Ireland: Day One

After a somewhat uneventful flight (except when Joe passed out and we didn't find out till later), we arrived in Ireland. We think (?) the food on that flight was good, but we don't remember for sure. All Shannon recalls were the many Bailey's and coffees we consumed. Shannon recalls a French mademoiselle at the airport who kept trying to ask Shannon how to use her cell phone. Shannon announced, "American! American!" and Crepes Suzette's face fell. At the airport we consumed our first European meal: a bag of Lord of the Rings "Fruits of the Shire" we split amongst the five of us. Note: Emily went all Gollum with the rings. Note 2: We don't know the guy in the picture, but he's wearing a ring on his schnozz and for that we applaud him. After Hobbit time, we got in a cab that we presumed was taking us to our hotel. Oh no, the body-odor stricken driver took us to a different hotel. We were suspicious when he said it had a pool, as we knew it couldn't be that high quality. So we got to the hotel, and met up with the rest of our group. I don't know what I was expecting out of this tour group, but the mostly geriatric motley crew we encountered was not it. Everyone there was over 40, most over 60, except for one girl in her 20's and a youth (with a misshapen face that no one mentioned until the last day, it was the proverbial "elephant in the room") who took to prowling in odd places. The dad of the said youth looked remarkably like Dr. Robotnik, so we named his son Knuckles. Also, three men in the group (count'em, three, including Robotnik) looked like Cliff Clavin. They were dubbed the "Cliffs of More." Pictures of them will ensue.

After meeting "Peter," our tour guide, an older gentlemen with various forms of dental malady, we made a stop at Dublin Castle. Pretty rooms, not much else to say except they really liked Bill Clinton there. We moved on to the Guinness Storehouse, "to learn about the origins of the famous brewery and how the popular black brew is created." That info comes to you courtesy of our tour brochure. Peter referred to Guinness as "liquid viagra," informing us that "there's a baby in every bottle." No word on where or how Peter was conceived. At the Guinness Storehouse, a strange trade went on: we got pebble with "the black brew" in them that we showed the bartenders in exchange for a free pint. Much better than a Girls Gone Wild "flash for a t-shirt" exchange. We hung out at the rooftop bar and encountered some other tourists taking pictures of us. I don't get it either. A befuddled Joe and Shannon managed to get lost on the stairs at the Storehouse, but managed to rejoin the group a bit later. Deciding to opt out of hotel food for our first night, we had the bus drop us off at a restaurant called Panama, where we enjoyed some paninis and encountered our first "sex & candy machine." This machine sold both condoms and sweet treats. After changing clothes at the hotel, we headed out to the Temple Bar area of Dublin, which features lots of bars and street performers (one who jumped, jumped, jumped in a burning ring of fire). Our first stop was an unknown bar where we encountered a lad from Blackpool who told Emily her shirt reminded him of candy. Due to his terribly thick accent, Shannon had to translate. The dude also told Shannon she looked like Alanis Morrissette, and thought Joe actually was Justin Timberlake, so he was kind of iffy. After stopping at another unknown bar for shots of whiskey, only to have Joe befriend a toothless patron, we ended up at a club called The Ballroom (take the movie tour, it's worth it). This hotspot was where we had our first encounter with the popular men's trend of 2003 in Ireland, the diagonally striped shirt. They were everywhere. The Ballroom was fabulous, we heard a lot of "In Da Club," which was a little disconcerting, but the music was overall high caliber. Among the patrons were a man who kept licking his fingers in order to groom his eyebrows. His cronie wore a mesh shirt. We also encountered some British girls who were highly amused by Phil's knowledge of Knight Rider. Finally, we encountered some very nice Irish lads. Emily's paramour, Ronan, informed Emily that she had a lovely "figger." Shannon's wee love, who stood a head shorter than her, was named Fergus. He kept trying to convince her to come back to his apartment and "talk all night," but Shannon resisted the mini-Irish Don Juan. Numbers were exchanged, and Emily called Ronan upon return to Dublin. However, Ronan's sister had just given birth so he was in his hometown (possibly Tipperary, we're not sure). Eventually hunger pangs lured us away from our Irish loves (though Shannon almost encountered a drunken paramour at the place where we got food) and Joe bought himself a panini. Maybe we should call it The Panini. The Panini was the most amazing food ever consumed. After one bite of the ham n' cheese concoction, we were hooked and went back to buy our own. After purchasing said paninis, it was time to get a cab. We hailed a cab, only to see that food wasn't allowed. We let the cab driver go, but he was quite angry, yelling, "This ain't a f**kin' restaurant!" Sketchy. . . we consumed our sandwiches and got a more gracious driver to take us home.

Pictured: Fruits of the Shire, a guy with a ring on his nose.