Grafton Street

  After our crazy adventures on the west coast, we took it easy on Tuesday, wasting excessive euros on Grafton Street, Dublin's main shopping street is the pedestrianised path lined with stores like Brown Thomas, River Island, and Chanel. Good stuff! Had the best tortellini of my LIFE at an outdoor Italian bistro. There was a lot of interesting shops, cafes, galleries, used book shops, and vintage record stores that were so much fun to browse through. I enjoyed a Premiere McChicken at McDonalds, and honestly, it wasn't that bad. It has "herbs" which is typically unheard of at our McDonalds. Plus, they had relatively nice wood paneling on the walls, and flat panel TVs inset into the paneling with music videos continuously looping. That's kinda cool. Much better than our infant vomit infested indoor playscapes here in America. Ah well...

After a fun day of engaging in my favorite sport, we showered and stuff back at the hotel and headed out to the city center again. This time, we shared a bus ride and a cab with an old Libyan man, who has travelled the world. He shared many opinions, stories, and reccomendations, which was incredibly interesting. He said he has a house in Ireland because its simply beautiful, and the people are among the nicest in the world. When we told him we live in a suburb of New York City, he told us he didn't like the city because he didn't feel safe, and he didn't like "the black people running around at night with all the drugs." Incredibly warped vision of what I consider to be an awesome city! I'll just assume he's a racist who visited Times Square in the early 90's. Good conversation though! Can't deny that...

After that episode, we went to our favorite pub again, Quays, where a guitarist was doing his thing upstairs. We sang along to his traditonal Irish tunes, and his modern covers with our Guinness glasses waving in the air. He really captured the local crowd, and declared he'd have one more song for the night. Like teenage girls from 1964, Sean and I whispered to eachother, "Beatles! Beatles! Do Beatles!"...The man yells in his fabulous little Irish accent, "It's a little tune from the Beatles!" This time like drunken Giants fans from New Jersey, we shoot our fists in the air and grunt out manly, "Yeeeaaaa's"! The guy plays "All My Loving" and gets the crowd really going. He knows his time is up, the the crowd is chanting for an encore. The bartenders shut off his audio, but he gives in and sends a signal to them to turn it back on. The bartenders say no, and refuse to turn it back on, despite the roudiness of the whole pub. Finally, the guy says fuck it, rips the amp cord out of his acoustic, and starts playing "Hey Jude" anyways! The entire pub is singing along, loudly, and the climax came during the "na, na, na, na na na naaaaaaa" parts, where the glasses were being pounded on the tables, and the feet stomping on the floor, and the lyrics being screamed at the top of a pub full of lungs. It was surreal! We all got so into it!! They ended the music, but we happily finished the night with some Franz Ferdinand blasting from the downstairs section. Fuckin awesome night!