Vid Goes to Dublin

I kicked off the day after St. Patrick's Day with the coldest shower I've ever taken in my life. I was staying with my friend Sean, whose water heater, we later deduced, was a bit broken. But the water wasn't just not hot. I can deal with not hot. It was COLD. I'm convinced if the water had been any colder, it would have ceased being water altogether, unless we can call ice solid water, which I suppose it is. More on water later.

I survived my shower and my friends and I rushed to City Hall where we waited for what seemed like an hour for our walking tour of Dublin to begin. The reason we rushed is that we were supposed to meet another group of friends there and we were concerned that we had kept them waiting. It turned out there was a problem with their bus (in that it was the wrong one) and they ended up missing the beginning of the tour.

Our tour guide, Dave, was friendly and engaging and knew a lot about the history of Dublin. He spoke about the tension that existed between Britain and Ireland and Dublin's role in the story of Ireland's eventual independence. He expressed his mild distaste for the architecture of Sam Stephenson (whose Dublin buildings are arguably both landmarks and eyesores) and his extreme distaste for Jack Black (whose portrayal of Gulliver in the recent Hollywood flick Gulliver's Travels is, according to Dave, an insult to the memory of great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift). He informed us that like famous Irish writers James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, Courtney Love attended Trinity College, but she was kicked out for selling massive amounts of LSD. All in all, it was an entertaining and informative tour and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Dublin without having to spend any money. The tours, which are run by Sandeman's New Europe, are completely free. Tips are suggested.

After the tour, we went to O'Neill's Bar and Restaurant on Suffolk Street, where we got a discount for having taken the tour. I got Fish and Chips, which I'm told is very popular in Dublin. It was delicious and the atmosphere of the restaurant was very friendly.

That night, my friends and I went on a pub crawl, also run by Sandeman's New Europe. It was a lot of fun, although some bartenders seemed less than happy to see us waving our colored wrist bands about, yapping in accents that clearly originated outside of Ireland. One in particular let us know that he hated these pub crawls and that, although my two friends and I didn't "seem so bad", we represented a major nuisance for him and he'd be glad when we moved on to the next bar. It was all a little confrontational, but at the time I was in good spirits, and allowed my mind to twist his blunt honesty into a sort of friendly confidentiality. From what I can remember, the pub crawl was fun and it's a nice way to both meet other people visiting Dublin and to experience the Dublin nightlife.

The next morning, I was a tad hungover. Of course, Saturday was the day we decided to visit the famous Guinness Storehouse, so as I stumbled around in my miserable alcohol-induced haze, I got to learn all about beer and how it's made and just how gosh-darn great it is. I tried to keep sickened groans to a minimum.

Perhaps my experience at the Guinness Storehouse was colored by my hangover, but I wasn't all that impressed. Our tickets cost eleven euros online and there are plenty of other, free attractions in Dublin that I suspect I might have found more enlightening.

The first floor of the Guinness Storehouse is devoted to Guinness's four ingredients: hops, barley, yeast, and water. Each ingredient gets its own visual displays and plaques of information.

• Learning about hops: Fairly interesting. Maybe you're like me before I went and you aren't entirely certain of what hops are, or what they look like, or where they're grown.
• Learning about yeast: Also fairly interesting and relevant.
• Learning about barley: At least somewhat more interesting than it sounds.
• Learning about water: A good reason to spend your eleven euros somewhere else.

The Storehouse tried to turn water into something new and fascinating by installing a miniature waterfall inside, with mixed results; it wasn't fully capable of distracting me from the inane information about water painted on the floor and written on plaques, but it was cool enough that many people seemed to want to take pictures in front of it.

After I took my free pint on principle and gave it away immediately, we exited the Storehouse and took a taxi to the Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison in Dublin that houses a lot of Irish history. The jail is known mostly for its political prisoners, especially the fifteen rebels sentenced to death after the Easter Rising of 1916, who were executed by firing squad in the courtyard. The tour was a little eerie, but it only cost us two euros each and the jail is so steeped in Irish history I think it would have been a mistake to miss it.

On Sunday, we rose bright and early to catch our Ryanair flight out of Dublin Airport. I tried to sleep on the plane, but I think maybe it was designed to make this impossible, or at least incredibly uncomfortable. After landing in Malaga, we took a city bus to the bus station and bought tickets for a bus back to Cádiz. The weekend had exhausted me and I wanted nothing more than to be back in the city I've grown to love, snug between my cheap Chino store blankets and my not-that-comfortable mattress. Of course, this was denied me for just a little while longer when our bus broke down somewhere between Algeciras and Cádiz.

I think because we were overtired, my friend Megan and I almost immediately burst into laughter at the seeming absurdity of this occurrence and we kept laughing as we waited for another bus to come pick us up. Our chuckles drew suspicious glances from some of the natives, but by that time I was too tired to care.

I guess I can sort of break it down this way:

• Dublin: fun
• Traveling all day long: not fun
• Bus breaking down: funny(?)
• Sleeping after arriving home in Cádiz: AWESOME