Slainte

T-minus one hour until we take a long, hopefully scenic bus ride to Cork. Dublin was a trip. There was a lot of Guinness involved, including a trip to the storehouse. They have a pretty good setup there. Charge for roughly three-and-a-half Guinness and grant one free Guinness when you reach the finish line. Although you do get seven free James Joyce quotes at the top of the building, so that's a plus.

Some other thoughts on Guinness: in the mid-80s into the 90s, they used Rutger Hauer as the "Man with the Guinness" for ads all over the UK. I wish they had used them in the US, too, because he is awesome, and those ads must have been incredibly creepy.

We caught some Irish music at Temple Bar last night, and it gave me some insight into the thought process of non-Americans towards the US (note: this insight is not insightful). First, the band asked if there were any Americans in the room. Then they said they were going to play us a tune. To that point, they had dropped in a Dylan song between every three or four Irish jigs, but this time they busted out with something called "Erie Canal." I would wager that most Americans don't know where the hell that is. Cameron is one of them. He thought it was in Indiana, which is an understandable mistake given the epic 1990s television show, "Eerie, Indiana." Also, Cameron is an idiot.

I have a couple of other belated things to post (mainly because I have been reprimanded for not having covered these before. Peer pressure is a bitch.).

Firstly, for everyone's pleasure and amusement: I was nearly attacked by a Spanish schoolgirl while riding my bike in Barcelona. I'll go into more detail, even though that is probably enough for you. I was at the front of the bike tour pack when we passed through an alley full of schoolchildren, all of whom started laughing and pointing at us. And then one girl, rather feisty for having been born in 1997 or so, wheeled up her leg and took aim at my front tire. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to steal Mike's patented bunny hop and swerve into the wall. This pretty much served no purpose other than to allow the children to laugh and point more.

Now then. Food. We'll just speed through the London portion of the trip. As Mike said last week, he was disappointed with the McDonalds chicken mcnuggets, and when you are A) going to McDonalds in the first place and B) complaining about the food, it's not a good sign. I later accidentally ordered a ham and cheese sandwich on sliced white bread, which cost me something like $5. I was less than pleased. English food sucked.

Moving on to Barcelona... tapas, paella (I have absolutely no idea if i spelled that right), gelato, rabbit and snail (everyone criticized me for eating rabbits because they are cute, but I do not care; it's not like they're going endangered. Contrarywise, one place we went to had large and small "sea cow claws" on the menu. Reading that hurt my soul.). But my favorite part was that we were around the block from an open-air market, so we got croissants and fresh fruit and nifty smoothie things for breakfast every morning. Spanish food was good.

Irish food has been like English food, but less terrible. And when you count Guinness as a food, we have had like 15 meals a day. We have also happily discovered that they know what coffee is here, though. It is not espresso. Or espresso. Or espresso.

To Cork!

Finally, Ireland

I would have never guessed I was here unless it started raining, which it did, last night. The weather has been perfect, warm, and sunny. Today it is overcast and the kind of Ireland I have been expecting. I am leaving on a bus for Cork in about an hour and will get to see the countryside.

There isn't much to do in Dublin but drink, and we did that just fine. Last night we saw a live band at the Temple Bar which was a lot of fun. We did a mandatory tour of the Guinness Factory and saw the book of Kells. If you ever get a chance to see it, know that while impressive, they did not know how to use perspective so the art isn't the best. Trinity College is the real treat here in Dublin and like I said there isn't much to do but drink.

I don't have many pictures, just some videos of the band. The problem is they are too large to upload so imagine if you could an extremely crowded place with everyone singing along in their best voice, or maybe just their loudest.

Well off to cork and some castles and rocks you can kiss.

cheers