Guinness is good for you

Disclaimer: Although I don't feel I need to defend myself for all the drinking stories I've posted lately, I feel a small preface is necessary. While I was not drunk my entire time abroad, drinking did happen to be our main activity, at least in the evening. Not only is it the Irish way to have at least one beer at some point during the day, drinking in another country is the best way to meet people and have a good laugh. Also, I think any reader, whether my relative or a cyber buddy, would rather hear a story about a fun night than about how I sat on a tour bus for five hours and saw some cool rock formations. Pretty scenery is better told in pictures; Hannah's disheveled experiences are better told in words.

This post will include a few words on Dublin and Belfast. Later, I will continue my account.

We were having a couple beers at Karl Strauss when Erin was telling me about her upcoming trip to Ireland and Spain next month. I got really jealous. So I bought a ticket. A very expensive ticket.

Having already been to Spain a few years ago, and having no desire to return, I was just going to travel with the group of six (me, Erin, Heather, Chris, Jen, and Kallie) in Ireland then return home from there. Our first day in Dublin, Erin and I knew we just wanted to get a Guinness at a pub: the quintessential Irish initiation. The next night was when I indulged in many a quintessential beverages. Too many, if you care to know. I don't know why. I think I was just excited to be in Ireland and really thirsty I guess. Erin and I still wanted to go out, because the bars seem never to close in the Temple Bar district. Kallie wanted to go back to bed because she had just gotten in that day and was tired. But when we dropped her off at our room (Kallie and I shared a room with four strangers; Erin and the other three in our group shared another room with other people) she got scared because our Swiss roommates were apparently really drunk and turning lights off and scratching at the door or something. (When I asked the boys about it later, they didn't know what I was talking about. But then again, we had a bit of a language barrier and they were probably a bit out of their minds and unable to remember anything.) I tried to lay down to go to sleep, but I had the spins. Never go to sleep with the spins. You'll wake up with them. So I went downstairs to use the pay phone to call Theodore with my phone card. Phone cards will be the death of me, I swear it. After sitting there for about five minutes unsuccessfully connecting with the boy in California, I started crying. (Surprise surprise.) I turned around and see a pretty French Canadian girl waiting to use the phone, but she was too polite to kick me off. I sat on the steps while she used the phone and her friends talked with me, letting me practice French.

"I'm sorry I'm so drunk. This is so frustrating and embarrassing," I said.

"No. Don't worry about it. It's normal," one girl said.

"Normal?"

"Yeah. In Canada, it's totally normal to be drunk. Don't worry."

For some reason, they made me feel so much better. I didn't feel good enough to drink that much on the trip again; but at least I no longer felt guilty for having a couple extra beers. (NOTE: If you want to sleep in on a trip to Dublin, or even Galway, don't stay in the center of town. Around 6 or 7 in the morning, you will hear a clank-clanking so loud you'll think it's your shitty, hostel bunk bed crashing around you. It sounds like a screamless riot in the street. No yelling. Just throwing things at each other. You will look out the window with a blistering headache and see people rolling their empty kegs--the kegs you helped finish--down the cobblestone streets. They will do this for about two hours. Good luck.)

(TIP: If you go to Ireland, yes, order Guinness. But be sure to order the cider they have on tap as well. It's Bulmers, normally. It's delicious always.)

The next few days in Dublin were fine. We did some good dancing, saw some pretty parks. The next town we went to was Belfast. Every time we would tell people about the cities we were going to visit, they would nearly vomit when we told them we were going to Belfast.

"Why would you go to Belfast?"

"I don't know. We just kind of picked it."

"But it's so boring."

"Well, we'll decide for ourselves."

They were right. The moment we got off the bus, we were a bit disoriented. We had to exchange our money because Belfast is in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK, which still uses the pound, which sucks for us because it's a higher exchange rate than the euro, which is much easier to use than the pound. We walked for what felt like an hour (later I was told it was only 30 or 40 minutes) until we finally found our hostel: The Linen House. Sounds like a hip name for a hostel. But no. It smelled horrible and it was so crowded because I guess a bunch of people were staying there to see Pearl Jam that weekend. We were all scared to sleep on the beds because there were all these stains and almost visible bugs crawling in and out of the pillow case threads. (We all dressed our pillows in shirts and sweatshirts for the two nights we were there.) But we liked the brick walls, even if it felt like we were sleeping in an alley.

The city was weird, too. I have a theory that the reason the city is a little less defined than most major cities is because it doesn't really know who it is. It's not quite a tourist spot; (They have Giant's Causeway and boast being the construction site of Titanic, which Erin thinks is rather presumptuous given the fact that the monstrous boat is now only known for sinking.) it's not quite a party town; (We went out one night and it was just bizarre: weird music, bad dressing. We did see our first real Irish bar fight in Belfast, though. The club was closing up, the DJ kept shouting "Give it up to our California girls Hannah, Heather, and Erin!!!" and playing an embarrassing techno, Irish jig rendition of "Single Ladies", when a girl tapped Heather on the arm and said, "Look. Look. A fight. A bar fight. Look." Like it was some sort of pack of animals: those coyotes everyone knows roam Mission Viejo because we hear their howls; when you see one you're not shocked, but you stare until it's passed so you can talk about it over breakfast the next morning. We look over and there is a group of eight or so people tangled up and moving around like a blob. I really thought they were playing that game, Pretzel, where you get tangled then have to untie yourselves. The bouncer and DJ ran over to break them up. Excitement.) and it's not quite a shopping town. (We went to a mall that looked almost identical to an American shopping mall. It was weird.) Everything closes early and we never really felt comfortable.

What was cool about Belfast was going on the tour of Giant's Causeway. I don't feel like taking the time or energy to describe it, so just look at the pictures. But basically it was an all day tour with the Carrick-a-Reed rope bridge, Giant's Causeway, and the Bushmills whiskey distillery. Our tour guide was hard to understand over the bus speakers; but when we did catch his anecdotes, they were all incredibly depressing.

"See that thing that looks like a shadow in the water? That's actually a salmon farm. One time, jelly fish stung all the salmon and they all died a horrible death and the people in this village lost their income for the entire fishing season."

"See that castle on the right hand side? There used to be 200 servants working in that castle for the family that lived there. Then lightening struck the side of the building and all 200 people fell to their deaths into the water."

"Coming up on your left hand side are three famous caves. The third cave was where kids would came to do horrible things because they did not have a fulfilling home life."