Delivering Dublin

the surprising cafe-en seine
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haha...here goes

so, i finish and hand in my first year report which i had been slaving away at for days and days and i knew once the sacred papers left my anxious parms, i was ready to leave the country on a whim and have merry times away from the doom and gloom that had laid rest on cambridge...  who was i kidding, i was, in fact, going to a town/capital renowned, second maybe to London, for its cloud cover and indetifatigable drizzle.  but with people nicer, drinks flowier and friends friendlier; it was all set for a most excellent time. (dude)

we were off to what is regarded as one of Ireland's finest culinary establishments:

Elaine's awesome home and her 'ferrari'
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As tradition goes, Nia will always get on an earlier flight, closer to the destination, which arrive the requisite 30 minutes late, so that i would greet her out in the terminal with backpack on back.  The promptness was the only good thing about my flight, which essentially involved being herded into a tin can, strapped into lego-plastic seats and provided with as much luxury as a guantanamo prisoner, in isolation - an experience that could only be made worse if the over-zealous cockneyfied stewards periodically beat us over the head with their over-priced snacks and induced vomiting for which no sick-bags were provided! otherwise, ryanair is just grand.

i had it somewhere in the back of my mind that Dublin was quite a hub for stag, hen and 21st birthday parties, but i hadnt expected that only 10 minutes after arriving, i would be exposed to a 20-strong party of Glaswegians boarding our shuttle-bus, which our shrewd Nia had saved 2 euro in picking, donning kilts and being plain loud. This made me and Nia feel decidedly old, chosing to sit downstairs with the grannies, watching the gang upstairs make clear indentations in the first-floor partition to the rhythm of aye aye yipee yipee eye, interspersed with one concerned scottish fella screaming 'weeerree da fuck is da stop man, aye!'.  they eventually got off, filing out like a group of men getting out of a mini after a guinness world record attempt (A LOT more about GUINNESS later...), at O'Connell street, at which 10 mins later we realised we also should have alighted... The rain was already doing that annoying spitting action, and we wound our way to Davy Byrnes, where Elaine, Marco, Tim and Alasdair were sitting outside and already getting sufficiently oiled...

however, we took so long, that the heavens opened and they had to move back in which is where with all our luggage, we met them and only a nano-second after we had exchanged hugs and pleasantries, a drink was in my fist for cheers and welcomes. i quickly made my stomach food-shortage known and we were off to what is regarded as one of Ireland's finest culinary establishments: "Abrakebabra".  Here, i had a KFC style kebab wrap, which had the normal kebab meat, pita bread, suaces and salads, but what really sets it apart from otehr kebabs was the special exquisite ingredient of paper napkins, which had made a siamese arrangement with my bread. yum.  we were told to keep it down by some jolly passer-bys in the shop, but as everyone had a jolly demeanour when happy or angry, we didnt really know whether they were serious, but Marco did the manly thing and diffused the situation by buying too many chips, which he tried to force feed us all (ALOT more about CHIPS later...)

Cafe-En-Seine was truly an impressive venue consisting of a huge three storey bar/club which was our next stop. of course, we still had our luggage so look like we were trying to find a hotel rather than something to drink. After some weird stares and some pushing and shoving, we got to the back of the place and found a slightly elevated platform of chairs and tables, where we dumped out stuff, necked some drinks, reminisced over our time in south east asia and commented on a nearby couple, which hadnt stopped snogging for the whole time we were there. Marco was succinct in his opinion 'get a room'. It was truly special that the no smoking indoors rule was working, but when we left for the taxi around 2am, and walked through the crowd of people smoking outside, i felt just as smelly when i got back to Elaine's place, which was just lovely. excellent taste indeed!  She also managed somehow to have a bed for everyone, but it was a random number-game which had about the logic of a water-proof teabag, that decided who got random cushion bed or foldup camping bed.  I got the later which was surprisingly comfortable.