Dublin, Ireland

Allo mates, (That's Irish for Hello friends)

Well I'm in Dublin now. I've been here for about 3 days. The first day I was just incredibly jet-lagged and when I got to my hostel they told it wasn't going to be ready for about 4 hours. So I had to walk around in Dublin with no sleep, but I made the most of it. I went to a couple of parks, museums and I went to this restaurant Cornucopia with vegetarian dishes that was recommended to me for some soup, coffee and bread. Then I napped and I really didn't go out and do much that night. I stayed in and read. Partly cause I was tired and partly because it took me a little bit of time to get into that travel zone. It's where you feel comfortable trying to start a conversation with people that you don't know at all. That took me well into my second day, so just last night for dinner, to get going. Before that I was just kind of hanging out by myself, which was relaxing in certain ways but annoying in others. Yesterday during the day though I went to the Guinness factory which is awesome. It's self guided but they got really creative with it to make it interesting. They even had a tasting room where you could have a free tasting of Guinness. I had 2. Then at the top of the building, which is shaped like a pint glass, they have a gravity bar which has a panoramic view of all of Dublin. Then I walked back to my hostel but stopped at a Catholic church on the way where I sat and listened to a sermon for 20 minutes. Great timing after a couple of beers.
Last night though was a lot of fun. I went out drinking with 4 Australian women and 1 French woman. We started at a Turkish bar but then moved to the touristy bar right next to our hostel where all the young travelers between 18 and 33 go to. I got hit on by 2 Irish guys that night while going to the bathroom but in separate situations who were just blasted. One of them offered to "hold it for me for 50 cents" while I was taking a leak. I explained to him the economic situation regarding the Euro and how at that price it wasn't worth my while. From what I saw a lot of drunk Irish men have no chivalry towards either women or tourist women because these guys were out of line. If you think I have ever said some bad stuff sometimes go to Ireland. By the end of the night these women I was with kept calling me Dad (which was ironic because I'm a couple of years younger than all of them) because whenever they needed to get away from some fool hitting on them they'd come find me and put their arms around me and say they were with me. Given that I'm taller than most of the Irish guys and for some reason they loved that I grew up in California, they tended to back off after that. After the bar closed it took us 2 hours to leave, walk a block to a store and walk right back so we could get to our hostel because there was so much drunk action going on. The streets were raging, and it was a Wednesday night in the beginning of the off season.
After that I don't know if I'll go out tonight. Those ladies left and I'm about to go on a 3 day bus tour through the southern parts of Ireland where there will be plenty of merrymaking. It will be the same group of people going to all the same places, staying at the same hostels and going out the the same Irish music bars/venues in the south. Should be fun and it cam highly recommended. I just read a lot the first night and I think I'll do that again tonight, but you never know. I feel like I've seen a lot of Dublin at this point. Today I was thinking about going to Belfast for a day but i decided that would be trying to squeeze too much in so I went for a walk north of the Liffey River for 3 hours or so. I stopped and got some Irish Stew and a Guinness for lunch. That hit the spot. Well that's all for now. Basically I feel like I'm in a good groove now. There's was just an adjustment period at first but I'm excited about going to all these places and meet a bunch of new interesting people. Having seen where a lot of people are right now that have just graduated, and then to actually be somewhere different it feels more right at this point to be doing what I'm doing. therefore, I'm not missing Oregon too much anymore. I'm still missing it but I'm having enough fun to not feel to bad about being away.

Peace be with you