After a very close call with getting my new passport, I made it to Dublin last week for a girls’ trip with my fun friends J. and B.

The trip went something like this: B. and I flew from Minneapolis and met up with J. at JFK – with a tight connection for us and and a nail biter for J. – and then took a red eye to Dublin.

With the time change (only six hours), we arrived in late morning.

B’s Irish friend generously picked us up at the airport and took us to pick up our race packets, which was an amazing help – especially since the race expo was located far away from where we were staying.

It was still too early to get into the Airbnb apartment we’d rented (this one; it was my first experience with Airbnb and it was great!), so we headed to brunch here.

A word about the food we ate: it was across-the-board ah-ma-zing.

I’m not sure what I expected for Irish cuisine, but part of it was an outdated vision of baked beans/sausages/fried tomatoes for breakfast and some potato-centric pub food for dinner.

Shame on me. I got it totally wrong.

These huevos rancheros were pretty insane.

After brunch, we met up with our Airbnb host, Wayne, and he acclimated us to our three bedroom apartment located around the corner from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

While the building was old – and charmingly so – the apartment was completely modern. It was a three bedroom, two bath place that we had all to ourselves.

The location was also unbeatable, since we could walk almost anywhere within the City Center within 10-20 minutes.

We were tired the first afternoon but decided to rally.

After showers and caffeine, we went around the corner to tour the Teeling Distillery, which makes small-batch whiskey.

Full disclosure: I am not into whiskey and these samples went nearly untouched. Sacrilege, I know. 

I loved the Banksy-esque street art we saw in our neighborhood, too:

That night we ate at a restaurant recommended by our Airbnb host called Darwins.

It had a funny nautical vibe and I loved the bread and butter they brought:

We turned in early that night because we knew the race would come early the next day.

I’ll post about the race and the rest of the trip tomorrow.