Dublin

Thankfully when we arrived at the airport, the plane was miraculously in time and Anna was waiting in the welcome area with arms wide open in welcome. I met Anna in IHouse during my third year at UCSD and after she came to Colorado and drove to California in January blizzards with me, a trip to Vegas, and a visit to King's house in Santa Barbara we managed to stay friends across the Atlantic :)

At her house, we were introduced to the entire Murray clan, including a cousin who was visiting from north London. She then whisked us over to a German-themed party at the neighbors house where they were celebrating the birthday of German Chancellor Anna Merkel. It's really an interesting thing to arrive in Dublin and be whisked to a party where faces were embroidered with the German flag and German Eurovision winners (if you don't know Eurovision, it's like American Idol but a competition between European countries.

Exhausted we crashed on a wonderful sofa pull-out bed and slept the night away. The next morning we woke relatively early to accompany Anna into town where we planned to go on a free tour of Dublin (Google Sandemans New Europe Tours) and then to visit a photo gallery before meandering over to the Guiness Factory for a tour and free beer :)

On the way to the free tour, us girls were happily immersed in conversation and I looked up to see a good friend of my from UCSD smiling and walking my way. Kevin is another UCSD 2010 graduate who I met in a coffee shop in North Park (San Diego). While I knew he had travel plans in Europe, I hadn't talked to him since graduation so randomly bumping into him in Ireland was mindblowing! I really didn't know (and still don't know) what to think of the randomness of it!

We decided to partner up and all go on the walking tour together. During the adventure through the city's sights Kevin and I got to catch up on life since graduation. He told me of his travels prior to Dublin (he was travelling for about 2 weeks prior to when I left) and it seems we must have been in London at the same time as well. Kevin, while on a similar travelling journey around Europe now, will be going to Damaskus following his time in Europe to teach English and work. We split up in the afternoon because he had already done the Guiness stop, but that evening our groups joined forces for a night out in Dublin.

This is seemingly a pretty small town, especially after spending so much time in London. Everything was in walking distance but the streets are pretty hard to navigate as, like in most European cities, they didn't do much central planning and as the small villages grew larger they had to merge their often criss-crossing paths into singular roads. Anna explained that in Dublin, when streets get too long (more than a block) they change names. For what reason? "Eh they just don't like long roads" She explained.

The Guiness Factory was amazing. It's an incredible large, old brick building that has been remodeled internally to create a pathway of a tour that takes you through the various steps and processes they follow to make Guiness. And then the best part...when you finally smell each ingredient and see how they process it you can proceed to the Sky Bar to get your fresh pint of recently brewed beer. And yumm it was good! Probably the best Guiness I can and ever will taste. It was perfect, light, dark, and frothy. Yum!!

That night we went to a Hostel birthday part and listened to Happy Birthday sung in about 7 languages while eating a mixture of sushi, deli meats, cake, and wine.

A beautiful first day in Ireland to be followed by a few days of camping...