dublin, ireland

Our trip to Dublin was relatively painless (as painless as RyanAir can get). We got to our hostel quickly and dropped of our stuff in our room before heading our. Were we going to have this 10 bed room to ourselves?

Haha, yeah right. After plenty of wandering around and some food at a pub, we got back to a room full of American girls studying abroad. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Two shockingly handsome guys in a room with 8 American girls visiting Ireland. Sounds great!" You haven't stayed in a 12' x 20' room with 8 American college girls. You probably haven't even been in a room with said demographics. Drowning them out with my iPod, I got to sleep without too much trouble. The morning adventure to the shower was, well, interesting. Picture a truck stop restroom, converted to a shower room and painted lime green. I might have thought that they were trying to conserve water by lowering the pressure in the shower. That is, if the fixtures hadn't been duct-taped to the wall. (I'll post a full review of this hostel sometime this weekend)

The next day was spent on a hop-on hop-off bus tour. This got us around the whole city and we felt as if we had seen everything. Among the most popular stops were the Guiness Brewery and the Jameson Distillery. We arrived at the Guiness Brewery at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon. Bad idea. Luckily, I've got a policy. It's pretty simple, really. If the exit isn't guarded, why the heck not? So, we casually strolled past the 200 yard line (no exaggeration) and hopped into the exit while the security guard was busy letting a delivery truck out of the gate. After 3 flights of stairs against a steady flow of angry tourists, we made it. The best part? My in-the-exit policy sometimes requires that you take the tour (or whatever it may be) backwards. Not only did this pop us out after the 200 yard line, but it delivered us to a point immediately after the ticket counter. No line, no admission fee.

The next popular stop was the Jameson Irish Whisky Distillery. This wasn't quite as busy and that meant we needed to pay. Oh well. It was a really nice place with a really nice guided tour. Outside was one of the original distillation 'pots'.

One of our last stops was the famous Temple Bar. This is situated in the center of the Temple Bar Area of Dublin, a very culturally diverse area full of restaurants and arts for everyone.

I'll admit, I'm not usually the first to 'donate' to a street musician; not only could this guy play the accordion, but I had to have a picture of him.

I suppose this last one could be anywhere but I needed to share it. On our last day in Dublin, we spent the day just wandering the streets looking for cool things to take pictures of. We ended up wandering into the 'projects' of Dublin. Anyway, I saw this and before I knew it I had already taken the picture. I wish I hadn't put my camera away so quick, as we spent the following 2 minutes running from the dog and the 5 minutes after that walking nearly as fast to get out of the neighborhood. This 'little guy' meant business and well, teeth are teeth.

We took the last bus to the airport at 11:00pm on Sunday night and caught our flight at 6:05am Monday. I'll save that story for another day.