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Ok so I figured I'd finally put my Ireland blog post up. It's been a while since my last post. A fair amount has happened since, but I'll stick to Ireland for this one. I started my journey on March 14th. I took the train from Plymouth to London. My train left at 5:00 pm. I stopped at a Spar (popular UK convenience store) and grabbed a four pack of Scrumpy Jack cider for the train. Three hours and four cans later I was in London. I found my hostel and dropped my bag off. I met some Australians who were drinking in the common room. I went to the store grabbed some more cider and then joined them. Can't really remember most of their names. But I did meet one sort of famous person. The one girl I was talking to was apparently the runner up in the first Australia's Next Top Model show. I didn't really believe her at first because people usually say a lot of s*** when they're pissed, plus she didn't seem like she was pretty enough to be on the show. But I checked it out on google later and it turned out to be true. My opinion of Australia dropped a notch that night.
So we pretty much drank all night until about 4:30. I was in a world of trouble because I was supposed to meet my tour bus at 6:00. I had a quick half hour nap and then grabbed a shower. Almost missed the bus because couldn't find a cab. I finally found one and got there in more then enough time as a lot of the other people on tour were just as or even more pissed then I was.
I met a few people on the bus that I would hang out with for the duration. There was Clinton from New Zealand, Dan from Florida, and Adrian from Australia. We did meet other people. Quite a lot actually but the way it usually went was you would meet when you were really drunk and then the next day sort of forget about them. Until the next night when you were really drunk again and then you remembered who they were.
I was hoping to have a nice sleep on the bus but as soon as we got outside of London they started handing out the free Guinness's. I thought I was going to be finished but I hadn't sobered up enough yet to really struggle with the first pint. The drive to the ferry took us through northern England and Wales. We got to the ferry terminal in Holyhead around noon. We took the time on the ferry to sober up a little and watch some Rugby. It was the last stage of the Six Nations tournament which has England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, and Wales play off until there is a winner. The first two games of the day didn't really mean anything. England were playing Ireland for third place. Scotland was playing Italy for the wooden spoon. Which is what they call last place over here.
So after the ferry we sobered up pretty well. We got to our hostel in Dublin and it was pouring rain. I was hoping it would last only a few hours but it poured pretty much all night. It made for a tough night of walking from pub to pub but we managed.
Dan, two other guys and myself decided to go from pub to pub and have a guinness at each pub. I have been drinking a lot of guinness in England so I really had a feel for the taste of it. It really is true that the best guinness is in Ireland. It just has a little bit different after taste that really makes it better then all the rest. After about five pints at various pubs we went to an italian restaurant for dinner. It was a pretty good dinner. For a bottle of wine, four starters and four mains it only cost us 25 euros each.
After dinner we went back to the hostel and got ready for the tour night. We were all supposed to meet up at a club called Zanzibar. It was a really impressive club. It had the feel of colonial africa. Dan and I grabbed some drinks. While I was waiting for my drink I met a girl from Vancouver. Can't honestly say I remember her name but she was living in England as a teacher. She had been in England over a year and a half and was due to go home in a few weeks. I pretty much talked to her all night. We left the club and it was still pissing down rain so she wanted a cab even though it was a quick walk back to the hostel. I got a cab to stop for us. Three Irish guys were getting out of the cab as we were getting in. Apparently they got into a big argument along the way and the cabbie was now trying to get the cops attention to arrest them. When that didn't work he just called the guys a "bunch of c*** ". They really like using that word over here.
The next day I had to wake up at 10:00 to get ready for the Guinness Storehouse tour. The tour itself wasn't really a tour at all. You just sort of wandered around and followed the arrows. It was probably the best alcohol tour I've ever been on. Just the whole feel of the place with St. Patrick's day coming seemed very impressive. The building itself was the first brewery built for Guinness. Before the building opened for tours they transformed it a little. The whole center of the building was built to look like one giant pint glass. At the very top was the rooftop bar. That is where you got your free pint of Guinness. The good thing was that an asian tour was just in front of Dan and I so we got a lot of free beer tickets because they had no interest in a taste test.
After the tour we went to Temple Bar. Temple Bar is a huge bar district. It's pretty much filled with tourists 365 days a year. It has nightclubs, bistro's, cafe's and pubs. We went to one of the pubs that was playing live music. The place was packed. The songs were pretty good. Traditional irish songs and a few others for good measure.
After the pub we went back to the hostel to catch a nap. After waking up and getting ready for the night we headed to a pub across the river. We found a little pub with cheap drinks and good food and had some dinner. After dinner we headed to the Arlington Hotel. The hotel pub was where the tour party was. It was actually a really nice pub. It was huge and they had live music and irish dancing. I was hanging out with the kiwi Clinton when this blonde aussie chick bumped into me making me spill my drink. Her name was Jacinta, but went by Jackie because as she put it "Jacinta is such a black name". She felt really bad about it and offered to buy me another drink. I said don't worry about it but she insisted and we went to the bar to grab some drinks. I figured while we were there we might as well do a few jagerbombs. We ended up drinking all night and it turned out she was on the same tour as me just a different bus.
Jackie and I were having such a good time she wanted to hang out for the rest of the night but Dan was in need of a wingman. He was talking with this girl from Germany and needed me to distract the friend. I had no problem with it because the friend was way better looking then the german girl. The friend was named Madz. She was Austrian which means she was even more boring then the german girl.
The next day was St. Patrick's Day. Dan and I got up and went to the pubs. They opened at 10:00 and would be open until 12:00 when the parade started. We got out of the pub around 12:30 and watched the parade roll past. It was probably the weirdest parade I've ever seen. It wasn't the content that was weird it was just the fact that it was a St. Patrick's day parade. I was expecting bands, green floats and leprechauns. What I got was a parade full of costume insects and birds. The parade would have fit in nicely with Mardi Gras, but not St. Patrick's day.
After the parade we went to Temple Bar and drank there until around 7:00. After that we went to the tour St. Patrick's day party that was taking place at a bar called the Woolshed. It was an Australian bar. I wasn't too impressed with it because we were in Ireland for St. Patrick's day and I was surrounded by a bunch of Australians in an Australian bar. Dan and I had decided to leave after an hour or so and go back to Temple Bar. The plans quickly changed when Dan was thrown out of the bar with his d*** still hanging out after having been found having sex with an American chick in the stalls of the women's washroom.
We made our way to Temple Bar again and pretty much drank all night. I met up with Jackie at one of the bars and had a few more drinks and then before I knew it it was 5:00. We had to be out of the hostel by 6:00 so we staggered back to the hostel. Had a quick shower and packed our stuff. By 7:00 we were on the ferry and passed out.
It took all day for me to get back to Meavy. I didn't get into Meavy until around 12:00 am. I was ready to do some laundry and relax a little, but I had walked in on the century club taking place. I decided I might as well finish my trip off in good fashion. I was 15 shots behind so I took those shots in quick order and went to about 40. After the whole weekend and the drinks I had had during the day I just couldn't go any further.
Little side note. Not many pictures were taken. For one I just wasn't in a real state to take pictures most of the weekend, and secondly I don't want any evidence either. I'll get the pictures I did take up soon enough.
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