Week 6 - DUBLIN!

From now on I'm going to just write about the days that I actually remember something interesting happening, as during the week I'm pretty much just doing homework and such.

Monday(02/09/2009):

 I've started to get rather annoyed with the Irish educational system.  I think it's rather subpar.  I mean, it's great if you never need to see examples or anything, but otherwise it seems to lack any real form of instruction.  Lecture is generally just having the lecturer literally read the chapter and examples in the book to you.  Also tutorials seem to be a waste of time.  I don't have tutorials for my physics classes, which I would actually like so I could see more examples worked out, and my math tutorial is especially annoying as the professor there refuses to actually work any problems out as he claims we won't learn then.  

Friday(02/13/2009)

On Friday after I got out of PY2103 at 2:00 PM and had packed Shawn and I made the incredibly short walk to the Cork bus station to take the 4:00 bus to Dublin.  One really nice thing about Bus Éireann is that when you buy a return ticket, it's good for a week after the day you depart, so you can come back whenever you want to.  Which is pretty neat.  We got into Dublin around 8:30 Friday night and luckily the hostel we were staying at, Isaac's Hostel, was literally just around the corner from the bus station.  We checked into our hostel, got our room and our beds and then settled in and went to get some dinner out on the town.  The hostel was really nice though.  The beds were nice, and long enough for me, with pillows, blankets, and a comforter.  We were in a room with 8 beds, but Shawn and I were the only ones in our room for Friday night.  We ended up going to some Italian place, La Pizza, for dinner and getting lasagna.  It was around €11, but that was pretty much the cheapest place we could find, besides Burger King and McDonalds.  It was pretty good though.  After dinner we went to the pub district, which is called Temple Bar district.  We went into The Temple Bar, and got a a pint.  I took a picture of the back of bar behind the actual bar, which caused the man next to me to muse aloud "Why does everyone do that?" .  I responded that people back home wanted to see where we went, and this started an hour and a half conversation with this guy.  We never actually did get his name though.  It turns out that he was a 40 something engineer who was in charge of the eastern area electrical grid, and he loves whiskey, so every night of the year he comes to The Temple Bar and has two shots of whiskey (which are small drinking glass sized, not shot glass size).  He always comes to Temple Bar as he loves the atmosphere so much more, even though he says that the whiskey he likes is much more expensive at Temple Bar then any other pub in Dublin.  He also told us that he comes from a very musically gifted family, and he is basically the only one that doesn't play an instrument in some form of professional way, and that his aunt, who is a nun and Mother Superior of some convent in the North, taught Enya how to sing and is good friends with her.  Apparently, a limo will come to the convent every once in while with a dinner invitation from Enya, and it then whisks this Mother Superior off to go party with Enya for the night at all the really expensive places in Ireland, which I personally find really funny and cool.  

We then went on to go look for The Porter House, which Giovanni recommended to us before we left.  We found the place, and it turned out to be as awesome as he had claimed.  The Porter House has three floors to it, and you can order drinks from two of the levels.  There are half levels along the way up, where there are tables and places to stand and such.  Porter House is also a brewery, so they have their own slew of beers that they serve and the ones that I had are pretty good.  The atmosphere in there is great, the decor is pretty interesting, and the attitude of the establishment is enjoyable as well.  For example, on the bottom of the receipt that they give you with your drinks it says, "Latest surveys shows staying at home causes death.  Come in, drink, and live longer!" They have live music 7 nights a week, starting at midnight, and it's great.  They have a tiny stage on the half level between floors 2 and 3 and you can hear and see it from most of the pub.  On Friday night they had this one guy who was playing acoustic guitar by himself, but he was incredible.  He was pretty much a one man band, and played a whole slew of stuff.  The Beatles, Radiohead, Led Zepplin, Lynard Skynard, pretty much anything and everything.  

 After that we went back to the hostel, found that no one else was in our room, and went to bed.

Saturday(02/14/2009):

We woke up around 8:00 and went down to get the complimentary "light breakfast", which was really just toast, but we took it and went.  We started walking to the Guinness brewery and made it there just when they opened at 9:30.  

The self guided tour was pretty impressive, just on a matter of scale of how big everything is.  The size of the machinery used, and how big some of the old casks were (like 729,000 pints big) was staggering.  They also had some barley out for tasting.  I had never had raw, fresh barley before, but it tastes just like coffee.  We finally made our way though the self guided tour of the brewing process, where you are guided by automated screens, and then spent a very little amount of time browsing through the museum section of adverting and shipping (which made me realize that 19th and early 20th century barrel makers had a tough job) as we really just wanted to get to the top of the building an have our pints at The Gravity Bar.  When we finally did get up there we found that we were the very first people of the day to make it to the top (score!) so we took our time to admire the view, which was phenomenal, read the James Joyce quotes on the windows and then finally turned in our tickets to get our pints.  Once we let them settle, and toasted to our girlfriends (it was Valentine's Day after all) we went ahead and enjoyed our pints, and that pint of Guinness that I had, has got to be the absolute best pint of beer I have ever had in my life, and maybe ever will.  It was incredibly fresh, and had a flavor, freshness and taste that far surpassed anything other pint.  When you combined that with the view of Dublin sprawling out before us towards the Wicklow Mountains, both Shawn and I agreed that it was the happiest moment since we had arrived in Ireland.  After savoring our pints, we promptly stole our glasses (they were nice pint glasses, and I had been told by the Newman guys that it was my duty to do so), and made our way out of the Brewery on an incredible high and smiling ear to ear.

Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral which had a very nice grounds.  We didn't actually go in to the Cathedral as you have to pay, but the grounds were pretty big and they had an nice fountain.  We made our way back to City Center, grabbed some Subway for lunch, and then headed out to St. Stephen's Green.  Along the way we passed Trinity College Dublin, so we stopped by and showed ourselves around.  The actual college campus, as far as building and such, was rather small (to my standards).  It was all centered around one main quad, that had a bunch of really old looking trees with some funky bases and roots.  To prove my point about Trinity being small (the building part of UCC is bigger by far) the rugby and soccer fields took up more space with their surrounding greens then the actual college seemed to.  However, they did have this pretty crazy "sphere" sculpture outside of their library which I was a big fan of.

After we left the college we continued on and finally reached St. Stephen's Green.  It was beautiful.  It was basically a 22 acre park, laid out in 1880, with a lake inside of it with Swans swimming around in it.  All throughout the park there were statues, monuments, and memorials to people who had died in war, the fight for Irish independence and between fighting between Catholic and Protestant militia.  There was yet another bust of James Joyce in the park.  The Irish really seem to be proud of him and his writing(Shawn's a big fan of him too).  The park also had its fair share of pigeons in it that reminded me a lot of the U of I squirrels; fat, hungry, and not willing to pay any attention to you unless you have food or are about to step on them.

As I had never seen the ocean before we decided that after exiting the park we would walk back down to the river near City Center and then walk East along the river until we made it to the harbor and out to this one lighthouse on a peer that stretched into the ocean, and appeared to be the part of Dublin that extended farthest out.  Along the way to the river though we ran into several street musicians.  One group was composed of three older people, who were playing traditional Irish reels on a fiddle, hand accordion, and harp.  About 100 feet down from the street from them there was a guy in his 20's playing a didgeridoo.  Again, Dublin is crazy.  We made it to the river and started walking.  Turns out the walk to the ocean is a lot longer then it looks on Google Earth.  We finally made it to the harbor and the docks (which is still way inland from the ocean) where we saw a three masted sailing ship (think Master and Commander) and this one crazy modern boat that was sitting totally up out of the water, so that just two long, massive pontoons were actually submerged.  Along the way we passed "The O2" arena, which is not where I thought it would be.  It looks like by the time that I get into Dublin from Cork after my final on the 5th, and catch a bus all the way out to the docks to actually get to The O2 that I'll be cutting it close to seeing Bob Dylan.  I'll probably miss the opening act (hopefully he'll have one), but that's ok.  I just want to see Dylan.  We finally got outside of the city area and past the docks, but the only road that led went through a maze of electrical and power company buildings and compounds.  After a lot of dead ends, and possibly walking through areas that were most likely company private property, we finally saw some dunes, and after making our way through some brush and mud we climbed over the top and were rewarded with a view of the ocean!  We climbed down to the rocky beach and skipped some stones, and I finally got to put my hand in the ocean, so that's another thing off my list of things to do.

We then found a sign that had a position marker on it and a marker for Poolbeg Lighthouse, so we walked about another mile or so to the peer of the lighthouse, and then walked out onto the peer, which in all seriousness was probably another mile unto itself, out to the lighthouse (Go ahead and Google Earth "Dublin, Ireland" and then find the main river and follow it all the way out to the ocean, and you should see a peer that goes out there.  Where that peer ends, is the lighthouse).  By the time we got out there, we were pretty tired.  We had easily walked close to 10 miles to get to the lighthouse and we had been walking around the city all day too, so after taking a few pictures we just sat at the end of the peer with our legs dangling over looking out to sea.  After a good rest, we got up, much to the resistance of our legs, and began to walk back to Dublin.  We made it off the peer and started back on the road, but at this point we were tired enough that we did not want to walk all the way back to City Center, so I started sticking out my thumb every time we heard a car coming.  After about 2 miles and about 20 cars, a car finally did stop (I was beginning to wonder if the Irish knew that a thumb meant "I want a ride"), and a guy said he could give us a lift to a bus stop where we could catch a bus back to the City Center for about a €1, which sounded awesome to us.  We got in and in about 5 minutes we were at the bus stop resting our feet and waiting for the bus, and decided that Chinese food sounded like an excellent idea for dinner.  When the bus did come about 15 minutes later, it was a double decker, but we didn't get a chance to sit up top as the bus started moving as soon as we paid.  As soon as we got back, we headed straight for Chinese buffet, and ate delicious Chinese food and rice until we were fit to burst.  Once we got back to Isaac's Hostel, I climbed into bed and sunk into a comatose state for about 3 hours.  Once I woke up, and Shawn had checked his email we once again headed out to Porter House (it was about 10:30 by now).  We got a few pints and then headed up to the top floor and waited for the band that night to start playing.  This time they managed to fit a drummer, guitar, bass, and singer all on the tiny stage, which was impressive.  The band was pretty decent, and they played some great Police and Clash covers, although their singer was more then a little drunk by the end of the night, and was doing some pretty crazy stuff.  We left around 2 and when we got back to our room, we found that it had become occupied with 6 sleeping people, who started speaking some language that we couldn't decern when we opened the door and woke some of them up.  It sounded like some form of Russian, or at least something from an eastern block region.

Sunday(02/15/2009):

Upon waking up at 8:30 AM, I was able to see that our roommates all had large tattoos, wore biker boots, and had a few bottles of Russian vodka on the floor, so yeah, my assumptions from the night before still hold.  Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral started at 8:30, so I knew I wasn't going to make it on time, as it was about a 20 minute walk there and the Mass would probably be close to done by the time I got there, judging by the speed the Irish go through it.  I still went and inquired about any other local Catholic churches that would have a Mass soon, and the people working the desk kindly directed me to Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church that had a Mass conveniently at 9:30 AM (which was good as we wanted to catch the noon bus back to Cork), and which I later figured out is also the burial place of St. Valentine (which I thought was pretty cool, as it was St. Valentine's Day weekend).  We caught the noon bus back to Cork, and I slept for most of the way back.  Once we did get back, we immediately started doing laundry, uploading pictures, and making dinner.  I did a little bit of homework, but I was pretty tired, so I went to bed relatively "early" for me.  So all in all, it was a great weekend in Dublin, and I'm going to have to go back before I leave.