Top O the Morning to ya!

3/10/09

For our BLC field trip, we travelled to Warwick Castle, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and a Fulham futbol game. Warwick Castle was more interesting than the other castles we’ve been to because we were allowed to go inside. They had wax representations of famous people who had stayed in the castle. We also found another zipline in the playground! Henry VIII
In Stratford we went to William Shakespeare’s birthplace. I actually ended up learning more about his father than I did about William. I would have liked to have had more time there to see where he was buried.
We then travelled to Anne Hathaway’s cottage which wasn’t all that interesting compared to William Shakespeare’s home.
We then hopped back on the bus for a two hour drive to the Fulham futbol game. The game was quite the experience. I enjoyed it, but left early because I had a lot of homework due the following day.
3/13/09
We left for Dublin around 3:45 in the morning. The flight was only an hour long, so we were able to get a fairly early start. We decided to get on a city bus tour where we could hop on and hop off. Our guide was awesome. He sang Irish songs to us while driving. At the very end of the tour, we got off at Trinity College then went to the National Gallery for a little while. The girls shopped around for a little while and we all went to a pub later in the evening. All of the drinks were ridiculously expensive and every place we found was crowded.

3/14/09
We bought the Dublin Day pass and knocked out the city in a day. We went to the prison, Guiness brewing house, Jameson distillery, Christ Church Cathedral, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I liked the Jameson Distillery more than I did the Guiness experience because I hate Guiness. Jameson gave us yummy mixed drinks. Guiness had 7 stories; it was a bit ridiculous. I was shown how to pour a beer which was pretty cool. The prison was probably the most interesting place. We were told a lot of stories about the inmates. Later we bought green stuff, went to one pub then headed to Temple Bar Street. Temple Bar holds a lot of really well-known pubs and clubs in Dublin. The first pub we went to ended up being a cougar bar (Our Brazil friend called it). We were the only ones there under the age of 35. They had a really good dj, so we stayed for a while and danced. While there we witnessed some doing an Irish Jig. We went to another bar which was really crowded and every place else was full, so we called it a night.

3/15/09
We didn’t really do a whole lot today since we did everything yesterday. We did stop to look at Dublin Castle, but pretty much just shopped around the rest of the day. This was our first trip that we booked, so for some reason, we picked a flight that left at 9:55 p.m. This was a really stupid decision. I didn’t get home until 12, I had two papers due the next day, and I was really tired. I was pretty stressed when I got home, but the weekend was fun.

3/18/09
Parliament was our destination for today’s BLC field trip. It would have been so much more interesting if everyone wasn’t so tired (Last night was St. Patrick’s Day). A member of the House of Commons came and talked to us for a little while and then we were given a tour of Parliament.