Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Big Guy

This was my weekend.  It was an awesome touristy time.  With lotsa ancient history for the history nerd that is me. A few side notes:

1. booked a trip to Barcelona for Thanksgiving weekend with Devin
2. Am attempting to slowly rebuild my work ethic after months of not doing much at all.  Progress is slow, but definitely progressing.

Delicious fish and chips

Sunday was probably my favourite day in Dublin.  Four big highlights:

1.  Fish and chips takeaway from the oldest chipper in Dublin.  It was doused in salt and vinegar and coated in grease, which made them by far the best fish and chips I’ve had so far.  To make it better, we ate in the park next to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is one of the prettiest places in Dublin.  Amazing start to the afternoon.

2.  Guinness Storehouse tour.  So damn cool.  Got to see all the parts of the production of Guinness, a ton of old adverts, and finally got a free pint in the skybar at the top of the storehouse, which had beautiful panoramic views of Dublin.  And did I mention Guinness tastes better in Ireland?

3.  Walk up to Phoenix Park to see the Wellington Monument and a dinner at Ireland’s oldest pub, where I had Irish stew, which has beef, vegetables, and potatoes in a broth.

4.  We wanted a short quiet night at the pub since we all had to wake up really early for flights.  We went to this small local pub for one pint, and it turned out to be one of the coolest things we did all weekend.  It was full of older regulars doing a karaoke night, who were all really friendly and welcoming.  It was so cool getting to hang out with some genuine Irish pub-goers on the last night there.

Then woke up early next morning to go home for class.  Strange thing is, for these few months home is the East End of London.  A surreal sort of feeling that might not wear off while I’m here.

Given the 2 hours of sleep the night before, miles of walking, and working-day-length pub crawl, it’s probably not surprising that we slept in a bit Saturday.  After finally getting around to moving, we ate a take-away lunch on a hedge outside a cafe in Dublin’s main shopping district because we were too cheap to pay the extra 2 euro to eat in. Fun fact:  European restaurants seem to all have a surcharge for dining in.  I do not like this at all.

After lunch, we checked out the Old Jameson Distillery, where Ireland’s most popular whiskey was made for a long time.  I now know the differences between Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey, the ingredients and steps in whiskey making, and that if you succeed in life as a barley-guarding/mouse-killing cat, you get memorialised like this:

That is a badass stuffed cat.  The tour ended with a complimentary Jameson sample, which I had as a whiskey and cranberry, the way the Irish like it, they told us. We did some more exploring afterwards but didn’t really find anything all that exciting, and headed for dinner at a cheap Chinese restaurant near our hostel that offered a 4-course meal for 10 euro.  Little did we know this would take 2 hours because of almost absurdly slow service. Afterwards, we headed out on another slightly less ambitious pub crawl, returning to our favourite spots from the night before and checking out a few more pubs.  My favourite of these was the Duke, which had some sort of literary connection we couldn’t discern, but was still really cool.  I stole 2 of their coasters to bring home.

Ireland has some excellent pubs.

This weekend I went to the capital of Ireland. This is what happened.

Lesson one of the weekend: never book a 6:30 am flight.

3:00 am: wake up after 2 hours of sleep 
3:30 am: take the 25 Night Bus to Stratford 
4:05 am: board National Express coach to Stansted 
5:00 am: Arrive at airport and go through security really quick because very few people besides businessmen are stupid enough to book a flight that early 
5:55 am: run/jog to the gate even though you’ve been in the airport for nearly an hour because the flight status board says “final call” 
6:00 am:  Learn that “final call” in Ryanair terms actually means wait in a queue for 20 minutes because the plane isn’t ready to be boarded. 
6:30 am: Take off.

After arriving in Dublin a little after 8 we took a coach into the city, promptly got lost on O’Connell street before finding our hostel and learning we couldn’t check in until noon, which started Kevin and I’s 4 or 5 hour marathon walking tour of Dublin. With our backpacks, being all student-like, we saw probably a dozen old churches, Trinity College, Dublin Castle, The Customs House, lots of Medieval/Viking Dublin, endless statues, bridges, and cool old streets. The highlight of the afternoon was a tour of St. Michan’s,  a Catholic church dating back to the 11th century, where you get to walk right up to these in the crypt:

Creepy but awesome.  Rumour has it that Bram Stoker, who has relatives buried in the church’s cemetery, went down into the crypts to get inspiration for Dracula.  I wouldn’t doubt it.

Exhausted after walking through virtually all of Dublin (no exaggeration), we checked in at the hostel, rested for a couple of hours, and met up with the rest of our group.

For the rest of the night, we embarked on an epic pub crawl through Temple Bar, which is an old entertainment district that still has the old medieval streets.  It started with fish and chips and a Guinness at Fitzgerald’s, a nice and cozy old pub.  We then visited the Temple Bar Pub (live Irish music yay), the Purty Kitchen (bad live acoustic guitarist), the Czech Inn (terrible pun, cheap pints), the Porterhouse (delicious, delicious microbrews), Fitzsimon’s (nice rooftop bar, really overpriced), the Auld Bubiner (more live music), and finally a pub near Trinity College whose name I can’t recall.  If you fancy pictures and descriptions of these pubs, see here.  Our first night pub crawl lasted about 8 hours and was a great introduction to what the Irish do best.  My favourite Irish beers were Guinness, Smithwick’s (pronounced Smitticks), Kilkenny, and a Porterhouse microbrew called Plain Porter.  A quick note on Guinness:  it’s better in Ireland.  The head is creamier, there’s less of a bitter taste at the end, and it just goes down smoother.  The Irish attribute this to the freshness since it’s served the same day it was made.  I buy it.  The first day was a most excellent snap introduction into Irish culture. Between the pub crawl and the multi-mile walk, I’m pretty sure I saw just about as much as can be seen in one day.

It was the open mike night at our local pub tonight.  We watched a few local bands and dudes with acoustic guitars (plenty of terrible versions of Travis, Coldplay, Oasis, and Radiohead songs), but the definite highlight was a band of 2 goofy-looking English guys with acoustic guitars who played a few gems including a song about dating a Nazi (at this point we hadn’t realized they were a comedy band, and were taken aback by the rhyming of “racial mixin’” and “Pollution”) and a song about their affinity for the Prime Minister, which included some catchy internal rhymes:

“The world may hate you, but I wanna date you, Gordon Brown”

Dashing fellow, he is.  But it really is quite interesting how universally disliked he seems to be.  Regardless, nothing like a combination of bad Nazi jokes, a song with a chorus of “you’re fucking ugly” in a James-Blunt-You’re-Beautiful-like Falsetto, and some Brown-bashing to break up a night of generally bad covers.  I love me some English humour.

My professor for “Disraeli, Democracy, and Empire” shared with us that Oscar Wilde applied to teach English at Queen Mary but was rejected because the college board deemed that it would be irresponsible to allow him near young people.

I can’t imagine why.

Travel Plans (take 2):

Dublin: October 16-18 (still booked)

Paris: October 30 - November 1 (booked, flights to Barcelona were too expensive that weekend)

Italy (Rome —> Florence —> Venice):  November 6 - 15 (flights booked, rest of the middle stuff needs work)

Travel planning has come along nicely, I’m also definitely taking a daytrip to Stonehenge and Bath at some point this semester, might be spending 2 days in Belgium this weekend if last minute plans work out, and would like to fit in one more trip to either Krakow, Amsterdam, Barcelona, or Munich.  Hopefully one of those can pan out in late November/early December.

So, I haven’t updated on my British goings-ons in a while, so here’s a summary of the past week or so:

Wednesday:  Went to a Indie-type bar called “catch-” on 22 Kingsland Road with some friends of various nationalities.  It was a really good time, got to hear some cool local music and hang out with people who aren’t American.

Thursday:  Met Devin and Jason at the Baker Street tube station for dinner.  Saw statue of Sherlock Holmes.  After giving up on finding a suitable cheapish place to eat, we followed Jason’s lead, hopped back on the underground, and went to a pub on Fleet Street called “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.“  The place has been unchanged since 1666, and has a really cool vaulted basement with low ceilings and tons and tons of atmosphere.  I ordered fish and chips (delicious) with a pint of bitter to drink.  England has a comparatively wide selection of beers easily available, and I’ve enjoyed sampling the various types of Ales, which are served only slightly below room temperature.  The Cheese’s brand of bitter was especially tasty, unfortunately I can’t recall the name.  Also, Devin and I sampled some spotted dick with custard (also delicious)  which I’m still not sure how to precisely describe.  We will be returning to this pub.  Next, we joined up with a birthday party with some people from King’s, Devin and Jason’s school, and hung out until the wee hours of the morning.  This left me to take the night bus home alone at 2:30 in the morning, something the Arcadia orientation people warned us against about 50 times.  I made it home taking two buses across half of central London without getting lost or mugged, so epic public transportation win.

Friday:  Relaxed a bit with a film at the local cinema (Ricky Gervais’s “The Invention of Lying,” a pretty good film, but a lot heavier than I expected) and a fun, chill night at the local pub, The New Globe.

Saturday:  Read Beowulf most of the afternoon.  Damn you studying aspect of study abroad.

Sunday:  Visited Brick Lane, a famous market and shop-filled street about a 20 to 25 minute walk from campus.  Ate my first Chicken Tikka Masala of the trip. It was delicious, and I can understand why it’s typically recognized as the national dish of Britain.  Although I do have to wonder why that dish isn’t fried chicken, since there were well over a dozen fried chicken places on the walk.  But despite the rep, I really like British food so far.  The main things I have left to try are two local East End favourites, pie and mash and jellied eels, along with the traditional sunday roast served at most pubs.  I’m excited for 2 of the 3.

That’s about it for exciting things this week.  Planning an excursion to the British Museum Wednesday morning and perhaps a trip to the Tate Britain Friday.  I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to run out of things to do in London.  Unfortunately, school work is starting to pick up, so the days of endless free time are pretty much over.