A New Beginning

So the adventure begins... as in a 6 hour flight with no sleep and trying to function for the first day. The flight was like any other flight, cramped with babies crying the entire way. I finally landed with zero sleep and local time being 5:00am. YAY, let's start the day bright and early before the sun has even risen. To say the least it was going to be a very long day for Amanda! I got to awkwardly sit around the arrival hall for an hour guessing if people who looked like student walking by were on my program or not. Turns out a good amount of them were and we all got to take our sleep deprived bodies to the hotel. Luckily, we had nothing scheduled until 12:30, so it felt like the perfect opportunity to take a nap. Or maybe to go back to sleep seeing how we passed out for 4 hours.

Now the actual adventure begins. I had a quick, informal group meeting where I got to meet a lot of the other student on my program. My provider, Arcadia University, provided us with a hop on, hop off bus ticket. Since we were all still really groggy, we need a way to keep ourselves moving and energized. The bus tour might not have been the best choice in the long run. There was some head bobbing during the ride.  But, it was the first time I got to ride a double story tour bus and I got a good overview of the city. One of the stops was the Guinness Factory. We thought about doing it, but we decided we would do it some other day. Got to save some of the fun stuff for later!

Entrance to Tour of Guinness Factory

 

We being the lost tourist that we were, randomly got off at a stop and tried to, on our own, find Grafton Street. Which turned out to be great because we got to see the Spire of Dublin. Literally all it is a giant needle point used as a landmark because in Dublin they have barely any street signs. So not knowing the city, you end up aimlessly walking around. It probably has more significance, but we didn't have the energy to find out. 

Spire of Dublin

 

Finally we meandered our way to Grafton Street. Granted this was after walking in circles for 20 minutes, but we finally figured it out. Life without smart phone GPS is just so tough. Grafton Street is like Ireland's version of Newbury Street. We fit right in as it was mostly tourist walking the streets looking at the shops. Any stranger looking in on our group would think we were the walking dead. We were all spaced out walking around without a clue to wear we were going.

 Grafton Street

 

We somehow managed to find this beautiful park. It turned out to be St. Stephen's Green which is the largest city square in Europe. We got to see some lady get bombarded by birds because she was smart enough to feed them. But behind her was this beautiful swan lake. At this point, I don't think anyone was functioning, so we hopped back on the bus and made our way back to the hotel. 

St. Stephen's Green Swan Lake

Tired as could be we came back and take a little down time before dinner. As in I get time to write my first blog post! YAY! So pretty much the phrase to sum up the day is the walking dead tries to find their way around Dublin! We will see what is in store for the coming days!