Dublin Day One

Well hello all. After a long hiatus I have finally returned to you. I’m sure you have all been at the edge of your seats wondering, “What is the latest adventure/embarrassing act Christine has faced?” So, never fear I am here to fill you in on all my mishaps.
Last weekend (March 5-7) I ventured to Dublin to discover what it means to be Irish. I found that it means you are very social…only when drunk. I was surprised to find that the Irish people were not as friendly as the Scots that I have come to love. To be fair, I was in Dublin, the most touristy city I have been to yet. But still, I was saddened to find that the Irish aren’t as jolly as I thought they would be. I still had a great time though. The hostel we stayed at was pretty much a hotel. It was very spacious, had a nice kitchen, and was very safe. Most of the hostels (okay all two) that I have stayed in are very nice. So since we got there late on Thursday, we went pretty much right to bed. We shared the room with six other very loud and obnoxious French people. Note to those traveling: ear plugs = best packed item. The next day we woke up really early in order to go on a walking tour of Dublin. I’m not quite sure why this city is so popular. There wasn’t too much to see and the walking tour consisted of history which to me is a lullaby. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you my pathetic knowledge of history. I swear it is not my fault. I would always try to pay attention in Western Civ. my first year in high school but to this day it my only D on a final. Ooops. My brain literally turns off at the mention of historical facts/figures/dates. I know this isn’t a good quality, but ask me anything about the inverted U hypothesis of stress and sport performance and I will rock it. Anyways, that was extremely off topic, but I wanted to forewarn you because I would tell you about what I learned on the walking tour, but um, I don’t remember. Pretty much the theme of the walking tour was that the English are absolutes arses. The Irish and the Scottish both seem to dislike the English. Lucky for me, I’m not English. The walking tour ended around 2, so being in Ireland, we did as the Irish do, grabbed a pint. Then to be considered proper tourists we visited the Guinness Factory. I was really excited to see the factory and find out how this magical potion is made. Well, I was sort of disappointed to find out that surprise…they don’t take you on a tour of the factory. Instead, they set up this huge warehouse as sort of a show. You walk around on your own and discover how the product is made. It is very impersonal and not as cool as the Anheiser Busche tour…hello they have Clydesdales. But I was able to forgive the Guinness company a little when I got a free drink at the end of the “tour.” And by free I mean I paid 11 pounds to see the nonexistent factory, and by drink I mean syrupy, nasty, foul tasting, couldn’t be a worse brew drink. So if you are going to Dublin anytime soon, skip the Guinness factory and instead tour the Jamison whiskey factory. I didn’t get to do that but it couldn’t be worse than the Guinness factory. Then we went to Tesco to buy some cheap groceries for dinner (after that Guinness tour my wallet was pretty bare.) Well, we sort of overestimated our hunger and how many of us there were. There were six of us, but we probably could have fed half of Zambia. We bought three packages of pasta…nevermind that meant that each of us would eat half of a package…and two loaves of garlic bread. Needless to say, we had a good portion leftover. We tried to give the cooked pasta to the others around us, but they looked at us like were offering them something dirt or Guinness. We went to a local pub where we talked to some pretty funny Englishmen. They were all mid forties, married, and making fun of us for being American. One asked what I was studying and when I replied sport psychology he said, “how are you supposed to tell people how to do better in their sport when you don’t even know what a proper sport is?’ I didn’t have a quick comeback, so I just laughed. Har har.