Dublin!

Well, i was gonna take a break from writing about my travels since its been taking me over two months to finish it but i suddenly got an urge to write about ireland so, well here it goes. DUBLIN!
After spending a night in an airport and what felt like a 10 minute flight since i slept through all of it i arrived at the dublin airport and made my way to the hostel we had booked for the night alone since Gus wasnt going to get in for about 5 hours. Once i reached my hostel, which was no easy feat let me tell you, i asked the nice lady at the front desk to recommend a place to eat and she pointed me in the direction of a restaurant. Unfortunately i was still pretty out of it when i got to the restaurant and the hostess' accent was so thick i couldnt really understand her and after an embarrassing miscommunication or two she cocked her head to the side and said "are you alright dear?" At that point i just gave up trying to understand what was happening and took a seat at bar and got myself some food and a guinness.
Now, i liked dublin, but let me just say this, dublin is a real child of the industrial revolution but its like that child who came back home after college and now lives with you and who every few weeks you have to bail out of jail after they've been found passed out on the street in a the pile of someone else's vomit. The river that runs through dublin is also one of the most unimpressive rivers you'll ever see (much like most of dublin's notable landmarks like the o'connell bridge or dublin castle). in particular, at low tide, the Liffey river reminds you of what your stomach must look like the morning after bar hopping which seems oddly fitting, black and full of bikes, road cones and other garbage which you have no idea how it got there. Now that i think about it i really wish i had taken a picture of it in all its lackluster glory.
After a hectic first night and homeless second day me and Gus finally found a free room, unfortunately it was an hour bus ride out of the city in a suburb-ish type town and it was in a real (and expensive) hotel...we were disappointed until we got there and realized that a nice night in a hotel was probably exactly what we needed to finally relax. After settling in and taking some showers finally we went to the town center and watched the world cup rugby match in a bar. This was pretty fun, plus since we hadn't eaten in a while we were feeling pretty good after three beers. This bar was also where i heard the first of three crazy things on our trip in Ireland. I asked the bar tender what a good dark irish beer was besides guinness that i could get. He thought for a sec and then in all seriousness said "well we have heineken." So from then on the running joke was that in Ireland hieneken should take a line from the pork industry and advertise themselves as "the other dark beer".
The next day Ian finally arrived me and that night we went out in dublin with a little bit more vigor (it was sunday but luckily for us a sunday in dublin sees more action than copenhagen on a friday). To start off the night and save some money we picked up some beers from a convenience store. That's where Gus picked up this hilarious beer can which we didn't notice until we had drank a few beers at which point we thought the saying on it was the funniest thing ever and if you could have tasted it you'd understand how appropriate it really was. There wasn't too much to tell about the rest of the night, we found some finnish beer though that was around 12 or 14% alcohol which we figured we had to get, and thats when we learned why no one in their right mind makes beer with that much alcohol in it. It tasted like a shot of vodka mixed with beer...so basically like sin packaged in a fancy bottle.



After we woke up the next morning we made it out to Europes 4th largest stadium where the gaelic games are held. Gus made this choice and i'm not gonna lie i was skeptical at first but happy that he did. On our way there we found this lovely picture spray painted on the side of a building, just in case anyone was worried the IRA is still kickin' in the slums of dublin. This is also where i heard the second crazy thing in Dublin. As we were walking to the stadium down some random and slightly worrying backstreet a kid, no more than 7 years old, rode up to us on a bike and yelled what sounded like "EY, wunnaboyahboyk", after asking him what he said he shouted the same intelligible phrase back at us so we just walked away. It took us a good half an hour to finally figure out what we think he had said which was "hey, want to buy a bike?" so evidently he was trying to sell all three of us the one childrens bike he was riding. This made us really wonder how hard up this kid was for some cash and we figured that in that neighborhood there was a good chance he would have used the money for either booze or to feed his three kids.
The next day we made our way to the guinness factory. Since we got there at 10am and thought the bar where you can get a free guinness didn't open until noon we took our dear sweet time going through the 6 floors of exhibits on the self guided tour. Me and Ian even ate some raw hops on one of the floors although we weren't sure if you were supposed to. It turned out we were wrong about the bar too and it had been open the whole time, but we weren't too upset because if we hadn't taken our time we wouldn't have found this hilariously racist old guinness ad. (josh, i bet you'll laugh the hardest at this)

This is a photo of the guinness bar which is on the seventh floor of the building and gives a nice view of the whole city. Despite it not being the most picturesque city it was still a great view so we had a good time hanging out and getting our buzz on. Yeah, i know it was only one beer but they were pretty big and yet again we hadn't eaten in at least 12 hours.







(thats me in the lead!)












Finally, we took what turned out to be a 45 minute walk through a park to get to the old Magazine Fort. When we got there Gus was a little bit angry that i had dragged him all the way out there but me and Ian thought it was a pretty fitting site since we had yet to be impressed by any of dublin's touristy landmarks. Around this area is where i really had to go to the bathroom and almost walked into a small tunnel before some bottles clanked and warned me that a renegade homeless man was in there. I figured if this guy was willing to walk nearly an hour just to get some peace and quiet i probably didn't want to be the one to disturb him especially by exposing myself to him.
So that was about the extent of our stay in dublin. We had one more night, and went out a little bit and then caught a midday train up to Belfast. Oh right and the final running joke we had while we were in dublin happened...mm i dont remember which night, but we were eating at a restaurant and Ian ordered a hamburger and foolishly (but very politely) asked the waitress "could i just get some fries instead of chips if you have them?" And because me and Gus and the waitress are less polite we all laughed at him for a while before telling him that they were the same thing. Then Ian put the icing on the cake and said in his texan accent "thank god i didn't ask for freedom fries at least." (but don't worry he doesnt actually call them that) So from then on we got a kick out of referring to 'chips' as 'freedom fries' instead.