Eight Hours in Dublin

This is not, I should warn you, a New-York-Times-travel-section-style post about how best to enjoy Dublin in a limited amount of time, unless your definition of enjoyment involves drinking a pint and a half of Guinness for breakfast and walking until your legs feel, for lack of a better word, fuzzy (I'm pretty sure these two things aren't related). But I had a pretty good time during my limited stay in Dublin, despite the fact that a) it rained the whole time, b) most of my trip revolved around me drinking alone, and c) I was operating on literally one hour of sleep. Here's a quick recap:

After leaving my guitar at the airport and meandering my way onto the Airlink bus to the city, I ended up on O'Connell Street, which is home to Dublin's most distinctive landmark: the Spire. It is, quite literally, a giant metal pole, which makes it about as useless as the Washington Monument or the Obelisk (more on the Buenos Aires connection later). 

This picture doesn't really do the Spire justice, but I like the idea of it just being a really big flagpole.

O'Connell is also home to a plethora of American fast food dining options and a continuous line of double-decker buses parading down the street. (Fun fact I overheard on the ride into town: apparently when Ireland first switched to the Euro, they got a big economic boost and invested most of it in roads and public transportation. Now they have 15 percent unemployment and a referendum is looming. The EU giveth and the EU taketh away.)

Dublin is an extremely international city. It has everything from Mexican to Japanese to Turkish to a 50's-style diner complete with red-and-white striped soda jerk uniforms.

From O'Connell I took a city bus over to the Guinness Storehouse, which is a huge, imposing brick complex in what seems like a potentially sketchy neighborhood. I was expecting a tour of the brewery itself, but instead I found myself in an over-the-top beer museum, complete with waterfall cum wishing well and a tasting room overlooking the entire city of Dublin. I learned how to pour "the perfect pint of Guinness" and even got a cheesy certificate to prove it. And I finally realized that the Guinness of Book of World Records fame is, in fact, that Guinness.

The Guinness gift shop is filled with some pretty impractical merchandise, but the ones that take the cake have to be the Guinness time Christmas tree ornament and the pink and blue Guinness boy shorts.

I ended up at the oldest pub in Dublin, The Brazen Head, which looks like a local hole in the wall until you realize that there are more Asian tourists than Irishmen there and that the walls are plastered with dollar bills and NYPD patches. They even serve Budweiser on tap, which seems like some form of sacrilege in a beer Mecca like Ireland, but whatever.

This is what Irish food looks like.

I spent the rest of my time wandering around Dublin. I got to see Trinity College (about as posh as you would expect—you can't even take a campus tour for free there), the outdoor shopping area on Grafton Street, and a quick glimpse of St. Stephen's Green before I had to head back to the airport.

Trinity: The Pomona College of the independent British Isles!

Does Trinity have grass tennis courts? You bet your ass it does!

I'm actually writing this post from within Germany, but I'll pretend that I'm not in order to give you a better first impression of Mannheim tomorrow, when I theoretically will not be loopy and sleep-deprived. We'll see how that goes.