DAY 52, MONDAY, MARCH 4TH
It is officially Long Study Tour week- the week where we travel to a different part of Europe for a whole week with our core course!! My cyberpsychology class is traveling to Dublin, Ireland Monday through Saturday! I woke up at 6 today to get to the airport to meet my class to fly to Dublin! Everything went as planned and we arrived in Dublin safely! Once we landed we went straight to our hotel which is really nice! After an hour of down time we met up and went on a historical walking tour of the city. We visited several monuments and buildings over the city that had some part in Irish history.
We talked mainly about the Irish revolution and how Ireland earned its independence and some history of Ireland vs Northern Ireland. I knew nothing about Ireland previously so it was really interesting to learn all about it- especially because it’s becoming extremely relevant with 'Brexit' as Ireland is an independent country and a member of the EU but Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. We ended our tour at the Trinity College and we did a visit to the Book of Kells and the long room of the Trinity College Library with the class. The Book of Kells was completed in 800 AD and is Ireland’s most lavish and glorious manuscript. The vellum (calfskin) manuscript contains transcriptions of the four Gospels, lavishly illustrated and ornamented. It is the most elaborate manuscript of its kind to survive from the early Middle Ages.
After finishing up with that we headed to dinner as a group to Gallagher’s Boxty House. We had some traditional Irish Boxty which was good but not my fav. After dinner we had time to ourselves just to hang out! It was a great first day!
DAY 53, TUESDAY, MARCH 5TH
Today we had to get up and eat breakfast and then meet the class in the lobby at 8:45. We then all got on the train and headed out towards the Dublin Bay for our academic visits of the day. Today we had two academic lectures that were both held at the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire. Our first lecture was by a man named Jason O’ Callaghan who does work in hypnotherapy as well as entertainment hypnosis. He discussed about how social media and internet addiction and being online can be compared to a sort of hypnosis. He also did more of an entertainment presentation as he performed hypnosis on some of my classmates. After his lecture we had a buffet lunch at the hotel which was pretty good! Then we had about 45 minutes to walk around outside down by the water before we had to be back for our second academic lecture in the same room.
This lecture was from a women doing her PHD in Cyberpsychology and she discussed social media, persuasion, and social influencers. The lecture was really interesting and super relevant to the media culture today. After her lecture we had the rest of the day as free time. Me and a couple others walked around Dun Laoghaire and down along the coast for a couple hours, and of course this couldn’t be complete without stopping for some ice cream (at a place which seemed to be the popular local joint!). There were some great views and we even saw a seal!!
Then we headed back to the train station to take the train back into Dublin. We relaxed for about an hour before heading out for dinner. We decided to take some recommendations online and go get fish and chips at Leo Burdocks. We walked over the famous Ha’Penney bridge (a famous pedestrian bridge over the Liffey river) on the way.
The restaurant is a pretty famous place where tons of celebrities have gone to. We didn’t realize it was take out so we had quite a time walking through the pouring rain, carrying our fish and chips, trying to find the bus to get back to the hotel. We ate our fish and chips at the hotel and despite some minor sogginess they were delicious and worth it!!
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