Friday Night!!!!

I'm so wild and crazy that I'm sitting here in Dublin blogging on a Friday night.

Actually, we spent the whole day on a bus tour of Glendalough (Valley of Two Lakes in Irish) and Kilkenny, and we just got back. We overslept this morning and had to dash to catch the bus, so now that we're back we're cleaning up before going out.

I uploaded a bunch of new pictures in the Ireland folder on my Picasa page, so you can just click on the slideshow on the left here and then browse to that folder.

They haven't invited us to move here, or offered us lucrative jobs at the Guiness Brewery yet, but maybe they will. If so, we'll see y'all at Christmas!

I had a Boxty for dinner last night, which I had never seen before, but it was really good. It's a potato pancake filled with your choice of meat etc. I had corned beef and cabbage in a wine sauce, and I'd do it again.

I still haven't found any good black pudding yet, but there are two more mornings, so keep your fingers crossed.

We have lots to tell about, but I'll wrap it up so we can go with how we wrapped up last night. We went on a musical tour of Dublin, guided by two local musicians who played authentic music at 4 different pubs. THIS is right up our alley.

Pubs: check

Traditional (read: nerdy and weird) Irish Music: Check.

We were there, bells optional.

It was great, and we learned a little about the music and then they told us about another pub where musicians gather to play to one another, not for the crowd. We went there, The Palace Bar on Fleet Street, until closing time and it was terrific. Whether or not a late night of Guinness had anything to do with sleeping late today, I don't know.

One more anecdote. Apparently the traditional Irish monasteries were pretty low key and our tour guide said they monks were like free living hippies and they made a lot of money and had a great time. But, the pope decided in the 13th century that he wasn't getting enough revenue from the monks in Ireland, so he sent the stern Cistercians over to straighten them out.
The result? All the monasteries closed because being a "good Catholic monk" wasn't fun anymore.

You see why we like it here?