It is already day two of our trip in Dublin and I feel like we have done so much already. When going to multiple site visits, we do a lot of walking and traveling on the bus transportation so we have seen a good amount of the Dublin area already. After the past few days, I feel that Dublin has given me a good first impression.
I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but the city is more quiet and quaint than I thought it was going to be, which I like. It has smaller surrounding buildings compared to the city of Pittsburgh and not as much hustle and bustle going on throughout the sidewalks. Although, I would say the driving here is more aggressive. I do not think that I would be able to drive here because first of all, the lanes are the opposite of what they are in the United States and second of all, the cars and busses seemed to be going in all different directions, all while very close. All I know is that it would definitely take some getting used to. Those are the things I noticed were different from Pittsburgh, but something here that reminds me of home is the way companies run businesses here. After our site visit with FoodCloud, I realized it is very similar to the organization 412 Rescue back in Pittsburgh. FoodCloud is just like any other organization in the United States with its suppliers, retailers, and the desire to expand on that.
There are also some differences I have noticed between the place we are staying at now in Dublin compared to the Hyatt Place we stayed at during our time in Charlotte, North Carolina. The place we are staying at is called StayCity and it’s apartment complexes shared by four people, with two to a room. A big difference from staying here compared to the United States are the outlets. Luckily, we knew about this ahead of time so we all had the chance to buy outlet converters/adaptors for this trip. But as a whole, I noticed the apartment complex is a lot more simple than the rooms at Hyatt Place or most American hotels in general. Here, I feel like we were given the basic necessities and nothing extra, compared to our stay at the Hyatt where we were given a lot more extra unnecessary things in the rooms.Going off of that, I feel that the simpleness says more about Irish culture as a whole. I look forwarding to looking for other differences and more as the rest of our trip continues.