so last weekend, i..
this past weekend was definitely the highlight of my trip so far, but first things first. ireland was last weekend..
the first stop was dublin. i took this picture from the connely bridge while on the way to my hostel.
after checking in to our respective hostels, the group met for a yummy dinner at an italian restaurant. in ireland, they use EUROS instead of POUNDS as the currency, so prices were finally relatively back to normal. very good meal.
that night, we hit up the famous temple bar. well, i'd never heard of it before, but apparently ireland is somewhat known for it.
when you go to ireland, you have to drink a guiness beer. or so i've heard. so i bought this stupid pint of guiness, and of course, being the non-beer-drinker that i am, i despised it. however, being the chinese person that i am, i managed to gulp down the majority of the glass so my money wouldn't go to "waste." bah.
random picture under a random fake palm tree along the street. thug style, of course.
crossing the connely bridge again, but with a little more flair this time.
the next day, we went to the guiness brewery place and went on a tour. very interesting stuff in there. i learned a lot about the entire beer-making process, so if i ever decide to start brewing beer, i'm pretty much set.
on the 4th floor of the place, there was this thing where you could fill out a little notecard and sorta leave your mark at the brewery. so of course we americans left our mark.
and then on the 5th floor, we received our "complimentary" guiness. taylor, anjali, and i took one sip and left the rest of our drinks into the trusty, alcholic hands of alan and sara.
i like this picture a lot.
in our last day in dublin, we visited saint patrick's cathedral, where we got a free tour from the dean. now how cool is that?
of course, i found some time to discover a few fun places as well, including an arcade. check out the HUGE crane game. the crane's bigger than my head!! unfortunately, the game costs about $2 for each play =(
can you tell we're tourists?
on the train ride from dublin to belfast, we met some interesting people..wait. excuse me, some interesting, drunk people. a very entertaining train ride, i might add.
eating fish and chips in belfast. this place was so bad it made me hate fried food. can you believe it?
we took this thing called the "black cab tours" the next day, where we learned all the history behind belfast. man, there's SO much stuff you don't hear about back in the US of A, it's amazing. anyways, in northern ireland (which is a part of the UK), there's this whole sorta hatred thing going on between the protestants and the catholics. so we found a bunch of stuff like in this picture. pretty scary stuff sometimes. anyways, this one was just interesting because no matter where you stood, the gun was always pointed at you. sorta like mona lisa's eyes, except you're looking down the barrel of a gun.
near the end of the tour, the cab driver brought us to this wall that had been built to keep the protestants and the catholics from killing each other. there was a bunch of stuff painted and written on it, but this quote is my favorite. "only the dead have truly seen the end of war." true that.
so that was last weekend in ireland.
anyhow, this is my last week of class here. my finals are on wednesday and thursday, and then i'm off to london, with maybe a stop at sterling. i'll share about my past weekend some other time, but i'm afraid i am both hungry and tired of typing. later ya'll.
