stop and run in front of us and wait for us to catch up. It was awesome, he was great. We got to the church graveyard and there were other people down there. It clearly looked like he was our dog, which was great, until he went over and peed on one of the headstones. Oops! The number of dirty looks that we got from them was almost funny, but what were we supposed to do about it? We hung around the village for a while, then found a small seaside restaurant for fish and chips. I was in the bathroom when Megan ordered drinks for herself, a Guinness and a water. You can only imagine her annoyance when I came back and the waiter handed me the Guinness and her the water, but I laughed a lot! The fish and chips was massive, and the most incredible meal ever, freshly caught off of the coast. We sat there for a while after finishing, laughing about the awkwardness in Ireland of asking for a check. When we got the check, we headed back to DCU to make brownies for dessert that we had bought earlier in the week.
On Friday, we went to Maynooth for the day, and decided to spend the night out there to see Sean and tour Maynooth as well. Meg and I waited for Brian and John to get out of class, so we made lunch and got ready. After a misunderstanding on the phone with Sean, we ended up touring a small town called Lexilip, Ireland, a full hours walk away from Maynooth. Thank God for google maps though, we figured out we should catch the next bus instead! We got to Maynooth, and Sean showed us around the town. It was a small town, country feel in Ireland; in fact signficantly more stereotypical Irish than Dublin where I was staying. I had mixed feelings about that. We went to Aldis, and picked up hamburger meat, and Brian, John, Sean, Meg, and two of Sean's friends all had cheeseburgers for dinner with fries, or sorry,
"chips". We were in Sean's common room to start, but his Chinese roommate, asked when the party was starting so she could plan out when to eat, so we decided to not interrupt her and went to Sean's friend's room. We played a couple of games, including Cheers Governor, then went out. John took the elevator down, and met us at the door as we were leaving. We got to Fitzgerald's Roost, and started making our plans for the night. We met a group of girls, and I got clearer directions written on a coaster on how to get to Maynooth without all the confusion. It was a great time.
On Saturday morning, we all woke up for breakfast, except Meg who decided that sleep was much more of a priority than food at that point. I've spent enough of my life being attacked by a grumpy angry Meg after waking her up, so I knew better and let her sleep in! We went to Aldi's and picked up some eggs and bacon and toast and had a feast, laughing about the night before. Meg woke up, and we headed back to the city. We were on the bus about twenty minutes when Meg decided that we should stop in another small town in the countryside. We were only there for a couple of minutes, and caught the next bus through, laughing even harder.
We saw an awesome pizza special, so we stopped and took
advantage. When we got back to Dublin, she insisted on a shower and a nap, so she headed back to DCU with Brian, and John. I stayed down in the city with Sean, and we explored Saint Stephen's Park, grabbed decadent chocolate milkshakes at Butler's Chocolates in the city. We went and looked around Dublin Castle, and also went to the Chester Beatty Library.
We went to a Trinity College science exhibit, which we laughed about. It wasn't exactly what we expected, it was all about bad invention ideas and their failed products. We headed back to DCU for dinner and caught up with everyone else. It was Meg's last night, so we went down and explored the city with Sean one last time. We passed two old men in the Temple Bar area who were playing music, singing and dancing. It was a classic. Afterward, we went to Fitzsimmons, and the three of us sat on the rooftop deck and talked for the rest of the night. It was awesome again, the perfect way to end an awesome week. We ran and caught the last bus out of the city so that we wouldn't have to buy a cab, and we ordered Dominos before bed and hung out for one last time. I walked her to the bus stop on Sunday morning, wishing I could go home to my family now, because I knew it wouldn't get better than the week we just had. It was awesome.
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