The T-shirt orders, apartment crawl lineups and early morning breakfast plans with friends and visitors are U of I student’s plans for the first Friday of March every year. Built up with anticipation, Unofficial 2013 has already passed and now Spring Break plans are the primary focus.But what about everyone that is studying abroad? Because traveling to other countries can happen just about any weekend, not just during spring break, obviously heading to Dublin, Ireland for Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day was the best choice.
I kicked off my Unofficial by heading to the Guinness factory with the Illinois students from my program, we even invited the students in our program from different Universities to join in on our Illini tradition. We learned about how Guinness is made, touring through the steps and history of Mr. Arthur Guinness, the owner of the Irish brew.
After the tour, we wandered around Dublin exploring, and headed over for a traditional Irish dinner filled with bangers and mash, fish and chips, Guinness and Bulmers, an Irish cider.
On Friday morning, everyone from my study abroad program headed out to the pubs to meet up with other Illinois students that made their way to Dublin for the weekend. We spent the afternoon catching up on our European adventures, listening to live Irish music and getting into the Irish culture.
Photo credit: Amanda Zubricki, ’14
As unofficial festivities slowly dwindled down in Champaign Friday night, the fun didn’t end there for us in Dublin. Throughout the weekend, students travelled the west coast of Ireland to the Cliffs of Moher, an Irish tourist spot where scenes from the Harry Potter movies were shot. I even made my way on the Wicklow tour, which features the scene spots from the movies Braveheart and P.S. I Love You.
Photo credit: Amanda Zubricki, ’14 (This is the P.S. I Love You Bridge from the movie)
Needless to say, spending Unofficial weekend in Ireland was an experience none of the U of I study abroad students will forget!