St. Patrick's Day, something, something

On Monday 17th March, was my first ever St. Patrick's Day. I spent the day right here in Sligo. It would have been possible to go to Dublin by bus in the morning and then come back at night, but for some odd reason, the thought of a day in Dublin partying and then a bus ride back to Sligo around 4 am didn't sound that tempting.

There was a small parade in Sligo, with some music (oddly enough, bagpipes, which sounded more Scottish than Irish) and children promoting their sports teams etc. The parade was nice, nothing too extravagant or anything.

Sadly, on the official St. Patrick's Day, very few of the good bars or night clubs were open. On top of that my friend was feeling a bit ill, so we decided not to go out that night. Considering that one of the bars that was open, was one of the worst night clubs in Sligo and the rest most likely were super packed, in all honesty I don't think we missed out on a whole lot.

All in all, St. Patrick's Day was a bit of a disappointment for me. Perhaps my expectations of the day were too high, who knows. But some of the Irish classmates of mine said that sometimes St. Patrick's Day can be worse in Ireland than abroad, for example in America, as weird as it sounds. But oh well, it was still nice to finally get a chance to celebrate the day and to do so in Ireland. And if nothing else, we got to dress up in some of the tacky Ireland accessories! And here's some proof of that:

After the St. Patrick's Day, it was a bit of a slow week. Studying, tai chi, the works. But on Friday, we decided with my friend that we have to start planning for the upcoming trips in Ireland, but also the trips for the 2-week Easter break. And that's exactly what we did. First trip was easy. We decided that the next place to visit here in Ireland for us would be Galway. So we found a nice hostel and in about 1,5 weeks it's Galway calling for 4 days. After that, we started planning for the Easter break. We literally spent hours and hours on checking up hostels, prices on flights, trains, buses, etc. And this is what we came up with: Our trip will take place 10th-28th April and the route will be Sligo-Belfast-Glasgow-Edinburgh-London-Paris-Sligo. So all in all, 5 cities in 2,5 weeks. Could say we are "kinda" excited. Especially when we hadn't even realized that it really is less than 3 weeks till our trip! So now we just wait and buy some things for the trip, such as a smaller suitcase. And planning a some kind of budget for the trip would be quite important too.

Dublin

On Thursday 6th March I did a day trip to Dublin with my Cultural Tourism class, visiting The National Museum of Ireland and The National Gallery of Ireland.
First we went to the National Museum of Ireland. It was such an interesting place, it was cool to learn more about the history of Ireland. And that place had loads of different exhibitions about that from the prehistoric era to the time of the vikings and loads more.Sadly, we had no guided tour in the museum, so most likely I missed out some of the exhibitions and the time spent in the museum felt quite short. But nonetheless it was great to visit the place for the first time and I'd like to visit it again whenever I go back to Dublin.

The museum had some very nice artefacts

The roof of the building was both very beautiful and interesting, a bit of a mind fuck. And it was so big that I couldn't even fit it all in one photo.

After the museum, we had a short break, so I went to for walk around the city center with a friend. Dublin city center is beautiful, even though it's quite a big city, it still has that same feel as all the Irish cities, with old-time buildings and not so many really modern buildings as I would have expected. Also, we took look around the campus of Trinity college, which is one of the oldest colleges in Ireland, dating back to the 16th century. And as schools go, it's definitely one of the most beautiful ones I've seen. The buildings were historical and the campus was huge. As much I like IT Sligo, it was a lot more beautiful than IT Sligo and at least twice as big.
After Trinity college, it was time for our visit in The National Gallery of Ireland. I was a little skeptical about the place at first, because I'm not that big an art enthusiast. But the visit turned out to be quite interesting. The guide who told us about the paintings was very good and I ended up learning something about art. And the paintings we saw were cool too.
Once our at the gallery was finished, most of my classmates took the bus back to Sligo. But I stayed in Dublin for the weekend. My friend didn't arrive to Dublin until around 7 pm, so the few hours of time I had to kill, I wandered around the city center and ended up going to Starbucks (I spotted at least 3 different Starbucks in the city center area alone) for a cup of coffee. I know I know, how very hipster of me. But at least the place had coffee I knew tastes good enough, plus, free wi.fi! After I had sat there for a while, it was time to find my way to the bus station to meet up with my friend. Imagine that, I managed to find the bus station pretty much without getting lost, which with my sense of direction, is huge.
When my friend's bus finally arrived to Dublin, it was time to find our hostel. It ended up being a little further away from the city center than we had thought. Or then the distance just felt longer with our rather heavy luggage. But eventually we made it and finally were able to rest for a little while.

A view from our hostel room

After we had rested, it was time to go check out the town and the night life. Though our night was cut a little short, due to our exhaustion. We had dinner and then went to some rock-themed bar, which was an okay place, one of the few bars with a volume level low enough that you can actually have a proper conversation. After that, we went to some of the bars that were more "tourist" places, since we really wanted to try out Irish coffee and those places were guaranteed to sell it. Both my friend and I had been feeling a bit ill for a while, and this was the time to test whether something like Irish coffee would actually help with the flu symptoms. Funnily enough, it actually did, on my part anyways. So perhaps the Irish really are onto something with this drink, who knows. After we had finished our drinks, even though it wasn't that late yet, we decided to go back to our hostel. After all. it had been a long day for both of us and we wanted to be up early in the morning to go see the town.

Friday was the day we decided to use for shopping, since Dublin has loads more shops than Sligo. And that was exactly what we did the entire day. Both of us found a lot less stuff than we would have thought, but at least neither us left home empty handed. This day quite thoroughly destroyed our legs; the distances in the center area alone in Dublin are "a little" bigger than in Sligo, in other words, by 6 pm, our legs were literally dying on us. But nonetheless, it was a fun day and Dublin is a good city, when it comes to shopping and different kinds of shops.

Sunset by the river in Dublin

In the evening we went out. It took us a while before we found any cool places, cause most of the places we did find were either really packed or such tourist places, and those were the places we really wanted to avoid. Eventually we found a really cool bar/night club. Entrance was free and it had two floors, a bar upstairs and then an actual dance floor downstairs. And on top of that, this bar was one of the few places I've been in Ireland that actually played different kinds of music, and good music even.
Before we went dancing we sat at the upstairs bar. And you gotta hand it to the bar; they had Pulp Fiction playing on the screen, even without volume, that's something you just have to appreciate, big time. And well, of course it was rather amusing to watch the movie with volume off and then hear songs like "Somebody I Used to Know" or "Be My Baby" from Dirty Dancing.
When we went downstairs to dance floor, we were pleasantly surprised by the music, again. For once the DJ had some sort of variety in his music. And we danced to Muse, twice. Awesome, just awesome.
One other thing that made our night in this place was one of the bouncers; when we went to the bar, he actually thought we were Irish. He didn't realize we were from Finland until he saw our IDs. But considering what a tourist place Dublin is, and how incredibly tourist tourists we saw during the day, in comparison to them, we did feel kinda Irish.

On Saturday, it was time to go check out the sights. The places we visited, were Kilmainham Gaol (a prison), Guinness Storehouse and Wax Museum. And of course on top of those places, we walked around town, seeing many beautiful buildings, churches, etc.
First we went to see Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison. It was such a cool and interesting place, and once again we learnt more about the history of Ireland. The guide there was fantastic, explaining about the place so well and answering if anyone had any questions. The tour took an hour and it covered the main events in the prison and we were able to see the different parts of the place, and it only cost 2€. Definitely worth the money!

The more modern part of the prison

After the prison, we headed to Guinness Storehouse, a place that is a bit of a must-visit to any tourist visiting Dublin. It was quite a cool place, but both my friend and I felt that it was too much of a tourist attraction for our liking (if we had visited it as soon as we arrived to Ireland, we probably would have liked it more), not to mention that neither of us are too thrilled about the taste of Guinness. But anyways, it was still cool visiting it and the view at the Gravity Bar on the top floor was pretty spectacular.

After we finished our tour at the Guinness Storehouse, we went to a Wax Museum. Now this was a fun place! The place had both historical and fictional characters and also, a chamber of horrors. When we went inside the chamber, both of us were thinking "Imagine if any of these dolls would start moving" And just guess what happened then.. Not one, but two of the dolls started moving and we screamed and jumped like little girls. And of course some kids went there after us, and even they didn't scream. How brave are we.. haha. And of course we had to take a couple of pictures of ourselves, posing with the dolls.

Filthy elvses..

After the Wax Museum it was getting quite late and we've had our share of the sights of Dublin. So now it was dinner time and after that, we went out. We wanted to try at least one new bar in Dublin while we were there and managed to find one, after some searching. The place we went to was okay, quite similar to the places in Sligo, with the difference that a lot of the people there were clearly quite a bit older than us. But at least it meant that we didn't have to suffer from drunken, vomiting teens. That place was a nice ending to our last night in Dublin.

In Sunday, we were exhausted, it had been a long trip. As soon as we had packed our things, we headed to the city center and looked for a place where we could have breakfast before the bus would take us back to Sligo.
All in all, it was a really nice trip, there was enough time to both do some shopping and explore the many cafes and restaurants of the city,  but also see some of the sights. Of course there were some sights we didn't have the time to see, but it just means that we have to go back to Dublin some  time. Dublin as a city, is nice. Though in my opinion, it is a bit too much of a tourist city for my liking, in the beginning it felt like there were more tourists than actual Irish people in the city, which meant that for example people weren't even nearly as polite in Dublin, as for example in Sligo. Even though I still want to visit Dublin at least once before I have to leave Ireland, I think I kinda prefer Sligo over Dublin, simply due to the fact that Sligo feels more like the "real Ireland" than Dublin.

That was all about the Dublin trip and now it's time to get ready for my first ever St. Patrick's Day tomorrow! Something that will most definitely be one hell of an experience! But before that, a couple of last photos from Dublin:

Rag week

So this week in Sligo (and in some other cities as well) was something called Raise and Give week, or Rag week in short. Basically, this week is supposed to be about charity. Some activities in which you can participate in and donate money to charity that way, bars donating money for charity when buying certain products etc. But, what this week mostly is really about, is partying for almost one week straight.
There were all sorts of different parties organized in almost every bar and night club in town and some of them were open as early as 12 am.
On Monday, the first day of Rag week, I went to one of the bars near to my school and very popular among students, with my friend, just to see what this "infamous"Rag week  is about. It was maybe 7 pm when we got there, and already many people were feeling rather, cheerful. But all in all, it was a nice night, met quite a lot of people we knew and all that. And it wasn't even nearly as crowded in the bars and pubs as it was in the last days of Rag week, which was really nice.
I went out with friends on couple other nights as well, though most of the parties that for example the night clubs were organizing, were a bit disappointing. If there was supposed to be any theme in any of the parties, you really couldn't tell. The only major difference to any other week was that it was a lot more crowded in the bars, especially in the last few days of Rag week.
It seems that the bars aren't too big on the themes of their parties, which is kinda sad. Especially when, for example this "White party", me and my friend actually bought some white clothes and got all dressed up, only to find out that very few people at the party were wearing anything white. But oh well, at least me and my friend can feel good about the fact that at least we did something for the theme.
All the time I've been here in Ireland, there's been talk about how much the Irish drink. And until Rag week, I would've said that the Irish drink just about as much as the Finns, nothing too shocking about their drinking habits. But Rag week, now that's something that the Irish beat Finns at, not even we have anything like this. A lot of people really seemed to be drinking the entire week, since I saw a lot of people already drinking when I for example walked to school or when I went to do the groceries early in the afternoon. What surprised me though, was the fact, that even though so many people were drinking a lot and many days in a row, there seemed to be very few more or less serious accidents. Or then I just haven't heard about them. I guess  that's the difference between Ireland and Finland; if anything like Rag week were to arrange there, I'm sure a lot more people would get hurt, accidents would happen etc. So in a way, I am happy that we don't have it in Finland. But, it was still nice to experience it and see what it was about. And now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't as bad as I would have thought. But all in all, this week was incredibly interesting, both in the good and in the bad, with loads of random events happening when I was out with friends.


After Rag week ended, it was time for something completely different: Sports, and not just any sport, Gaelic football. I've always hated watching sports, it just doesn't interest me in any way. But for some reason, I really loved watching Gaelic football. It was first time ever seeing the game, and I have to say, it was very interesting. It was Sligo v Offaly, and at first, me and my friend were confused which team was which. But then, when we managed to figure it out, we could really get into the game. The game looks quite random, since it has elements from sports like basketball and football. And to be honest, we're still not entirely clear of the rules of the game, but since we are definitely going to see another match of this cool game, we're gonna do some research. And next time, following the game and more importantly, actually understanding what's going on in the game, will be a little easier.
Another sport I'm really interested in going to see, is hurling. Another Irish sport. It's weird, normally I'm not interested in watching sports, so I'm not exactly sure what is it with these Irish sports that makes even someone like me interested in them.
To finish up, here's a couple of photos from the match: