Lovely(?) (Two) Day(s) for a Guinness

Continuing on my limited European tour, Harrison and I headed off to Dublin. My flight was delayed like five hours, which was awful, but didn't really throw off our schedule. We got to our hostel pretty late and when we went into the dorm room (parents, see, it's better that I tell you about these things after the fact, that way you can see I'm still alive!) which had five bunks of two beds which were *supposed* to be labeled with numbers. But we didn't want to turn the lights on and wake the sleepers, so we resorted to the ever-useful "cellphones are flashlights" rule. My bed didn't have a number, but using our deductive reasoning skills, we figured it out. I slept terribly and woke up the next morning not even sure I was waking up from sleeping.
Saturday morning we headed over to the tourism office to pick up our Dublin Passes, which cost us 35 euros and saved us about 3 euros. Then we went on a FOUR hour walking tour with a guy whose main phrases were "ladies and gentlemen" and "brilliant" but he was kind of funny and at times, informative, so we gave him a reasonable tip (the tour was free) at the end. After that, we headed over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but once we were in line, we decided we didn't really want to spend 8 euro on a book we hadn't heard of until we started researching Dublin, so we walked over to the National Gallery and saw some art instead. Then we kind of wandered back to our hostel, showered, and headed out to find some dinner and walk up one of the main streets in Dublin.
Finding dinner was a struggle, because basically the only restaurants in Dublin are pubs, and I wasn't really in the mood for pub food. Eventually we found this pub and I was delightfully surprised by the penne chicken broccoli dish I had. Then we walked to the Temple Bar area to go for the Irish pub experience, but everywhere was super crowded.

After walking into The Temple Bar and walking out about three minutes later, we just decided to head back to the hostel and ask the "concierge" there for a recommendation of a less crowded, less expensive pub.
He told us to go to the Cobblestone, which turned out to still be crowded but not unbearably so, and so we did. We ordered pints of cider (YUM, America, please get cider, you NEED it) and stood at the bar, chatting and people-watching. There was a really good musician playing in the back room, but it was 12 euro to get in there, so cheapness prevented us (also, I don't think Harrison really cared for her music, but what I heard through the door was beautiful and I wish I could remember the name).
We went back to the hostel early and got in a solid eight hours of sleep before beginning our heavy day of sightseeing.
Although Dublin doesn't really have that one main attraction to draw tourists in, it's got a bunch of little stuff that adds up nicely. We started out with St. Patrick's Cathedral:

took a long walk over to Kilmainham Gaol:

which was interesting, and then headed back toward the center of the city and stopped at the Old Jameson Distillery. Here we went on a tour to see how Jameson whisky is made and then were treated to a "complimentary" (read: included in the price of your ticket) drink at the end. Harrison even volunteered to be one of eight whisky tasters, which meant he learned the differences between a Scotch whisky, an American whisky (Jack) and Jameson. When the tour guide went around the eight of them at the end, asking which was each person's favorite, he blasphemously said the Jack Daniels! They gave him a certificate for being a qualified whisky taster anyway:

Left: Harrison with his certificate; right: my Jameson and ginger ale. 

ALSO, as we walked into the square where the distillery was, we were greeted by HORSES and lots of them. It was weird and I don't know why they were there, but that's that.

Anyway, after Jameson, we walked over to Christ Church, which holds the infamous(?) mummified-ish cat chasing the rat. The story goes that a cat chased a rat up an organ pipe, both of them got stuck and were years later pulled out of the organ. They're preserved down in the crypt of the church and the whole thing is kind of dodgy.
After the church, we went to a museum/hands-on experience called Dublinia, which is more geared toward children, which was kind of relaxing. I didn't learn very much, but we had fun fooling around with the various children's activities. Then we went to the New York Times recommended Queen of Tarts for an afternoon scone (yum!) and then walked up to Dublin Castle for our 4:30 tour. The castle doesn't look like a castle in the medieval sense, because most of that was destroyed and it was rebuilt in the 18th century. There were some really beautiful rooms there, full of Waterford crystal chandeliers and so forth.

They also ushered us underneath the current castle to where you can see some of the old foundations of the original castle, which was built by King John (of Robin Hood fame).
After the castle, we rushed over to the Guinness Storehouse for our final stop of the day and easily the one that draws the greatest number of visitors. We traveled up the floors of the exhibition, working our way toward the Gravity Bar, which is a 7th floor, circular, glass room where you get your "complimentary" pint of Guinness at the end. The view was pretty great, which you'd normally be surprised by, since it's only seven stories, but most of Dublin is short, so we could see basically everything and there weren't many taller buildings than that. Harrison drank about one-sixth of his pint and I (proudly!) finished mine off. I actually kind of like the taste of Guinness, which reminds me of coffee.

I bought my Ireland souvenir in the Guinness gift shop, which is a new poster for my room. It's the one on the right here. 
Then we stopped back at the hostel, picked up our backpacks, and hopped on a bus to the airport. While we were waiting for the bus, we ran into a Yale student on the streets. Small world!
We made it back to London EARLY this time and I was even able to wiggle my way on to an earlier bus back to Cambridge, which was nice, because I was really behind on my homework, and as I write this, I'm only falling more behind.
This week's almost over, and we're leaving for Amsterdam early Saturday morning. This will be the last big trip of my summer, I think.

On an unrelated note, I had my first real pangs of longing for home today. The weather here was AWFUL (like, 50 degrees and raining) and I REALLY wanted to be at home, sitting in the sunshine, doing whatever it is I do when I'm at home in New Jersey with no work to do. So, I'm now looking forward to going home (which could also be a product of the fact that I have a lot of work to do and more to come).

You can find some more pictures (biased toward pictures of Harrison doing weird things and me standing in front of barrels) here. There's a short video that you can find here. I apologize for the terrible videography and the even more lamentable editing.