Dublin...the last day

Well today was our last day here, and we spent it finishing up things
in Dublin. First we trekked over to the Dublin Zoo. That was looking
pretty shady at first, as it was expensive and raining pretty hard
outside. But it was too long of a walk to turn back, so we went in
anyway. Turns out it was pretty solid, and the rain slowed down
thankfully. Some of the glass panes you were supposed to see through
were fogged up, but we saw a lot of classc zoo animals. Tigers,
giraffes, rhinos, monkey of various sizes, penguins, etc. Pete is a
zoo conneseur, and thought it was good, so that's good enough for me.

We had a serviceable lunch at the zoo tea house, then made our way to
the Guinness storehouse. So to say Guinness is huge over here is an
understatement. Every pub has a Guinness sign out front, all of them.
Which is a lot.

The Guinness campus is pretty gigantic, and the tour goes up 5
stories. There was a guided audio tour that you were encouraged to do,
but we went on our own. So certainly we missed a lot of the finer
points of the tour, but there were lots of pretty pictures, and at
this point in the "holiday" I think all of our brains are collective
mush. The top (7th floor) is a glass walled round bar at which you got
a free pint of Guinness. Definitely worth the experience. I'm pretty
sure my pictures are rubbish (I'm getting the hang of this!)
unfortunately. We'll see.

Then we hoofed back to St Patricks cathedral, which wasn't free like I
hoped it would be. Huge, old, beautiful church. Really would have been
cool to see a service there, but oh well.

On the way back to the train, Brandon picke up some shoes that he'd
been searching for for a while now - it was quite the shady
transaction, though we all survived. We had a few minutes to spare on
the trip back to the hotel, and we attempted to see the history
museum. Sadly it was about to close, so that didn't work out. No big
deal.

For dinner...earlier in the day I ran across a dinner show called "The
Irish House Party" that featured live music and dancing, and it was
right down the road from our hotel. We sat at a 5 person table with 3
swedish people, which was fairly awkward until Pete broke the ice with
some small talk (good work sir). Actually, that really didn't make it
any less awkward, but was at least entertaining.

The dinner was solid, but not really spectacular I think. The Irish
music and dancing after though was quite awesome. The three of us
actually were featured in a little dance lesson with three older
women, which was pretty hilarious. Luckily, there's no proof of that
ever happening :) In fact, the whole crowd seemed to be right off the
Dublin tour bus for the elderly, with the excepion of one Canadian
couple that claimed to be from "North America" when asked, which was
weird.

Anyway it was a great way to end our week. Tomorrow, travel travel
travel. It's hard work being a tourist in a foreign country, and while
it's been a great experience, I've had enough with being a tourist.
I'm ready to go to Applebees, get a diet coke with ice, and drive
there on the right side of the road (well, maybe not Applebees
specifically, but you get the idea).

Ireland, it's been grand. America, I'm coming home!