“It tastes like Christmas”

After our Spanish final on Thursday a bunch of us guys from Westmont flew to Dublin for the weekend. One highlight of our trip was the amazing food we ate for dinner each night, within an hour of arriving in the city we had already found an awesome restaurant and promptly ordered hamburgers (something Spain isn’t too good at making) and it wasn’t long until our friendly Irish waiter brought out our big, warm, and juicy burgers made with real beef! (something Spain doesn’t use in their burgers). He also brought out a tray of condiments that were just what we’d use in the US, except one of the packets was ambiguously labeled, Brown Sauce, which led us to the obvious question of “I wonder what Brown Sauce tastes like?” Danny bravely gave her a try and immediately knew what the mystery substance was, “It tastes like Christmas” he says, which prompted the next obvious question of “I wonder what Christmas tastes like?” well, I then took a swipe of the sauce and by golly, it did taste like Christmas. The rest of the group quickly gave it a try; wanting to experience their favorite holiday in the form of a sauce, and the consensus was that Danny’s first classification was correct. Why? Well we don’t quite understand the mystery that is Brown Sauce; we think it might have been some sort of ginger or nutmeg or something.

That meal kicked off our Irish adventure, seven guys from Westmont attempting to see all the sites that the capitol of that little green country had to offer in 2 days. The next morning we hit the ground running from our hostel with plans to see a good amount of the place.

We first saw the Christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle which we’re cool I guess, pretty much your basic cathedral and castle. We ran around and played tag in a courtyard at the castle which had skinny lanes of brick running through the grass. The grass was of course hot lava and would melt you upon the slightest touch so you had to stay on the bricks while running around. It was fun and helped us get really tired at 9 in the morning which is a good thing to do when you have a big day of walking ahead. From there we stopped by St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then continued to the Guinness Storehouse where the world famous beer has been brewed since 1759. After we learned a little about the history of Guinness and how it’s brewed we made our way to the top of the building and enjoyed a complementary pint.

After we were nice and full from a tall glass of Guinness we decided to skip lunch and stop by the Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Ireland neither of which were very interesting and we didn’t stay long. We headed to the Old Jameson Distillery which wasn’t nearly as big as Guinness had been but still very interesting and we all enjoyed our complimentary glass of Jameson whisky at the end.

**Ok the picture on the left is a story in itself. We wanted a group shot of us in front of the gate but with no passers by I set up my sweet mini tripod in the middle of the road, turned on the 10sec timer and ran into position. Right as I got to the gate a huge semi-truck turned onto the street and I was like, "Oh gosh...hurry camera, take the pic, take the pic" but the dumb thing wasn´t and the truck was still coming and ah jeez I had to run for it. So you can see the timer finally went off right as I was reaching down to take my precious camera to safety.

You may be thinking, isn’t it like 1pm and you’ve already had a pint and a whisky? Well yes, but you have to remember that we were in Ireland and we were just trying to fully experience the culture. We all were fine though, we were joking that we were feeling “inspired” because some of the Guinness ads around the city stated that’s what the beer will do to you.

We then continued to the National Irish Gallery which I enjoyed very much as it was my first time seeing paintings from a lot of famous artists such as Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo.

With all of those places checked off the list we tiredly walked back to our hostel and after a quick nap were back out to dinner, which was even better than the night before. We all got double cheese burgers which were amazingly delicious; I’m making myself hungry just thinking about them, if only I could go back. We hung around the Temple Bar which is the most famous bar in Dublin and a center for restaurants, pubs, and street performers. There was a guy who had messed with the steering of his bike, when you would turn the handlebars left the wheel would go right, and vice-versa. For 4€ you had 5 tries to ride the reverse-steering bike about 20 yards. I really wanted to give it a go but didn’t feel like spending the money and I think the genius part of the whole thing is that its way harder than it looks. It would be fun to make a similar bike and take it to IV or State St. I’m sure you could make some decent money.

The morning of our departure we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells which is one of the oldest Bible’s in the world from 800ad. It was interesting learning about its long history but my favorite part of the college is the Long Room which is an enormous room that holds 200,000 of the library’s oldest books. As you walk down past the books that are stacked from floor to ceiling you’re watched by busts of literary greats such as Plato, Socrates, Homer, Demosthenes and Newton who almost seem enjoy seeing you in awe of such a massive collection of famous texts.

It was a whirlwind trip but we got a good look at the city and I would love to be able to go back someday and see more of the countryside. It was a nice vacation from Spain and one thing I really enjoyed was the people who always gave a warm welcome and offered a good time. It was really nice to be able to speak a lot of English again and I am really looking forward to going to London next weekend.