Rocky Road....

...to Dublin. It's a great Dropkick Murphys song. Download it.

Dropkick Murphys is the reason we actually headed for Dublin on Thursday this week. The concert was Thursday night at Tripod in Dublin. We left Cork around 12 and arrived in Dublin at about 5. On the bus we met a boy from Canada and when we arrived at the Bus Station we started chatting and exchanged numbers. It turned out that his name is David, he is 18 years old and got a work visa, packed his backpack and headed for Ireland. He spent the day looking for potential roommates and some job possibilities and he's going to spend the year working in Ireland and travelling. Amazing. We walked to our respective hostels and checked in and then headed to a convenience store for "dinner". "Dinner" consisted of bread and butter, a red bull (sugar free!) and potato wedges. There may have been candy thrown into the mix as well. Don't judge us. While we feasted I gave David a call, he met with us and we proceeded to the concert. It took us a while to get there but after asking several people directions we finally found our way to the queue (pronounced like the letter "q" - means that we got in line =] ) The bouncer gave our friend Paul a bit of a hard time, but in good humor. We picked up our tickets and walked into the venue which was filled with Dropkick fans from around the world. We met people from Germany to North Carolina. It was so cool. The concert was pretty intense with a good deal of moshing, and crowd surfing. However, lucky for me it was quickly realized that I wasn't a "girlfriend." Meaning - I wasn't just there beacuse my boyfriend was there and I tagged along. The surprised looks on people's faces when I knew all the words the songs, were priceless. I got a lot of high-fives and fist-pounds simply out of shock that I knew the music. It was great. It was extremely helpful when they began throwing the crowd around, men will help to hold a woman up or keep her secure from any crazies that are pushing her around. It was fantastic. Didn't hurt that I was able to stay dead center and about 2-3 people back from the stage. I was so happy. At one point my favorite song came on, and I was legit jumping up and down in the middle of these crazies moshing and I felt someone rub my head playfully (which was probably great since I was sweating and nasty and had SO much beer poured on me by then) and I turned to see that it was my friend Paul (also one of his fave songs) who had SOMEHOW found me in the crowd. It was nice to know I could still be found my my crew. About a quarter in I realized that there were arms protecting me from everything around me. I had no idea who they belonged to but they created a fantastic protective bubble for me and helped me to stay upright even when nobody else could stand on their own two feet.
Eventually, the concert ended and we headed out the door. I waited around with a friend who got a copy of the set list and had it signed, and I got a picture with one of the lead singers. It's not a good picture at all. But that's ok. While I waited to leave I looked around for my "saviour" that had protected me the whole night but I couldn't find him anywhere which bummed me out I really wanted to thank him. Luckily on our way out the door I looked over to see him chilling along a fence, I pointed at him, I had never gotten a good look at him so I wasn't totally sure if it was him. But he said, "Hey" and clearly knew who I was. I gave him a hug and thanked him for saving my life and invited him to hang out with us for the rest of the night. It turned out that he was from North Carolina and was studying in Germany for the semester and came to Dublin alone just to see the Dropkick Murphys Concert. We hung out for awhile and chatted, I actually met some people from Chelmsford which was pretty amazing. Then we exchanged numbers and went our separate ways with plans to hang out the next day too.
The next day we went to the Guinness factory! It was so much fun! It's a really cool place and you get the feeling that Guinness is a religion to these people. It was awesome. PLUS While we were watching them talk about how they brew a Guinness they called on me to start a Brew of Guinness and then they took down my information so I now have a brew of Guinness named after me! Brew #2310 - Brittany Dalphond. I don't know about you but I thought that it was pretty cool. After the tour we headed to get our free pint of Guinness, which was clearly the best pint of Guinness I will ever have in my life. Then Paul and I headed down to the other bar to try the other Guinness stouts. We tried Guinness Foreign Extra Stout which is only available in the Caribbean and parts of Africa and has 7.5% alcohol. It was amazing. The best beer I have ever, ever had. I highly recommend it if you are ever in Dublin, Africa or the Caribbean. =]
After we finished with the Guinness factory we headed back to town and decided to grab lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dublin. It just seems right that you go to a Hard Rock Cafe if there is one there. I don't know why, but it's one of those places that it's nice to say oh well I was in this Hard Rock in this city and that city, etc. So we got over priced food and drinks, personally I went with chicken caesar salad because I'd been craving it. It was PHENOMENAL.
We then walked back to the bus station and got in line for our bus back to Cork. Chris stayed and waited with us and chatted until it was time for us to board the bus. Thankfully it was a direct bus, so there were no stops and we made it back to Cork in 4 hours. On the bus we met an amazing person named Mike who has spent the last 5 years travelling and living in various parts of the world but grew up in Cork. He gave us tons of information of the best places to go all around Europe and told us the tips and tricks of finding the inexpensive areas in all the places that we plan on seeing. He even gave us help with our computers. I don't know how we got onto the topic of computers but I'm certainly thankful for the help. We ended up chatting almost the entire bus ride. It was great, he was such a nice guy.
Once we arrived in Cork we walked back to our apartment and went right to bed, we were exhausted and we had a field trip for our Archaeology class the next day.
We were exhausted Saturday morning, which is why it took us extra time to get to the bus. We ended up being the last people on the bus, but that was only because the people that showed up after us had to take the professor's car because there wasn't enough room in the bus for everyone. It was, interesting. In any case the field trip was really cool. We saw a lot of really amazing places and it was so cool to stand in the middle of something that has been around for centuries. We stopped for lunch at a cute little town and Carolan Pat and I found a nice little restaurant where we grabbed some authentic Irish food. It made Carolan's day. She talked about what she ate and how good it was for the whole day. By the time we got back I was exhausted, and we all just went to bed. Carolan and Sam went hiking the next day, but I knew I wouldn't have been able to stay up all night to see the Superbowl if I had gone hiking and when I talked to them today it was clear that there was NO way I'd have been able to stay awake for the game.
Sunday was wonderful. I had the apartment to myself and I went to gym and then spent the day cleaning and doing laundry and just hanging out around the apartment. It was nice to have a day of nothing. Around 8:30 we headed to Skybar which is the only bar we could find that was playing the whole game. My (Irish) friend Colin told me about it. It was awesome. It was filled with Giants fans and a few Pats fans, but it was nice to have that rivalry in the crowd and feel the tension and the excitement. CLEARLY the feelings of the Irish fans were very different from our, and it was obvious that it meant a lot more to the Americans that were there. But it was still nice. They did a raffle and lucky me I won a poster of the winning team. Riiight, that could have been awesome. While filling out my information a man who was over there commented on my T-shirt (which I had gotten at the concert on Thursday) "Dropkick Murphys," I replied, "Yeah I went to the concert in Dublin on Thursday. It was phenomenal." We then chatted about them for awhile and it turns out her actually grew up in Worcester (as if his Patriots hat and T-shirt and Levi jeans weren't already a big signal that he was from the states)and he knows the band pretty well because he grew up with some of them. Apparently they hang out when they are in Germany, he now lives there, and they grab a drink after their concert and he hangs out backstage with them. My response to this? "Can we be friends?" Yes I seriously said that. His response, laugh, "Yeah." We continued chatting about the Pats, Dropkick, etc and he gave me his card. In case you were wondering, I sent him an email today. After a few bouts of hope, some nail biting, a little nauseau and plenty of yelling and jumping, the game ended. Needless to say I was quite sad, depressed, dejected, somber, melancholy, etc at the end of the Patriots game. We were going to continue the night, half of us celebrating half of us being sorrowful, but since it was 4am here, we decided it would be wise to go to bed. And so ended a fantastic weekend, on a sorrowful night. My heart is sad. =[ I wish I could have watched it with you Daddy, and you should have been at the Guinness factory. It was cool, I wish I could share these experiences with you. I love you.
Going to go study for a quiz tomorrow. Should be hearing from a nearby surf school tomorrow too so that I can start surfing, it's prime time for surfing in Ireland.
I'm trying to put pictures up. I'll update the page as soon as they are up. My internet connection here is funky. Sorry! I <3 you all!