TRAVEL IRELAND // A Weekend in Dublin: PART 1

Hello Steemians, 

It’s been a while since I’ve published my first travel post on New York: What To Do in 18 Hours... I also have short series planned on Bahamas (Liam and I went there for 3 weeks at the beginning of 2018) but for now I wanted to tell you about our more recent trip to Dublin. I say “recent” - it’s already been over 2 weeks since we went! Where does all this time go?!?

Why Dublin? 

I might have mentioned this before but Liam is very well known in the whole rap battle scene and so he was asked to come and film one of the events in Dublin held by a smaller league called Rap is Full. Since the guys offered to pay for his flight and accommodation, it sounded like a cheap trip to come along to, with us just splitting one return flight and essentially paying £50 each. A no brainer. Plus it would be another little cheeky trip to add to our list!

The night before our flight... 

Liam and I were having a night in with some homemade fajitas and an incredible film “I, Tonya” (go watch it, really). Alla came home and asked us about Dublin which made us realise that we still haven’t checked in for our return flight. Ryanair app didn’t seem to work and at first we couldn’t really figure out why it wouldn’t allow us to check in (considering it was 2 days before our departure date)…

 

OR more like 2 days and a MONTH! Haha 😂😂😂

Turns out Liam booked our return flight for March 25th (not February). I immediately cracked up thinking “what a man’s thing to do”, haha. Considering we were approaching the end of the month, both of us were pretty poor at this stage and the only reason I decided to come along in the first place was because we wouldn’t have accumulated any extra costs.... sure. 

Well, that didn’t go by plan, did it? Within an hour we extended our weekend trip by another night which I actually was in favour of. It meant that we would have more time to chill and sightsee (which I'll tell you about in PART 2).

 

Day 1: Saturday, 24th of February 

---

We ordered an Uber for 6.15am so it was way too early. For anything really. Almost anything...

We got a lift from a rap battle fan who literally said to Liam, “just look for the fat ginger c*nt” as we were exiting the airport, lol. After multiple attempts and fails, we finally managed to find our cute little B&B. 

---

Now, a few weeks before committing to this trip - I also saw that Ireland was playing Wales at the Six Nations match (for those who don't know - it's basically an annual rugby championship between 6 countries: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and France). 

And this match was happening in Ireland. On the same day we were there. I bloody love rugby and the Six Nations (my friend Oli got me into it in my first year of Uni and I’ve tried to follow it ever since). Everything about that sport is just f*cking cool. No surprise there is a saying...

“Rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen and football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs”

 

Image source

By the way, that's not to say that I don't like football. I watch football too. I even played it at Uni for two years but that's another story.

---

Back to rugby in Dublin...

...plus knowing that being at a rap battle event for 6+ hours would be WAY too long for me (AND the best battles are always left till the end anyway), I made an executive decision to go and watch the match at 2pm and come to Liam’s event straight after.  

My friend Konsti hooked me up with one his good friends Alex who was living there and so my first few hours in Dublin I spent drinking Guinness with “strangers”. And it was great. Guinness tasted f*cking great, the game was great with Ireland winning 37-27 (and getting a try right at the last minute!) and even my new Irish mates were great! ☘️  

This is us celebrating Ireland's win

---

Rap is Full Battle Rap: Last Words 2

I was two pints down (having skipped lunch) and after a third one I was definitely pissed already. I came to see Liam at the International Bar to watch the last 3 battles which were hilarious. Watch the trailer below:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

By the end of it, a) I was still drunk and b) absolutely starving so Liam and I made our way to the the first restaurant we saw (actually, that’s a lie - I always have starred places on my Google map).

---

We ended up at an Irish restaurant Gallaghers Boxty House (can this be any more Irish?) so we we decided to go all out and order ALL the traditional dishes we could find on the menu: seafood chowder, boxty pancake with beef and a lamb stew. And cocktails (as if we needed more alcohol). Everything tasted great (and no, that's not because we were pissed)!

 

We then decided to go back to the International Bar for a few more amateur rap battles where a drunk Irishman literally passed out on my shoulder! Haha, proof below.

 

And then Liam’s mate Dialect came on stage to perform a few of his bangers which got the crowd moving! He is basically a mini version of Stormzy. If you love a bit of grime music, check him out on Spotify here.

 

I was keen to find a pub with some live music for our next stop but I wanted to get out of the Temple Bar (which is filled with tourists where you can easily end up paying €8 for a pint!). So, I dragged the crew out for some live music and we ended up in a Wowburger instead. Great work, Inga.  

And yes, if you're wondering, "but didn't they have dinner already?" - YES, we did share a second dinner a few hours later. We clearly must have been so hungry that I didn't even get a chance to take a photo of our burger... 🙄

  

And guess what else I spotted? Right opposite of Wowburger, outside a place called Opium I saw a Steemit car! Alla later told me that was @demotruk’s and I then remembered that they were having a Dublin Steemit Meetup that same night! (Un)fortunately by that time I was already way too drunk to make any sense.

Even though everyone left after late night food, I didn’t give up on my mission of finding a pub with some live music so Liam and I ended up scrolling back to the Temple Bar and going into the first pub we heard had a guitar playing.  

 

Once we got our portion of live music (an hour was more than enough), we grabbed a cab back to our B&B. I may have fell asleep in a cab whilst Liam was taking cash out but hey, in my defence we were up since 5.45am 😒 

I even managed to “borrow” a cup of coco pops from the kitchen which I never ended up eating. And yes, that's also because I passed out. Lol

---

OH! And how could I have forgotten about the old man with a guitar outside the International Bar?! Who read us his poetry (which I have to say, I struggled to understand because of the accent) and played us a song or two. Liam also gave it a go, hehe 😍😍😍

To be continued... 

Have you ever been to Dublin or Ireland before? What did you like the most? Leave your comments down below!

Love,

Inga x