Bubblin in Dublin!

One of my favorite beers, as many of you know, is the "black stuff" aka as Guinness. And it's always been a goal of mine to have a pint in Dublin and happy to announce that I was finally able to cross that off my list of things to do before I buy the farm.

The Guinness Store was certainly worth the trip out-- especially since I was able to go with another chap, Brendon (Australia) who also wanted to go just as badly as me. Met Brendon in Edinburgh, and over the past few days in Edinburgh/Dublin I picked up quite a bit of the Aussie lingo: (tell me if any of this actually makes any sense cause I'm still having a hard time figuring the logic out behind some of these)

Cut someone's grass/cut your lunch = homewreck a relationship

Stuffed = polite way of saying "fucked"

flogged = stolen

two stroke = lawnmower fuel

avo = afternoon

chunder = puke

bogan = hick

Anyway, met another Aussie, Vanessa, who also decided to join us for our pilgrimage to the Guinness Store. On our way there, every other block Brendon and I would hear somebody in the background (probably Vanessa) say something to the effect of, "Oh this cathedral was built in 1250.....this place looks interesting.... hmm... I wonder what this place is like inside...." Needless to say Brendon and I were on a mission, and there was no cathedral, church, historical point of reference that was going to stop us on our way to our lovely pint. I think I did grumble to Vanessa that we could check out the cathedral AFTER. Felt a little bad about the whole thing....ok, not really. But Vanessa, you do realize you were with two crazy Guinness fans, right?

I took a day out of Dublin to hang out in the countryside after a few too many pub crawls. Decided to check out Wicklow, about an hours train ride south of Dublin. Booked a hostel, hopped on a train, map in hand-- life's good, right? Got off the train, hopped on the bus where I was told to get off at the last stop (red flag) then walked. And walked. And walked some more. The directions said, go down the main street and it will be on the right hand side. 20 minutes into it I was getting a little worried thinking maybe I took the wrong main street. So I asked a sheepherder (no joke) where the hostel was and he said, another 30 minute walk. And this wasn't just a regular walk-- it was a hilly up and down trek. I thought to myself that I was probably going to end up in the news the next day: "In other news, an American tourist was trampled to death by 30 sheep, apparently lost on his way to the Knockree Hostel." Well finally I arrive, famished. Check in, ask the guy if there's a grocery store around and he said no-- the only thing they had was a can of minestrone soup for, get this, $4.50. A 49 cent can of soup, marked up 5000000 million gajillion percent as my reward for trekking 6 kilometers to this damn hostel.

So I'm in the kitchen hanging out, heating up my minestrone and I run into 3 French students cooking away. I thought to myself, ok, this is the part where I don't tell them I'm American lest they go on and on about how much they hate Americans. I usually wouldn't assume such negative thoughts about people in general but mind you, I was not in the best of spirits. I casually introduced myself and told them I was travelling around the world and disclosed that I was from LA. One of them gets excited about this (about me being from LA, not about my RTW trip, to which I was quite surprised.) He (Remy) proceeds to tell me that one day, he will go to Texas, eat a 40 ounce porterhouse steak with a cowboy hat on while drinking a Budweiser. Another (Mamu) proceeds to tell me that although American football was difficult to follow at first, he now understands all the rules and really enjoys watching it whenever he can. Not only that, there was no mention of politics at all that night. At that point, I thought to myself, where the hell am I, the Twilight Zone??! We commiserated about the 50 minute hike out there over a bottle of vodka, and turns out they were heading back to Dublin the following day. We promptly made plans to meet up the next night in Dublin. Good times....