Sláinte!

Location: Dublin, Ireland
"Sláinte" (pronounced "Slonche") is the Gaelic word for cheers, and since there was plenty of beer drinking on this excursion I figured it was a good place to start. (Also, a previous post was titled "Prost!" in honor of the Germans, and I clearly don't want to play favorites).

Before I left work for the weekend, my coworkers asked me my plans. This has become a routine question they love to ask when we're all together because it's synonymous with "what country is Cash going to tonight"? They thought Dublin was hilarious, but the Spanish apparently seem to really like the Irish. I found this a bit surprising considering their distance from one another, but perhaps many European countries feel the same.

Our hostel was located right on O'Connell street, the main North-South drag in the downtown area. And we were only about a 10-15 minute walk from the main cluster of pubs called "Temple Bar".

Here is a typical "beautiful" day looks like in Dublin. We were actually quite lucky because it only rained one of the days we were there. Before I left the weather prediction was rain everyday...
And this liquor store was conveniently located right across the street from my hostel. Fortune smiles upon me again!
The first stop was Temple Bar. I should clarify that statement, because "Temple Bar" is not only the name of a neighborhood of bars & nightclubs, but also a specific bar within that area. This was taken at the bar with the same name, and clearly they have a wide selection of beers and spirits.
And there was a rugby game on, so it was fun to mingle with the locals and shout or boo when something exciting happened. Here's me with my first Guinness of the weekend.
I also discovered that Smithwicks (a lighter red ale) is my favorite Irish beer. Armed with this important knowledge, I set out to find some Irish girls there. I shortly thereafter wound up befriending 4 French ones instead. Oh darn...

This is me trying to keep a watchful eye on the oncoming traffic. I leave it to you to decide if this was done intentionally.
Here's me with my homie James (Joyce, the famous author).
As I already mentioned, it only rained one of the days I was there. But that one storm had enough wind and rain to completely obliterate the wimpy Spanish umbrella I had brought. So I had to pop into a store to buy another one - except the guy there talked me into getting a poncho instead. It looked really stupid, and thankfully there are no pictures of it. In fact I'll deny the event even happened if you ever ask.
We also noticed an interesting hat & beard as we were shopping around. I was tempted but decided to pass.
The following day we ate lunch at "The Brazen Head", which is the oldest pub in all of Ireland and established in 1198. It even has the Guinness plaque and everything to prove it.
We each chose the typical Irish food of beef stew and pints of Guinness. The food was quite good, and I managed to fall in love with our cute waitress who came over and asked in a thick accent "whad'ta wan' luv?"

The restaurant also boasted daily live music, so we stuck around and watched a local band play a few pieces. Good stuff.
After we left, we were heading back on foot and happened to pass by this neat little church. This picture portrays something I continuously found odd, namely how much grass there was despite the freezing temperatures and continual dampness. Take my word for it that it was much colder than it appears. But then again, it was November in Ireland...
The next planned stop on our agenda was Trinity College. It turned out to be a beautiful campus as others had promised. This is the main quad.
Probably my favorite part of the campus was the famous library which one can only see by paying to see the Book of Kells. I was, however, unimpressed by the book itself but liked the long rows of century-old books in the very old-school library.
The usher in this room was very upset that I was taking pictures (I was even trying to be discreet), especially since I was practically standing next to the "No Pictures!" sign. I consider pretending to only speak Spanish when he approached me, but considering my Caucasian appearance I thought this a rather ridiculous idea.

And just by luck we happened to walk by the annual Christmas-tree lighting festival, complete with a parade and Santa on stilts. The base of the "tree" is on the left-hand side; I think it was at least 100 feet tall and completely made out of lights.
They also had live traditional Irish music (called "Trad" by the locals) as part of the celebration.
And one of the musicians also came out and did some traditional dancing as well. She was quite young (probably in her mid-teens), but I was quite impressed nonetheless. It was my favorite part of the event, and the video is below for your enjoyment as well.

And this is a good shot of O'Connell street with the tree much later that night...which also explains why no one is around.
The next morning we awoke early and hit the road with our first stop being the most famous in all of Dublin, and possibly even Ireland...

Being ambitious folk, we had decided to allot only 90 minutes to the brewery in the hopes of then catching a bus outside the city. Of course this didn't wind up happening, but we ran with it and wound up having a great day anyway. So back to Guinness...

It's a self-guided tour of the 7 story building, and it winds around and has stations where one can stop & read or watch a short video about the brewing process or the history of the business. This is a shot of a facility map.
Notice how the entire inner part is shaped like a pint glass? Something tells me that's not an accident.

This is near the beginning of the tour and entombed into the floor - it is a 9,000 year old lease signed by the original founder, Arthur Guinness. Forward thinking guy!
And they really had a little something for everyone...even us nerdy engineers!
I absolutely loved this quote and will likely always remember it.
One of my favorite parts was this section which showed how the television and printed ads evolved over time. They also had video screens there where one could select and watch any of the television spots...even the ones back in the 50s. Really fascinating to watch it evolve over the decades and various countries; I felt like I was getting a mini-history lesson.
Near the top they have a bar where one can pour "the perfect Guinness", which according to the sassy young Irish lass working there should take slightly over 2 minutes.
The entire top floor is dedicated to a circular room (called the "Gravity Bar") with a bar in the middle and nothing but glass windows looking out over Dublin. And we were lucky enough to have a clear day (a true rarity in winter there) which left us with a great view of the city.
As I mentioned before, all of this took waaayyyyy longer than 90 minutes, which meant we missed our bus and now had nothing planned for the day. So we did what any self-respecting person would do...we went to the other famous alcohol icon of the country.
Unlike the previous tour, they led people through the Jameson distillery. Unfortunately the actual whiskey is now made in another city, but they've largely restored the original building in Dublin so one can still get a feel for it.

Here is one of the earlier steps where they are adding water and mashing the barley.
In the storage room for the raw barley our tour guide explained that historically these used to be a lot of mice & rats trying to eat the grain, so they had a famous cat who is claimed to have averaged 20 kills per day. They were so impressed by "Smitty" that they had him stuffed to commemorate his hard work, and here he is.
Of course not all the tour was that odd, but it was a lot of fun for me to learn how they store the various kinds of whiskey. For instance, I did not know they re-used barrels from very specific kinds of wine and spirits.
Of course the best part was the taste-testing. While everyone was given a glass of Jameson, they also asked for volunteers for a more "full tasting experience". Both my friend and I shot up our hands when the 3rd word in her sentence was "I'll need volunteers...". We were the only ones who did this, and she stopped, looked at us, and said "wow, we're not quite there yet but thanks for the enthusiasm".

Say what you will, but if we're only judged by our results than it was clearly a success...we were both later picked.

What this additional responsibility entailed was to compare an Irish whiskey like Jameson to both a Scottish (Johnny Walker) and American (Jack Daniels) one. Plus they gave time to explain how the processes were different and exactly why the tastes were different.
In the end I could distinguish between the three and had developed my preferences...who knew drinking whiskey early in the day could be so educational!

Later on that night I got a good picture of the Ha'penny bridge, which is named thus because it used to cost a half penny to cross it.
On our last day we awoke early and decided to use our little bit of remaining time to go gift shopping and to walk through St. Stephen's Green again. We had actually seen the park on the first day, but it was close by and we both felt we hadn't dedicated enough time to fully appreciate it.

This is one of the entrances into the park; for those of you who remember my last postings on Paris, Dublin apparently has its own little Arc de Triumph as well!
The park is located near the downtown area and consists of a walking path which loops the grounds and is surrounded by lush tress. A long pond complete with ducks spans the park as well.
There were also these little separate nooks like this one where I imagined poetry readings during the day and clandestine political meetings at night.
There was also a neat look-out point along the trail which overlooked a good deal of the park.
And since it was Fall, the leaves were turning on several of the trees. It made for a very impressive site.
This left us with only a few hours before our flights, so we begrudgingly left behind the city which we had both come to love. Even compared to my previous travels in Munich, Paris, and Madrid, Dublin seems to me a very special place. It's hard to describe exactly why; the weather was terribly cold/damp/windy, everything was fairly expensive, and it offered much less historic sites than most other famous cities in Europe. But the people we met (whether Irish or not) were so much fun, and for me personally it was so easy to integrate with a culture which spends so much time in pubs.

And this final one was taken while sitting in the bar at the airport lounge. Oddly enough, the beer there was the cheapest we saw on our entire trip (a pint of Guinness was 4€ instead of 5€).
Between the beer and hat, this is just about my best Irish impression!

As always, further pictures can be found here.

Paris - Part 3

Location: Paris

Ok I know we've been on Paris for awhile now, but clearly it was a very busy weekend. I promise this is the last segment!

Picking up where we left off (leaving the Louvre), my next destination is also Paris' most famous...the Eiffel Tower. There are several parks in near vicinity, and here is one of them right next to the base.
My friend and I had picked up a bottle of wine while walking there, and we decided it made more sense to drink it before ascending than trying to carry it. Plus we weren't sure what the liquids policy was.

As we sat in the park drinking our wine and eating our baguette with local cheese, this was our view. Not bad, eh?
A half an hour later we were out of wine and feeling adventurous, so we decided to take the stairs rather than wait in the much longer line for an elevator. Directly in front of us standing in line was a little French girl who was not only cute but hilarious. She particularly enjoyed making faces at everyone in line and running her tongue across the entire length of the hand rails. Charming I know, but it provided some humor for the long wait (maybe an hour in total).
As we were walking in, I had the great idea that we should run up the stairs since we were so close to sunset. After all, we could always stop if we got tired. Seems logical, right?!?

I should take a step back and explain how the Eiffel Tower is set up. There are 3 floors, and people are only allowed to walk up the first two. Everyone has to take the elevator up to the 3rd. And the floors aren't evenly spaced either; I'd guess the first two floors only make up about the first half of the tower.

My official time? I can proudly say that I made it to the first floor in 3 minutes and 15 seconds. I was a bit winded, but the effort was well worth it because I just barely caught the tail-end of sunset.
And another one of the Paris skyline.
One amazing thing about this next picture is that it was taken 30 seconds after the previous one, and the sun is completely below the horizon. I'm happy I didn't walk :)
And the view across the Seine river.
I also thought the Arc de Triumph really stood out well at nighttime.We then ran up to the 2nd floor. This took considerably longer and was something like 5 1/2 minutes for me. I also decided upon reaching my destination that perhaps drinking large amounts of wine and running up stairs wasn't the wisest thing to do. A learning experience, one might say.

The elevator line from 2nd to 3rd floor was quite long. It actually looped around the entire floor, and I managed to take this picture looking up towards the top while standing in one of the four corners. I had no idea it was illuminated by blue lights at night, but it certainly looked neat.
And at the start of every hour, there are also white lights which flicker for a couple of minutes. Again, a very cool picture.
This is up on the top floor looking out over the city. It was breathtakingly beautiful, even if a little chilly. But there's a champagne bar at the top where one can purchase a small glass for the "small" price of 15 euros. I passed.

And in case you're wondering, yes that is a spotlight coming from the Tower.
We realized while standing at the peak that the wine stores closed in 15 minutes, and here we were with nothing to drink for the rest of the evening. So we ran back down, which we both agreed was considerably easier than up. Yay gravity. At the bottom we took some more pics, the next one being likely my favorite from the whole trip.
Armed with our next bottle of wine, we continued walking along the river to check out the many beautiful bridges, and in a half-desperate attempt to find a bathroom. Of course we stopped and took some great photos along the way as well.
Here's a great one taken with the blinking lights.
As neat as that picture is, the video below captures the entire scene even better.

Next on our stop was the Moulin Rouge, and it was far enough away that we actually made use of our metro passes (one of the few times). The Moulin is very easy to find; one simply walks off the metro and it's literally right around the corner.
And of course I wanted to walk around and see the nightlife of the red-light district. Many funny & awkward pictures ensued, many of them not appropriate for the general public. But the names of the clubs were quite humorous, including this one.
We actually hadn't managed to eat dinner yet, but luckily we walked past a street vendor selling crepes. Great way to finish an evening.

Our early alarm pulled both of us out of deep sleep the following morning. It was difficult to muster the will to get out of bed, especially since it was so warm under our covers and our room was freezing cold. A warm shower definitely helped, and after stopping for some more breakfast croissants, off we went on the daily adventures.

Our first stop was La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur ("Church of the Sacred Heart"), which despite its striking appearance is actually a "very young" church. I should clarify what the French mean by young...it opened in 1891.
It also conveniently sits on the highest point in the city, so the view can be quite spectacular. Unfortunately it was a bit foggy that morning (as are most in Paris), but the view was impressive nonetheless.
But this incredible picture is actually stolen from the net, but I figured it was too good to pass up. It looks tiny, but I recommend you enlarge it for full appreciation.
We then went by the Arc de Triumph. Even though we had been across the street from it two days before, it was as close as we could get at the time because it was closed.

It was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806, but actually wasn't completed until 25 years later after his exile and the next king had taken over. Here's a fun trivia fact - it's actually the world's 2nd largest triumphal arch behind the slightly taller one in Pyongyang, North Korea.

This was taken right across the street.
I realized one cannot fully appreciate it from across the street; I was much more impressed when standing under it.
And the level of detail on the carvings is amazing as well. Here is one of them, but there are 3 other equally impressive ones as well.
And similar to other triumphal arcs, there are names of fallen generals and high-ranking officers inscribed on walls. This particular one faces North, hence the names are for soldiers who passed on wars in the North (as demonstrated by the "Nord" at the bottom).
We checked our watched and realized we were down to a couple of hours. We thought it best to enjoy a baguette with cheese and a bottle of wine on a bench along the Seine river. (And yes, I too have noticed a preference to enjoy the local drink on these trips. But look at this view? I regret nothing).

In this case the wine turned out to be particularly useful because we stopped by the Musee d'Orsay, Paris' second largest museum and conveniently located right across the river from where we were sitting. I am now of the opinion one should have a slight buzz whenever touring museums.

Musee d'Orsay is actually pretty cool because it is an old converted train station which houses many French pieces (paintings, sculptures, photography, and even furniture) from 1850 to 1915. Unlike other museums which segregates pieces in separate wings, d'Orsay has them all jumbled together. This provided a lot of contrast which made the experience more fun. Of course the wine helped too...

But the inside does kind of look like a train station, doesn't it?

And as promised, there are lots of famous pieces, including this one by Van Gogh.

But my favorites were the sculptures. Most were located in the hallway between the rooms, and I found many to be really cool. Here are a few:

And this pillar reminded me as something from the old computer game "Doom". Really dark and twisted, but very graphic.

And this one was supposed to depict the ancient gladiators fighting in the Coliseum.

And although I don't know the story behind this piece called "Les Nubiens" by Ernest Barrias, I found the detail in it to be incredible.

A lot of people had told me they enjoyed d'Orsay more than the Louvre, and I can see their point. It's much more manageable to do in a few hours (the Louvre's size made it almost seem overwhelming), and there is such a variety of pieces that it really kept my attention.

And then it was time to leave!

As if the weekend wasn't long enough, I wound up getting to the airport about an hour before my flight and was surprised to find check-in had already closed. Mind you, I'm armed with nothing but a small backpack (no luggage to check) and am already in the correct terminal. There wound up being five of us standing there talking to a customer service representative who refused to have someone come down and print out our boarding passes. It was the worst customer service experience of my life (I now have my frustrating experience with the French); she actually lied to us, we called her out on it, and she just left the desk and refused to come back. I'm not normally a violent man, but I will find some measure of solace should some terrible thing happen to AirComet.

I wound up missing my flight and had to go to another terminal and shop for a new ticket. Nothing leaving that night of course, but many hours later I had a ticket for 7am the next morning. Wound up sleeping in a small hotel near the airport, waking up at 5am, caught the flight, and went straight to work for the day. It sucked big time. Still, the weekend was more than amazing enough to dwarf even this hellish experience. And I enjoy joking the city liked me so much that it prevented me from leaving :)

A lot more photos can be found here. I actually ran my camera dead for the first time on this trip, so enjoy!