Sav: Today was a very busy day!! We woke up and met Kelly again in Dublin for brunch at a cute place down the road from our hostel. After we all 3 bused to the Kilmainham Jail for a tour that was high at the top of our lists!

Meag: It was cool but kind of predictable. I’m not sure what else I was expecting, but I really enjoyed the prison at the Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg so maybe I had high expectations. The tour guide was great and I did really enjoy it. It was interesting to hear about the evolution of the penal system how this played out in the very differently designed areas of the prison, like the small dark cells and the panopticon-style room. The tour also covered the Easter Rising and political prisoners. We went around the museum a bit by ourselves afterwards with Kelly. There was a letter there from 1918 or so written by an 18 year old to his mother just before he was executed, which was very sad.

Sav: I hadn’t been through a jail quite like this, so I think it felt a bit more surreal than I was expecting. Like people were JAILED HERE. IN THIS TINY ROOM FOREVER AND EVER. Anyway that thought was going through my brain the whole time and then after I was just thinking to myself ‘I probably could have had more in-depth thoughts about that whole experience but no CRIMINALS LIVED HERE.’ Yes, yes they did.

After this we went to the Guinness storehouse which was so wonderful!! We were there for 2.5 hours exploring everything from explanations about the ingredients, to advertisements they’ve used over the years, right down to how to make the casks Guinness is stored in. Eventually we learned how to properly taste a Guinness from an instructor and then how to pull our own as well! The whole thing was really fascinating.

M: This was my first Guinness ever! Like Savanna said, we actually had so much fun here. We made our way up to the Gravity Bar at the top of the building with a view of the city to polish off our pints. The view was great! Savanna took many selfies.

We moved on from here to dinner at Darkey Kelly’s, a little pub across the street from Christ Church Cathedral where we had…another pint of Guinness of course! We had a ghost tour booked for later in the evening and I figured the beers would do one of two things for me – either make me giggly and therefore less scared, or make me even more terrified.

S: It was lucky for Meaghan that the ghost tour turned out to be just some slightly creepy but mostly interesting stories about certain places in the area, including how Darkey Kelly herself died inside this gated square we stopped at. Turns out the scariest part of the whole night was when the 3 of us were walking home and we dared Meaghan to go touch the gate. She was so scared and could barely approach the gate and wasn’t going to do it until I said I’d buy her a doughnut. Well now Meaghan is crying and laughing and flapping her hands and taking two steps forward and one back all the way to the gate and I am laughing so hard I’m crying on the street. And she just BARELY taps the gate and then sprints back to road crying the whole way!

M: Ok ok crying is overstating it a little…there was a slight overflow of eye liquid but I had it under control! And it was half laughing. But no joke it was terrifying, and the closer I got the scarier the gate became because you could see the shadows and creepiness. In my defence, Kelly was also very hesitant to touch the gate and we got out of there really quickly once we were done…all the way to the doughnut shop! Savanna has been talking about going back to this doughnut place for a week and a half now. How was it, Savanna?

S: Totally disappointing I was sad. But we will continue the doughnut quest tomorrow! (And forever)

S&M