Yeah, 25 isn’t the biggest milestone.  It’s no 18 or 21.  I don’t get to do anything cool now besides rent a car without an extra fee.  But what 25 is, is a quarter of a century, so that’s kind of a big deal.

It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to spend a birthday in Dublin, Ireland, seeing as my birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day.  I was lucky enough to be able to make that dream come true and ring in my first quarter century the exact way I was born to.

I flew out to Dublin with my friend Abby on the 16th.  After a slight delay, we made it to the other island by 1pm and then took a shuttle to our hotel.  We quickly settled in and walked to Temple Bar to chow down at a restaurant recommended by a friend from class who studied abroad in Dublin - Elephant and Castle.  It was delicious!

Then we spent the evening walking around Dublin a little, taking some pictures of the festivities, and sitting in a bar for a little while.  On our way back to the hotel, we passed by a little carnival and decided to go on a couple of rides.  But we had a pretty early night, since we had to get up early to catch the parade.

The next day, my birthday/St. Pat’s, we headed out by 10ish to find a spot on the parade route.  There were already a ton of people out by the time we got to where we were going to stand, by about 10:30.  We had to stand for about 2 hours before the parade even started, and then the parade lasted for almost 2 hours.  It was very cool though, with some very theatrical elements playing out a classic Irish story (apparently) about chasing away the black dog of depression (??).  In between the theatrical parts there were marching bands, and apparently all the bands were in a competition, though I don’t know who was judging it.  My only disappointment was that there were no Irish dancers in the parade.

We had some unbelievably obnoxious Americans around us, so by the time the parade was over, Abby and I really needed a drink!  We ended up just going into the Hard Rock because we were also starving.  We had a couple of drinks and split some food before heading to a real Irish Pub.

The pub that we went to was packed, but had a really fun atmosphere.  We met some very cool people.  But the day had already flown by, and we needed to get back to the hotel to change for our dinner reservation.

When I booked our table for dinner, it looked like the restaurant was very close to our hotel, but the guys at the hotel seemed to have no idea where it was.  They pointed us down the street, and we decided to try to find it before we changed.  When we couldn’t find it, we popped into a bar to see if the bartenders had any clue where it was.  They told us it was all the way back in Temple Bar, and Abby and I were NOT excited about walking back there in our dresses and heals (about a 20 minute walk).

A couple of Irish guys that were sitting at the bar overheard the conversation and started chatting us up.  Since it was my birthday they bought us some drinks and we talked for a little while.  Then we ended up deciding to just go change into our dresses and come back and hang out with them for awhile.

The guys ended up taking us to a few different bars.  They paid for the taxis and most of the drinks, which was really cool.  We had a lot of fun with them, and they were super nice.  They even got me a little brownie at one of the bars, and had them write Happy Birthday on the plate and put a candle in the brownie.  So much fun.

All in all, a really great night and a really great birthday.  I’m really glad I’m going back to Ireland in May, because we absolutely did not see any sights while we were there!  But it was an unbelievably fun trip (minus that pesky hangover…), and the best birthday I’ve probably had in my life.

And yes, it’s true, I got a tattoo.  It was all very spontaneous, but I was not drunk and I did make sure everything was clean.  I’m still not sure if I want to post pictures of it; for one, right now, it’s not completely healed and the colors aren’t coming through all the way yet.  And two, it’s pretty low on my hip.  But I will tell you that it’s a shamrock.  I decided awhile ago that if I ever got a tattoo it would be a shamrock on my hip.  I thought it would be a really cool way to commemorate my birthday trip to Dublin.  It hurts like hell still, but I’m already thinking about adding things to it when I go back in May (god help me).

Anyway, here are some pictures…  (Most of what I got was of the parade, which ends up being really boring to look at in pictures, so I won’t share any of those.)  Yeah and also, that dress is GREEN.  So don’t even start.  Even the Irish boys were calling it green all night, and I think they know.  It’s all in the lighting.