Sean Musial, Editor 

This past July, I took a trip to Ireland with my mom and pop. It was an eye-opening experience that showed me a place outside my little bubble in northeast Philly. Since it was my first time leaving the country, with the exception of Niagara Falls once as a kid, I was going in blind. But thank God I took my pop’s offer back in March to go. 

We left for the airport on July 13. When we landed in Dublin, my pop left with my cousins, of whom came back over with us from Ireland so he could visit his hometown in Donegal. My mom and I booked two nights at a nice hotel that was only a few blocks from the famous Grafton Street. During the first day alone, we covered most of the area and had a couple of Guinness’s to fuel the journey. We took the tour bus, checked out the variety of different pubs they had to offer, saw Trinity College, walked by Temple Bar and finished the day off by accidentally walking down one of the worst parts of Dublin after making a wrong turn to get home. 

The second day was much more jam-packed. We started it off by having breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant which was filled with all types of delicious foods ranging from eggs and Irish sausage to fruit salad and pastries. Our first official stop of the day was the Guinness Brewery Storehouse where the famous stout was founded and is continuously crafted to this day. We walked through the old-time looking warehouse doors and signed in to get the instructions so we were able to wander. Throughout the entire tour, we learned the history of the brewing company in great detail while they handed us three different pints each. The one stop even put a picture of me on top of the pint, which they labeled a “stoutie.” After having lunch with a distant cousin who apparently let my mom stay with them for a couple of days back when she was a kid, the Jameson Distillery was our next stop. We decided to go to bed earlier that night because of the long journey we had to make across the country the next morning. 

At 7 a.m., we hopped on the bus to take us all the way to Donegal. It felt like we stepped into the scene from Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban where the bus was flying down the road uncontrollably. The same feeling occurred with our bus driver, except our trip was a 4-hour journey across the winding, open roads of Ireland with occasional stops through certain towns sprinkled on top. We get to our destination around 11 o’clock. My mother’s cousin and her daughter picked us up outside the Abbey Hotel in downtown Donegal. The rest of the day was a history lesson by my grandfather as we drove through his hometown, looking at the now torn-down house where he and his siblings grew up, which only had a broken-down barn left to mark the spot. He showed us where he went to school, different hot spots like a waterfall, and the day came to an end when I climbed one of the highest cliffs in all of Europe, Sliabh Liag. I was staying at my distant relative’s house while there. The view from my room was mesmerizing as I looked out the window, seeing the mountains, lakes, houses and whatever else the beautiful country had to offer. 

The next couple of days consisted of adventures with my 84-year-old grandfather and my cousin, who is just a year younger than me. Each night, I went to just about every pub in Donegal. There are many in the downtown area, and one was even in between a cliff. Another was on top of a mountain that used to be a post office, market and pub all in one. While with my grandfather, he started off drinking strictly Guinness, as he convinced me it was the best the world had to offer, but then he shifted to drinking small cups of brandy since the Guinness was making him use the bathroom quite often. 

My cousin was an interesting guy. He showed me the open ranges that were much more hidden while driving around in his quad. He drove me to the places where he would go with his friends to help the town gather turf, check out the ranges where massive windmills were, and drove up the mountains that I could see from my window to get a glimpse of the hidden waterfall that he explained to me him and his friends went swimming in once. When we had to drive his car that was barely an inch off the ground, we would compare notes on the different cultures we had, running errands he needed to do for his job, or something simple like going to the movies with his friend who was a few towns over. He showed me the nightlife there as we hopped from pub to pub, meeting his friends, watching live bands and coming across an Irish dance show while accompanied by the rest of my family that lived there. 

A major thing I wanted to do while there was check out the Game of Thrones studio tour in northern Ireland. I have seen the show three times now and apparently, over 30% of it was filmed there. The tour clearly explained the different scenes that were filmed. It had props, outfits, sets, designs, outlines and mannequins that were reenacting different scenes from the iconic show. The Lannisters, the Starks, the Barathians– all of the families could be seen throughout the entire exhibit. Huge dragon skulls, the painted floor of Westeros, weaponry and the very iron throne that was a centerpiece for the show could be found inside. 

The day after we went to Derry, a historical place that had mural after mural for the hunger strikes, “Bloody Sunday” and an homage to the show Derry Girls on Netflix. While stopped in front of a building that has a painting of a man standing in front of a tank, we got stopped and talked to the very man the picture was based on. He went on about how he was shot by the tanks moments after the original picture had been taken, how he had gotten cancer due to being exposed to something similar to “Agent Orange” while fighting in the troubles, and had given us a signed photograph of this picture he was continuously talking about. 

Ireland is a vibrant place of immense cultural differences when compared to the United States. Simple things like driving on the other side of the road, certain pronunciations of words, quadding to get around places, and a good bit of cursing in their everyday vocabulary made my Irish experience unique. The experiences I had there were very eye-opening and a whole lot of fun. After a long freshman year of living at home and commuting to school, this was a great way to break the routine of living in my own little bubble in northeast Philly.