Can you tell me how to get to Cork....Ireland?

I'm finally back! This weekend was probably my favorite yet and it was not in Spain. I absolutely LOVED Ireland and had I been able to get some sort of credit toward my major, I would have studied abroad there in a heartbeat. Irish accents, meat and potatoes (Iowa food), live music in pubs :)

On Friday morning, we got on a train from Caceres at 5am. We got to Madrid at 9am and quickly took taxis to the airport. We didn't quite plan to be at the airport the full two hours ahead of our flight, but luckily the airport runs on Spanish time (our flight left 30 min late), so everything worked out. We arrived in Dublin, Ireland at 1:30pm. It was one hour behind Spain time. First, we took a shuttle to the city center and found a pub called The Brazen Head which is said to be Ireland's oldest pub, started in the 1300s. We had our first Irish beer called Smithwicks and had lunch. It was nice to have potatoes, called chips in Ireland. We met up with Cory's friends Nate, Fitz, Kenney, Tom, and Allen. They are all from ISU and are studying abroad in Cork, Ireland. After lunch, we walked with them to the Guinness Storehouse to get a tour, but when we got there we realized we would not have enough time to see it and get to the bus station in order to get on a bus to Cork. So, Cory asked the lady at the Guinness Storehouse if she could tell him how to get to Cork, Ireland and she made fun of him asking if he wanted to know how to get to Cork, England instead. That was one of our jokes the whole weekend. We took the Luas cable-car train to the bus station and got on the 6pm bus to Cork (Ireland). We met up with 5 other students from ISU who were on our same bus and are in the Cork program as well.

We arrived in Cork at 10:30pm and Ben (another ISU student we know) walked us to one of Cory's friend's apartments while we waited for them to return from Dublin (they took cheap flights). When they got there, they took us to The Bailey which is an Irish pub where we spent the whole night until it closed at 2am. It was Cory's birthday, so we had to celebrate. We finally got to bed around 4:30am. And to bed, I mean sleeping on couch cushions on the floor of Cory's friend's room. It was a little cold but actually not too bad.

On Saturday, we woke up at 12:30pm. We hung out and then decided to go see the city of Cork. Cory's friends gave us a tour. It was raining the whole day which was kinda disappointing, but typical Ireland weather. We went to the English market, which is like a farmer's market then to see the University College Cork's campus. They have a really cool building that looks like Hogwarts from Harry Potter. You should check out my pictures on Facebook. After that, they took us back the The Bailey to watch the Ireland v. England rugby game. The Irish people kept saying Come On, Ireland! (in their Irish accents of course :)) And when the captain of the team scored, they gave everyone in the pub a free drink and appetizers. Ireland won the match like 24-8 I think.

After the game, we went to the grocery store and bought frozen pizzas to make for supper. The pizza was like normal US pizza which was good since all we have here in Spain is extremely thin-crusted and nasty. After supper, we went out looking for live Irish music. We went to a couple pubs but couldn't find exactly what we were looking for so we ended up going to a cool pub called An Brog. It was my second favorite pub of the trip! They played only American music, and I tried Bulmer's Irish Cider for the first time. It is like apple cider mixed with alcohol. So good!! The last song they played was Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons and afterwards, everyone was chanting "one more tune, one more tune". Notice they call it tune instead of song. After An Brog closed, we went back and went to sleep.

I'll write more tomorrow about Sunday and Monday but for now, I need to do my homework and go to bed! Buenas Noches!