Dublin

By this point in our trip, Tracie and I had figured out that we hate travelling days - mostly because we have too much luggage. Trying to get anywhere involves a lot of swearing because apparently all those beautiful historic buildings in Europe don't have elevators.  Therefore, we had to drag our luggage up and down flights of stairs, and they're a LOT heavier than when we started.

Arriving in Dublin was easy enough, but trying to get to our hostel by bus was horrible. It turns out that the bus driver had never heard of the street it was on. We got off at the main street thinking we could walk there, but after a couple blocks we gave up and took a taxi - let's just say we lived it up and took a lot of taxi's in Dublin.  When we got to our hostel, we dragged our luggage up 6 flights of narrow stairs to find that we were sharing a room with 5 other guys. Not cool (one of them snored, or maybe that was me :). To make ourselves feel better, we spent a combined 6 hours updating this blog at an internet cafe. Luckily, we found a better housing at Dublin Citi University, where we got separate dorms with our own bathrooms.

The thing that struck me about Dublin was that you can't find an open coffee shop after 7 pm, yet there is a pub on every corner and EVERY single one of them is crammed full.  I don't think anyone goes home after work, they just head off to the pub.

We did the normal touristy thing and went to see the Guinness Storehouse and learned how they make beer and how Guinness is "good for you" (still don't believe that).  The cool part was the top floor of the Storehouse where they have a lounge with 360 degree views of the city.

The highlight of our stay in Dublin would have to be going to the Dublin zoo.  I had never been to one, so it was cool seeing lions and tigers and bears oh my! (actually there were no bears there, but there was a gigantic gorilla who looked very contemplative).  I pissed off a peacock while trying to get close to it and it spread it feathers, it was absolutely gorgeous! But it wasn't too pleased so it started hissing at me - that part wasn't attractive.

On our last night, we went to Temple Bar, which is an area full of clubs, pubs and arthouses.  We tried to go to a bar called Temple Bar but it was crammed full (surprise surprise) so we walked around trying to find an empty one.  It was cool, we sat and drank and had potatoes because every single meal we've had in Dublin has potatoes.  To end off the night, we took the wrong bus (again) and got lost (again).  It was just what we needed to make our Dublin experience complete :)