Departed Dublin

***Check out the links on the right for pictures!! It takes too long to upload crap on this site***

Well, I got the afternoon off work today because my boss wasn't feeling too well. Cait and I returned from Dublin yesterday, walked in the door around 8 after beginning the journey around 2...fun. We didn't have to go through customs though, which was nice. The other group of 4 that we traveled with left later in the evening - they ended up with a 70 minute plane delay, getting them in around 12:30 to stansted airport, where they spent some time in customs, missed the last stansted express train, took a bus to baker street and had a longer hike home...walked in around 2:30AM....so I'm glad Cait and I left earlier!!

Anywho, our last two days in Dublin following my last blog entry were spectacular. Following my last blog post, where I said we'll, "... be taking it easy tonight," we proceeded to...take it hard? That doesn't sound right at all...but you get the idea. We went out to a bar just around the corner, since we were pretty tired from our long day of self-guided touring. Expecting a relaxed atmospere to enjoy a beer or two before bed we went in. The Celt, it was called, and upon opening the door Irish folk songs backed by an acoustic guitar blared in our ears - we knew this was the place to be. This bar was north of the Liffey river, away from the Temple Bar area - meaning away from all the touristy areas. This place was packed with Irish lads and lasses just having a good time, so we grabbed a pint and joined the fun. A group of guys were jumping, singing, and clapping with the music and these 5 guys were soon to become our new best friends for the night. Smithy, Brenan, Thomas, Larry, and I can't remember the other guys name at the moment. Anyway, when they encouraged us to sing along, we claimed we couldn't since most of us didn't know the lyrics, to which Brenan responded - "Tha' doesn't matteh, lads - we don' know'em eithah! Jus' clap yer hands an' pretend like ye do!" And so we did. They bought us drinks, taught us songs, shot the shit, and danced and screamed with us until late. For anyone familiar with the Simpsons, they thought I looked like Hank Scorpio with my reddish beard, so Hank was my new name, as we traded Simpsons references for much of the night. Brenan wrote me an email yesterday saying that if we ever come back he'd be sure to "party properly" with us...I can only imagine what means after our night out.

Anyway, the next day our friend Lynn from UR flew in from Rome after finding a cheap flight. So Cait, Lynn, and yours truly took a day tour to Newgrange, a neolithic site that predates the pyramids and stonehenge by 500 years and 1000 years, respectively. It is a burial mound/ritual building (oldest building in the world, though nobody knows its true purpose) that is built precisely so that on the winter solstice, a beam of light shines of a narrow passsageway and illuminates a room containing three small chambers with neolithic art carved on all of the stone. The cross-shaped end chamber has a corbelled roof built entirely of loose stone - it has stood completely intact and waterproof for over 5000 years. The sun crept out during our time at Newgrange, giving us some amazing shots of the surrounding countryside, as well as the Newgrange mound itself. We also stopped by a graveyard with some celtic crosses and a monastary from the 11th century. Always fun. We came back, relaxed, and had a chill evening before enjoying our last day roaming the city, seeing St. Patricks Cathedral, and navigating our way accross town through backstreets that brought us by a group of about 30 men in an alley with parakeets in cages mounted on a building side...you're right, what the fuck? All in all, Dublin and Ireland fucking rocked.

Now its time to do some laundary and clean before our trip to Krakow and Prague on Thursday, then home for a long day of work (lecture at the British museum in the evening) before heading to Normandy. So long kids!