Guinness is Good For You!

To celebrate the late great Saint Patrick, the weekend was spent drinking Guinness in the fine island of Ireland. The trip started off with one of the dumbest moves this term, but all in all turned out to be one of the best thus far.

Friday morning at 2am, I left the house and traveled to Stansted Airport (the main hub of the cheap airline Ryan Air). Upon arriving at the airport, I was told that I couldn't check in here, because I was at the wrong airport. Sadly, there is 5 airports in the greater London area and I had managed to go to the wrong one. Great start to the weekend. Luckily, despite countless complaints about Ryan Air and their customer service, I was able to get on a flight shortly thereafter and was soon in Dublin.

I had the day to myself, as the rest of the gang was set to land at night. With the town at my disposal, I spent my time in the city centre and became accustomed with the city. Did some shopping, hopped on a city tour bus, nothing too exciting, but enough to see all of the city. From there, the Guinness came out in full force. Since I was in Ireland, I tried to be as much as an Irishman as possible. Naturally, this consisted of only drinking Guinness for the rest of the weekend. When I got home on Monday, I couldn't stop drinking water as I was so dehydrated.

Saturday, we traveled on the longest coach ride of my life to see the Cliffs of Moher. It was over four hours of bus each way to the cliffs. Upon arriving, we had about an hour and a half at the actual cliffs. While it was a pretty cool sight, I'm still not sure if it warranted my nearly crippled back and legs at the end of the trip. Much to my disappointment, dumb people wrecked the attraction. Due to the 10-12 people falling/throwing themselves off the cliffs, large walls were erected to prevent idiots risktakers from going to the edge. Of course, Richard and I still tried to get to the edge, but were stopped by the Ranger who blew his whistle at us in an angry manner.

Sunday, a solid 6 hours was spent in the best place in Ireland - the Guinness Factory. I was able to sample all the kinds of Guinness, have many a pint and learn all about the process from manufacturing to advertising to learning that alcohol can inhibit your decision making abilities. All valuable information. I got a sweet poster of my favourite Guinness toucan, with whom I have an unhealthy obsession.

Looking back on the trip, there wasn't a lot done in Ireland. However, it really is just one of those incredible places where you can go into any shop/pub/whatever, share a pint with some friendly people and have a good time. It's pretty tough to not like Ireland, unless you're an idiot.