So we arrived to the Emerald Isle early in the morning after an always interesting RyanAir flight (got to love that people clap when the plane touches down). We checked into our hostel and then went for a walk along the river and towards city hall to get our bearings. We also had plans to go on the free tour in Dublin run by the same company as the one in Amsterdam, (Sandeman tours, or New Europe is what their called for anyone interested) so we had some time to kill before the 1pm tour.
The Luck of the Irish
As we walked down the street from city hall towards the Temple Bar area, we passed a venue called the Olympia theatre. Old charming theatre look on the outside, looked like a really cool place. Well as it turns out in the window there was two large posters advertising an upcoming show for the John Butler Trio, a band I've been listening to for the past year or so but have not seen live. Further investigation (reading the poster, of course) we realized the show was that night, April 8th, 2010. Shocked, surprised, and frantic, I went into the ticket office and asked if they had any tickets left for the show. They said they did, but they were obstructed view tickets, in other words a column was in the way of the view. Becky hesitated about that, but before she could contest I had already bought the tickets. 8 hours until show time.
Excited about our ticket purchase we grabbed a burger down the street and then made our way to our tour.
The tour was once again really awesome, our tour guide kept it interesting and the weather was really nice (unlike Amsterdam) so I didn't mind walking around the city. We heard some pretty interesting stories and saw most of the major sites in the historical parts of Dublin, and on our short visit, fitting it all in quickly is always a plus.
After the tour we walked along the River Liffey and all of the different bridges that cross it. There are some really cool foot bridges that go across the river, but the river itself, not so pretty (probably as ugly as the Tiber in Rome).
We headed to a pub to get dinner early before the show. I got some great beef stew (can always count on the Irish for a good meal I suppose) and we were on our way to the show.
Music is the best Medicine
Around the time we were entering the Olympia theatre, I seemed to have developed a nice little fever (don't tell my mom!). I've been sick as I've mentioned before, and I seem not so be at the peak of my sickness. I thoroughly enjoyed the opening band, Mama Kin, but I was feeling pretty miserable in the headcold department. Then John Butler Trio came on. About an hour into my set, right as John finished playing a solo version of his instrumental song "Ocean", my fever had broken. I'm pretty sure that song did it to me too, because it is about 15 minutes of the craziest acoustic playing you've ever heard (I have video, I'll post eventually). The band absolutely blew me away, and rocked the theater for almost 3 hours. And that "obscured view" that we had? Yeah it was a pillar about 7 rows in front of us and the only thing that it obscured was my view of the far right stage which was completely empty. Luck strikes again.
Today we did some shopping on the main streets and in the Temple Bar area. I say area because Temple bar (for Lord Temple who owned the Barr land of the River Liffey, hence the name "Temple Bar"). It's a nice neighborhood of pubs and shops, and with a big rugby match later tonight it was alive with fans wearing lots of (sometimes ridiculous) yellow and blue outfits. Lunch was a bowl of chicken soup which was really good, and a chicken panini, which was so-so.
We then went to the "most visited tourist attraction in Dublin". Any genius guesses? The answer would be the Guinness factory. This tour was much different from the Bruge brewery tour we went on. It was self guided, much larger, and not in the actual factory but more of a fake setup (much like chocolate world in Hershey Park, even though the Guinness "storehouse" as they call it was actually exactly that, the Storehouse where the beer fermented up until the 90's when they stopped using it). The information and displays they had were equally as interesting and impressive as the Bruge tour, and given the uniqueness of Guinness its no wonder the factory is one of the most visited places in Dublin.
After the factory tour we picked up our bags from the hostel (which was awesome by the way, top 2 I've stayed in, tied with the Barcelona hostel I used) and headed to the airport to catch another Ryan Air flight.
It's too bad we didn't get to stay in Ireland longer and go to another place besides Dublin, but we had an awesome time, fit as much touring in as we could, and even had a nice surprise last night with the concert.
