Dublin

Friday Aug 13, 2010-
Flying over Ireland, it looked like a patchwork quilt of green, we had our heads craned to the window the whole last 30 minutes of the flight. The taxi guy who drove us to the city centre was very nice, minus the bikers he tried running over and the cars he barely avoided hitting. He was giving us lots of advice on where to go, and what to see. Unfortunately, we only understand about every fifth word he said. At one point he was talking about 'that singer Alicia Keys', but I haven't got the faintest idea how we got to that topic.

After dropping our bags off, we decided to go walking around for a couple hours (went to Trinity and saw the Book of Kells, and St. Steven's Green) after which we decided to take a 'lil nap'. Just a little one, we had no plans to sleep till 11 at night, but that's what we did anyway. Even then, the only reason we got up was because Gabe wanted food. And a beer. We followed the music down the street to O'Shea's, which has become our favorite spot to drink beer and listen to music.

All in all, a good birthday for Gabe I think...even if we slept through most of it.

Saturday Aug 14, 2010 (Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe)-
we got an early start, all thanks to that 8 hour nap the day before. We were showered, with a full Irish breakfast in our stomachs, and  ready to go by 6am (dad would have been proud). We did the touristy think, and jumped on one of those double decker buses to get us around. We jumped off at the Dublin Castle, St Patrick's Cathedral, the Guinness Brewery, the Jameson Distillery, and the Hugh Lane Gallery (nice art, but still don't know who he is though). I loved the Guinness Brewery with the 360 view of Dublin from the top (the free pint was also nice, especially after what they charged us to get in)

After much debate over whether to do a Literary Pub Crawl, or a Musical Pub Crawl, we decided to go on the literary one...mostly because we got directions to that one. Directions that were not too helpful as we ended up taking a round about way, and having to backtrack our steps a couple of times. The guys who led the crawl were great, very funny actors and entertaining at every moment. If you come to Dublin, definitely go on it. Favorite pub from the crawl, was O'Neills (lots of little rooms, very crowded, very loud, and very perfect.) We spent the rest of the night back at O'Shea's with good music.

Off to Galway tomorrow, assuming we get our asses on the right bus =)