This past week was another great week here in Dublin started off on Thursday with the Irish house party. We had a pretty good dinner and then we went into the basement for an incredible traditional, Irish folk music performance. It was pretty cool to Irish instruments like the uilleann pipes, the harp, and the bodrán. All of the songs were all really fun, and there was also Irish dancing, which was pretty cool (and nice that we don’t have to go and wait in the massive lines outside of Riverdance in downtown Dublin)
The highlight of my week started on Saturday when my parents flew into town. They took the redeye in from Connecticut so they took a nap in the morning, but after they got up in the afternoon and we went to the horse racing track in Curragh. I’ve never been to a horse race before, so this was pretty cool experience for me. It was also fun to be able to gamble legally here, although I did not do very well. Later that night, I took them to one of my favorite spots in Dublin, The Hairy Lemon, and it was great just hanging out with them. Obviously they were pretty tired so we all ended up turning in pretty early that night because we had a big day ahead of us the next day. The following day I woke up early and caught the bus into Dublin to meet my parents before heading off to go play some golf. When I’m at home, one of my favorite things during the summer is playing golf with my dad, so it was really nice to go out and play with him after spending a significant chunk of my summer away from my parents. Overall it was just a really great time at a beautiful golf course, and golf is kind of quintessential part of Irish culture so it was really cool to experience here. Also, I beat him which was fun.
The following day we had our tour of the Guinness Storehouse, and funnily enough, my parents ended up scheduling their tour of the factory at the exact same time that we did. So after class I met up with them in the city and we got a really good lunch at Devitts, another classic dublin spot. The factory was really cool, and it was insane how many people were there on a random Monday. Afterwards my parents wanted to meet a couple of friends that made here in Dublin, so we ended up all going out to pub together to watch the euros which was a great time. The following day was their last day in here, so after work I went out to dinner with them and then we went to O’Donoghue’s after dinner, probably my favorite pub I’ve been to in dublin so far. We watched the Austria vs. Turkey Euros game, and unfortunately we had a little bit of money on Austria to win, which they did not. Overall, even though we were net negative on our gambling endeavors on the weekend it was just really great to see my parents. I had really missed them a lot and it was really nice just getting to see them and spend time with them.
It was great to see you this weekend Cole (even though you beat me on the course)! Thank you for showing us around Dublin. It was also very nice to meet a bunch of your Bucknell friends on Monday.