Dublin, Ireland

Having recently graduated from university, me and a friend decided to treat ourselves to a long weekend away. After scouring several holiday websites, we decided on Dublin, and last Saturday we jetted off to the land of Guinness and clovers for 4 days of exploring, food, and of course alcohol! Here are some photos:

 

  

As flights to Dublin were cheaper than to the rest of Europe, we thought we'd treat ourselves to a 4* hotel. Sadly Clyde Court did not live up to the hype. The actual building was lovely, but the service and attention to detail was little more than 2 or 3*. One of the girls on reception barely spoke any English and on the whole they seemed unable to handle simple telephone requests. In terms of attention to detail, the remote had it's cover missing, TV channels were blurry, and hotel toiletries were very cheap . Of course, these are all small things, and had we booked into a 2/3* we would have been more than happy, but since it was advertised as a 4* it did not live up to expectations and we were left feeling disappointed.

  

  Hotel aside, we had a great time in Dublin. Everyone was so friendly and the Irish accent is just lovely! We even got lucky with the weather, and although cold, it was beautifully sunny for most of our trip. Highlights for me included stumbling across a pub with live Irish music, dining and partying in a converted Church, randomly meeting and chatting to locals and pulling a perfect pint in the Guinness factory. Both me and my friend had so much fun that we genuinely didn't want to leave (in fact we almost didn't when we arrived at the airport too late to board our scheduled flight!).

 

 

You may have noticed there are no food photos in the post. That's because the food in Ireland was so good that I thought it deserved it's own blog post. We also visited the infamous Guinness factory and I'll be writing a separate blog post about that too.

Have you ever been to Ireland? Where's your favourite holiday destination?