Dublin!

I get up at 4:30am, catch my cab to the airport and hop on my plane. The flight from Prestwick to Dublin is only about 45 minutes. It is pretty awesome seeing the coast of England and Ireland from the air.

I get in and hop on a bus to the city center. For once I print off directions from the bus drop off to the hostel, which is good because it would have sucked finding it otherwise. I get to the hostel around 9:00am. I can't check in until 2pm. All I want to do is sleep, but I guess that won't work.

I see there is a free walking tour at 11am. I sit around the hostel, eat some breakfast and kill time until the tour. The tour was pretty good. A large group and hard to hear, but defiantly worth going on. I meet two other Americans on it. One studying abroad in France and the other was living in Germany, working on the wine harvest and is traveling before going home. They had met at their hostel before the tour and have been hanging out. We all three get along pretty quickly.

After the tour we decide to do the Guinness Brewery tour. The guy has already seen it and heads back to the hostel. The tour is great. Self guided and paced, which I like. After the tour, you can go up to the sky bar, which has an amazing view of the city and get a free Guinness. The rumors are true. Guinness tastes much better in Ireland than the States. My favorite fact I learned at the Brewery was that the founder believed so much in his beer, when he signed his lease for the land the brewery is one, he signed it for 9,000 years. So yes, Guinness will still be there in Dublin for about 8,800 more years. Now that my friends is foresight.

I head back to the hostel and finally check into my room. I take a small nap and eventually head back down to the hostel common area. I met a pretty cool guy who from Canada who just finished high school and is back packing for a year. Hanging out with him and one other guy, who is French, we meet a group of 6 girls the States, who are studying in London together.

After a bit they invite us out with them to the bars. We head to the main and famous bar district in Dublin. We hop from bar to bar. One of the girls asks me to pretend to be her boyfriend because creepy guys keep hitting on her. Yay for being non-threatening!

After a late night at the bars, followed by pizza we all head back to the hostel and I finally sleep.