Ireland Day 7

Today was our last day in Ennis.  After a horrible night sleep in the tiniest bed ever, I was happy to move on today. Peter got up extra early today to try and get as much done as he could in his office. His employer has a fun summer program where they want you to only work half days on Friday's so that meant we could leave for Dublin a bit earlier in the day.

I stayed in the room as long as I could and then checked out and enjoyed my last little bit of time people watching and reading books on the streets of Ennis.  It was fun to see how everyone seems to know everyone in Ennis.   It definitely has some small town charm to it.

After a couple hours, Peter and his boss showed up. His boss was kind enough to drive us the 2ish hours across Ireland to Dublin.  His poor boss lives in Dublin and is trying to relocate back to the western side of Ireland but for the last several months has commuted back and forth from his family each week for work.  

We arrived into Dublin around 6 and settled into our hotel right in the heart of all the action.  We knew this was going to be an extra busy weekend in Dublin as it is "Taste of Dublin" and there is also a big soccer match between the Scottish brothers and Ireland tomorrow.  You know it might get a bit crazy when our hotel provided ear plugs for us.  

Man alive, can these people party!  I was truly not expecting just how crazy and busy the downtown parts of Dublin would be tonight.  It will be nice to NOT be in the city tomorrow and we're told things will calm down considerably by Sunday when we plan to sight see. I hope so! But we tried to enjoy the crazy excitement going on around town as we strolled the streets. 

Grafton Street, the huge shopping area:

The old buildings and especially the old churches everywhere fascinate me!

The Temple Bar area. This is the chaos going on all around our hotel. And this was early in the evening.  I've heard it is going to get much crazier!  But the bars seemed to be having their fun, lots of loud sing alongs could be heard out in the streets.

There were lots of cool musical groups set up everywhere.

And that was that for us.  Temple Bar is definitely not our scene but this level of partying is definitely a part of Irish culture. We were told things should settle down out there between 3 or 4 in the morning.  Fortunately I had already asked the hotel for their "quietest" room and we always have those ear plugs.