Ireland trip was pretty cool. i just got home and i'm pretty tired so this entry will be in english. plus other people could read it too.

Day 1 Thursday
We landed in ireland about 11:30pm and found a bus to our hostel. the directions to the hestel were terrible, plus we didn't have a map so it took us a while to find the place. The hostel was about what i expected, 5 or 6 bunks per room.

Day 2 Friday
got up at 7:30, walked around downtown dublin. we ate breakfast at a semi-sketchy place but the food was awsome. then we headed to the guinness storehouse, which also took a while to find due to our lack of map. We were there at 9:30am so the place was nearly empty. i'm glad we went early because by the time we left there was a long line. The tour was self guided. it was pretty interusting, i liked the big water fountain that had nothing to do with guinness. At the end of the tour we got a free pint of guinness at the Gravity bar, which is a bar at the top of the building with an awsome view of the entire city. i took a couple sips of my guinness and gave it to randy.

second destination of the day was St. Patrick's cathedral. i was excited to be able to point out and name parts of the cathedral that i learned in my into to architecture class i'm currently enrolled in. we happened to go at a good timing, and as soon as we sat down to take a break, a youth choir came in and started singing. they were awsome, but i was very tired so i slept though most of it. i really needed the nap, i could bearly sleep at the hostel.

since we were both super tired now (2pm-ish) we walked back to the hostel and took a hour and a half nap. after regaining some energy, we went and walked around the city to look at some stores. everywhere we went in dublin, you can't avoid seeing the word "guinness" somewhere. after i decided not to spend money on shirts for tourist, we went to temple bar (area with lots of bars) to find dinner. i figured i'm in ireland so i should eat irish food, so we found a pretty nice restaurant that serves traditional irish dishes. mmm it was gooood. after dinner we went to a bar/venue and they looked like they were having a band play so we waited around for it. it turns out that the band consisted of 3 guitarist who could bearly play, a keyboard, and a drummer who played a drum machine... so we left during the first song.


Day 3 Saturday
we planned on going to the country side today, but it turns out that it would take way to long to get there by bus, so we stayed in dublin. now that it was our last day here, we found a free map at the bus station. now equipped with a map, we were able to find out way to the national museum. we found it alright, but the road to the museum was blocked off, so we while we were going around to find another way in, we passed the national gallery and decided to stop there. spent a couple hours there, and headed towards the musieum again. another stop was made at the oscar wilde memorial. went we got to the street the museum was on, again, it was blocked. we asked the officers if there's any way to get to the museum, they told us it was closed. i thought hmm... it said it was open saturdays... but went to the natural museum close by. when we got out of the museum, we heard percussive music so we thought, hey maybe we can find out what all the road blocking was about. we saw the people playing and parading (there's a picture) and i, along with the other tourist taking pictures thougth "cooool". but smart randy thought "hmm why is there so much police for just a parade. and they look really concerned." then a couple minutes later randy said "oh man, that's the northern irish flag! we better get out of here". so we walked a couple blocks away and we see a cop car speeding passed us towards the parade, and following the cop are was hundreds of people yelling and thowing stuff. i quickly followed randy into a store, which locked their doors right after we got in. the store windows were all broken by the time they were passed.

got out of the store very frightened, and headed to the bus stop since we figured we should find a way to get to the airport as soon as possible. the main street that we were suppose to catch the bus was trashed and stores still had their gates down. we ended up walking north for a while until we found streets that were functioning normally. got to the airport, and came back to kingston safely.

here is the link to cnn's artile on the riot
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/25/ireland.unrest.ap/index.html

i'm very glad randy was there to get us out right in time. otherwise i probably would have been stuck there, with all the other tourist that were saying "i wonder if this is for the rugby game". i had almost no knowledge about ireland and northern ireland, there's no chance i would've recognised they're flag. well, now i know.