Day 28: Monday November 7th, 2011
I woke up, had breakfast with everyone, made my goodbyes. Lucia and Janina were coming with their school group to Dublin later in the week, so we planned to meet.
To spend my remaining English pounds I bought a Yazoo (a banana milk drink like Yoohoo that was delicious), water, a bag of chocolate marshmallows, an orange and a banana. I was off to Ireland, the first country where they use the Euro other than the pound. Exciting!
I barely made the Dublin bus, but upon arriving in Dublin, actually got to my hostel without any problems for the first time ever. Dublin would become one of the few legitimate cities I never got lost in. It helped that I found a map at the Belfast hostel before leaving.
I booked my hostel because Jimmy was there and recommended it. I was on the shit communal computers and he stumbles in, clearly not having showered, still drunk, exhausted and at his wit’s end. He was leaving for back home tomorrow and was spent. It was kinda rough to see my future.
I was figuring out my game plan for Dublin when I got a text from Mary Anne. She was in town for the day and wanted to hang out. Beautiful how a plan comes out of nowhere. We walked around St. Stephen’s Green, a beautiful park near my hostel with a James Joyce statue. We then walked to Merrion Square, another little park that had the greatest statue I’ve ever seen, a flamboyant Oscar Wilde statue. He was wearing a crazy colored jacket, with a bemused expression on his face and his crotch all kinds of out in the open. After that we walked through Trinity College, the preiminent collegiate institution of Dublin, which I’ll delve into more later.
Then we went to Porterhouse Bar, the only microbrewery of Dublin, and as luck would have it, the only bar in all of Dublin that actually doesn’t serve Guinness, because it only serves its own beers. But the beers were delicious (had a brown beer that was similar to Guinness and a red ale). I also ordered black pudding on ciabatta with a poached egg on top. It was fucktastic. At the bar we were joined by one of Mary Anne’s friends John, a hulking man who reminded me of the giant in A Princess Bride and apparently played rugby. Remind me not to play rugby.
They were calling it an early night, so I returned to the hostel to find Jimmy playing ping pong with Tim, another Aussie who looks like the guy with wacky hair in LMFAO. Jimmy was done, so I went out on the town with Tim, going to Temple Bar, the area where people go to get drunk in Dublin for obscene prices. A Guinness is 5 euro. But you pay for the atmosphere, and almost every bar is full and playing some sort of live music. And the Guinness is yummy.
We start at The Temple Bar of Temple Bar (kinda confusing) and then kind of hop around. We talk to a couple Brazilian girls, then I’m distracted by a girl named Renata who wasn’t impressed with my singing and I drunkenly asked out because I like girls that treat me horribly. She gave me her number, and it was either fake or I couldn’t figure out how to dial it (which is actually really likely, I haven’t been able to dial an international call correctly 78% of the time). I didn’t care. We then go to some university district I couldn’t point out on a map and danced a bit in a club, then called it a night.
Next: More Dublin