Wandering about in County Sketch – June 28th, 2009

This morning we woke up and took our time getting ready, as well as spent some time in the shopping center across the street using the internet. I miss having the internet all the time. The funniest thing is, I don’t even miss Facebook or anything that much, we just miss being able to look things up. It’s really annoying to not be able to figure out the bus schedule…and don’t even get me started on how many things we have to Google once we have internet access for real.

Anyway, we began our day by walking through Trinity College – beautiful. Although, I bet Oxford will be even more beautiful. And we actually get to study there. How cool.

Afterwards, we began our journey to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Oh, what a journey it was. We began walking, and on our way there we passed this cool looking old church. We went in, since we weren’t really on a time schedule, and admission was free…it turned out it was the oldest still used church in Dublin, and was really cool and beautiful inside. The staff were really friendly and told us tons of old history about the church, and we rubbed the “lucky stone” that has been in use since like the 1100s.

Upon leaving, we saw a spire in the distance and assumed that that was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and we should just head that way….not our best idea. We finally got to “St. Patrick’s” and it definitely was not. Another old church instead. We were a bit lost. We walked around a bit trying to figure it out, and finally had to ask directions. Let’s just say we managed to find ourselves in a bit of a sketchy part of town. Not like, gangs on the streets or anything scary or anything, but just a bit sketchy – hence, County Sketch. Eventually we found our way and made it to St. Patrick’s just in time to see it before it closed for the afternoon.

After leaving the cathedral, we had a nice long hike to the Guinness Factory. Funnily, the factory was actually only a few minutes from where we had been walking around in our search for St. Patrick’s…not so funnily, we were exhausted by the time we finally got there.

The Guinness Factory was AWESOME. I really liked it. The way it was laid out was really cool, and it was cool to get to see the way they make it, and have been making it for 250 years. Quite exciting. Then, at the very top of the building (it’s like 7 stories) there is a big bar where you can enjoy a free pint of “the black stuff” and look out over views of Dublin. I drank my pint, and it wasn’t as bad as the first time I tried it in Brazil last summer…but I don’t think it will ever be my drink of choice.

We decided to take the bus back from the factory to the hotel, since we were exhausted from walking all day. We hung out at the hotel a bit to rest, then grabbed some dinner at a nearby restaurant. Pizza again. It’s quite popular and one of the most inexpensive things you can get, so we’ve had it a couple of times.

After dinner, we headed down to the Temple Bar area to watch the football game between the US and Brazil. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the whole bar cheering for Brazil, but whatever, I’m glad they won. I mean, it would have been cool for the US to win, but just a little much to soon…we beat Spain, we didn’t have to win overall.

We then made our way down to Temple Bar again, where they had live music. It was quite fun. We talked to a lot of entertaining people…and I must say that Australia is officially on my list of places I want to go now. First, there was John, the Australian calculus professor who was in Dublin doing research and giving workshops. He was really cool, a lot of fun to talk to. Then, there was Hugh Jackman look-a-like cultural anthropologist who was hilarious. At first he tried to convince me he had no idea where the US was or that it was separate from Canada and I was getting quite frustrated, but he turned out to be really cool. He told me about one of his colleagues who is an anthropology professor at Oxford that I should try to get in touch with, as well as gave me ideas for a future thesis. It was cool.

The band was great, they played a mix between traditional Irish music and American music – like Johnny Cash. It almost sounded like walking into a bar back in the States…I guess drinking music is practically international?

We finally made it in later, after an exhausting day in Dublin.