In all seriousness Ireland was pretty great! We came thinking the weather would be rainy, overcast and dark grey. Needless to say we were pretty happy about the beautiful weather, bright sun, blue sky, and green grass. We got into Dublin at around 1pm and took the bus to O'Connell street. See the whole reason for going was because Ireland was playing England in the 6 Nations Rugby match and we were sure to be in the middle of a great atmosphere. We stopped in a little shop and bought some shirts for match, supporting the Irish. These would prove to be very useful when added with an Irish accent.
We checked into the hostel and left to check out the scene. Abigails Hostel is right in the middle of Dublin and was an amazing location for the weekend. We walked around the streets and found the Temple bar district, from the movie far and away. Also home to Gogarty's, a traditional irish bar, where we ended up watching the rugby game. The atmosphere was nothing less then intense. Tons of fans dressed in all kinds of Green and Orange representing Ireland. Countless Leprechaun Costumes, a huge group dressed in pink, and a group of guys with special made shirts just for the occasion, but by far the best dressed guy was the one in the picture below. Rocking out the Green, White and Orange full body suit. The man's got class.
When I first met him, he asked for an autograph. I was in shock because the only place that ever happened was at GT, so I figured he was just a Tech fan or something. He totally thought I was some Richie McCaw or something from a New Zealand rugby team. I of course had no clue what he was talking about, but figuring I'd play with him a bit. After speaking in a heavy Irish accent, or atleast a valiant attempt that got me by most of the night, he let it drop thinking I must get that all the time.... right everyone I meet and know is dying to tell me how much I look like a New Zealand ruby player.Eventhough the match was being played in Dublin, there were a ton of English fans also out and about supporting their team. We saw a bunch of them and throughout the match Matt and I pretended to be hardcore Irishmen. After the 14-13 win, the English guys did something I wasn't expecting. They all came up to us after the game and shook our hands and said things like "Great Match," and "just tell me you'll beat Wales and win the crown" and all other forms of encouragement. I guess I was much more expecting broken glasses and bodies flying more then handshakes and words of congradulations. (One really hilarious part was during the playing of the National Anthems. I looked at Matt and told him, you know we have to stand up and try and sing. Not knowing the Irish song, we mumbled our way through what I thought was the finish of it. Then the started playing another song after I had sat down, and I was totally confused. But we did our best Milly-Vanilly impersonations and managed to go unnoticed.)
That night was just elbow to elbow people drinking and singing great old songs. My absolute favorite from the whole trip was the Delilah song. Click here to listen to it. I had never heard this one before, but quickly picked it up. It was so much fun blasting out songs, especially since they were all in English. They played Johnny Cash, John Denver Country road, and Grease songs....all just heartfelt. We met some Canadian girls Annie and Mallory, who I think at the time where taking pictures with random people?!? Anyways we ended up making friends with them and hung out for the night.
The next day we woke up and headed off to see some of Dublin. Trinity College was literally 2 mins away from our hostel, so we walked their first. It was a beautiful campus and with the nice weather made for a great day. We saw the old buildings and then made our way to see the Book of Kells. One of the oldest surviving books on the Earth. It is dated to the 800's, and is written on vellum, a high quality calf-skin, in Latin. It was really cool just learning the detail and craftsmanship that went into making books in the old days. It was quite an art. The illuminated pages made from different colors depicting images in great detail were actually breathtaking. I mean these scribes spent countless hours using colors from minerals or even special red bugs found in certain foreign countries, to paint the pictures or scribe their text. Ok I'm done with the 
histroy lesson, but if you want to know more just google it. The library hall upstairs was quite amazing however. I mean breathtaking. Row by row of ancient books. A picture says a thousand words.When then made our way into Kilmainham, an older part of the town. Our taxi driver was quite the proud authentic Irishman, as well as an opinionated history professor. He told us all about different buildings, and politics and about Croke Park stadium...where the rugby match was played...all while driving on the left side of the car. Something that really freaked me out. I mean we almost got killed just trying to cross the street. Forget that inate instinct to look left first. I felt the gust of wind from the passing bus on one of my mistakenly timed jaywalk. If I stuck my tongue out, I would have licked it's windows. At Kilmainham we wanted to visit the old prison which was made into a museum. However, the only real down to the trip, they would not let you walk in and see the prision without being on a guided 1 hour tour.
Ok, ok. I'm all for learning about a country, or even financially speaking helping to stimulate the economy, but seriously all I wanted to do was see the prison. I'd pay my 8 Euros to go at my own pace. If that wasn't enough, the next available tour time wasn't for a good 2 and a half hours. We decided to just have a look through the free museum. It was quite informative and showcased numerous articles from the prison and even through the Irish Revolution. You had one of the original sub-machine guns, to a box of un opened chocolate from 1917 stating "...if I get a pass from prision we'll share the box of chocolates together. If not, you can eat them on your own." Also there were countless love notes and last words written. One very touching one to Mama, and one declaring he was an imbecile for not marrying a girl and that he would not have another. There was also Michael Collins memorabilia (Julia Roberts film), to some items from 17 year old kids who were hanged for having illegal weapons. Wow. Real eye-opener.
One point during our diving into Irish history, I figured out how the tour system operated. People gathered by a glass door and the man took the tickets and another tour guide walked them through. Instead of letting the massive amounts of tourists stop us from seeing the jail cells, we quickly went into Mission Impossible mode and stealthily crept into the line with the tourists after the ticket taker left. As we stood there for a breif 5 minutes on top of the world, my heart was pounding and I thought nothing would go wrong. Until I heard the click-clock of shoes stepping on the hard wood floor. "Excuse me sir, may I see your tickets?" ...
CRAP! "Um....a... I dont have them, Matt do you have them?" .... "Uh no....a... I thought you had them" followed by a prompt and proud "Well I must ask you to leave, you can NOT go on the tour without a ticket!" SOOOooooooooooooooo close. It literally would have made the trip. Oh well.
After that we headed back to the Guinness factory. One of the real reasons we didn't want to wait around to see the prison. The Factory's tour entrances close at 5pm. And we wanted to be there around 3:30pm to have enough time to see it all. I mean since Guinness pretty much runs the country! As we walked back we went through the National Museum of Modern Art, were I became scalded for life. One exhibit had just a saddle. I thought, ok old country saddle....interesting, but how is this art?
Upon further investigation it was discovered that on the saddle, the seat had been comprimised. The leather had been replaced for real cow skin. The only problem was that they used the skin for the cows bladder. So you had 4 udders popping up from the seat. All I could think of was Brokeback Mountain and couldn't compose myself to the artistic standard of silence. I mean it was strange, bizare, gross, and I just couldn't get that image out of my head. I proceeded promptly to the nearest exit.
At the Guinness factory we went through most of the tour learning about the beer making process, understanding ingredients, and becoming professional taste testers. We then met up with Annie and Mal and went to the top of the 6 story factory tour. Once at the top, you could see all of Dublin and taste the freshest Guinness in the world. The bar tender would draw designs in the foam. Matt got a superman symbol and I got the clover. We sat with the 360 degree panoramic view and just enjoyed the sunset. It was like we saw all of Dublins weather patterns, from brief ran, to sun to rainbows, to darkness, and the fog that sat in over some of the buildings towards sunset. It was really relaxing.
Afterwards we grabbed a quick bite and headed to the hostel just to hang out. It was fun making new friends and watching weird TV shows about cars and the Irish version of America's got Talent mixed with Gun's n Roses songs coming from someones computer. It was fun. We went out again and I introduced ourselves to Old Grand Dad Whiskey. Bah. It was so old the bartender had no problem handing us the bottle for a little photo op. Really I think he didn't care if we kept the bottle or not. I'm sure it was a strange request, and rightly so. When compared to Irish Whiskey... Old Grand Dad just comes up a little short.
All and All I had a great weekend. Learning the Irish culture, enjoying Irish drinking songs, I even had good Fish n Chips, Making new friends which hopefully ends up in seeing Scotland, Great weather, pretending to be Irish, sleeping in a hostel for the first time, I'd say all in all it was a great success! Oh well back to normal life in France :P!!!!!!!!!!!
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