Weekend in Dublin: Arriving & the Brazen Head

This past weekend Kayla, Kyla, Montana, and I took a trip to Dublin.  However, Saturday morning Kyla and Montana went on a Paddy Wagon tour of some places in Northern Ireland while Kayla and I stayed in Dublin.

Because of our different schedules Kayla and Kyla went up to Dublin earlier on Friday than Montana and I did.  We took Bus Eireann which took roughly four hours.  I wish we'd taken Go Bus like Kayla and Kyla, but I didn't know about it at the time I was buying my tickets.  If we had, we would've gotten there faster as we would not have made any of our stops in between (including the one we had to do because someone left their iPad on the bus).  But Montana and I enjoyed our ride and it was kinda cool to see the country at night.    Being from a city I'm not always used to the darkness that living in the country brings at night, but I was struck by how the buses looked at night.  They reminded me of that moment in Spirited Away when the ferry is arriving at the bathhouse, light gliding on the dark.

When we finally arrived in Dublin we met up with Kayla, Kyla, and Kayla and Montana's friend Jen before heading off to find dinner as I was the only one who had eaten since lunch.  After some wandering of the Temple Bar area we settled on a nice Mexican restaurant called Pablo Picante.

Our Hostel (Photo technically taken on Sunday)

After that Montana and I were desperate to dump our stuff at the hostel so we headed there and finished checking in.  We promptly dumped our stuff and headed out.  Some weeks ago Kayla, Montana, and I had gotten a pub recommendation in Dublin from a monk, so naturally we went and found it.  It was called the Brazen Head and it claims to be the oldest pub in Ireland, but there is some debate on the matter (I believe that there was always something there but that it was not always a pub or tavern).

Me at the Brazen Head

The Brazen Head was great.  It was mellow, but had a great atmosphere.  We met a very nice old man who told us about his life as a doctor.  He had a great memory for our courses of study and home cities (he recited them to his friend).  We had a lot of fun talking to him about random things like do boys ever chat me up about statistics and why everyone hates the accordion.

I Hope to go Back and Find This One Day

One really cool thing about the Brazen Head is (at least in the room we were in) that it's covered in money.  Most of it was American dollars, but I also saw bills from other countries from Canada to Kenya.  Luckily for us Kyla had a dollar on her, the bar had a sharpie, and I had a pen, so we decorated our own.