Dublin

First of all, let me say Happy Father's Day to my dad. I'm sorry we couldn't be there to celebrate with you today but we love you and appreciate every thing that you do.

So, you might have noticed that we didn't post yesterday. That is because the internetconnection in our hotel is SO slow that it times out before a page will load. It sucks and we have been trying like mad to make it work but so far, nothing. I tried unsuccessfully last night for 2.5 hours before Ifinally got tired (after 3a) and gave up. But I will go ahead and update everyone on what we have been up to for the past 2 days.

Yesterday we took the 8a bus from Cork to Dublin. It was an uneventful ride as most of itwas on the expressway. But we did have some pretty great views of some countryside. We got off the bus and caught a taxi to our hotel which is located at the end of Temple Bar. It's just close enough that we can walk to everything but not really in the middle of the Temple Bar district so we can get some sleep at night without being interrupted by the crazy drunk people partying below. We met Bobbi (one of my best friends from childhood that I haven't seen in 10 years) at the Turk's Head Bar for lunch when we got there. It was just like old times. We fell right back into our old ways even though we haven't been around each other in a long time -- and that was really great. It was also really neat to be able to share that part of my past with Andrew. There are not that many people that knew me way back then that I am still in touch with and he thought it was pretty funny getting to hear all the stories about what a nerd I used to be. We spent the whole day running around together. We walked around Temple Bar,visited Trinity College, explored the city north of the Liffey River, had dinner, went to the Porthouse Bar (and yes,Andrew had oyster beer), went to a couple more bars, met an American professor teaching at Trinity and hung out. Later, we walked Bobbi back to her hotel and hit up a Burger King on the way home. Burger King here tastes just like it does back home and it was a comfort at 2 in the morning.

Trinity College is probably my favorite place that we've been toso far. We got to take the tour to see the Book of Kells -- the oldest and largest collection of Old Testament books still in existence. And we got to see the Long Room -- a huge 2 story library with 200,000 of the college's oldest books. It also holds Ireland's oldest harp(from the 12th century). It is probably my favorite place in the entire world. I could live in there.

Today we woke up early and had breakfast at Starbucks withBobbi, saw Dublin Castle, tried to go to Christ Church (but it was closed until tomorrow), went shopping, saw Bobbi off to the airport, and had dinner at Captain America's. We got some gifts for people back home and a copy of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (set in Dublin, about a boy from Dublin, written by a author from Dublin).

I got a coat at Benneton and we discovered this store calledPenney's. I've never heard of it before but it was incredible. And everything is incredibly cheap. Andrew got a coat there and I got some shoes and some headbands. We plan on going back before we leave. If you have one near you, GO! I don't know if there are any back home in the U.S. though.

Tonight we are going to take it easy. We are pretty worn outfrom running around for the past few days. A night in the hotel and some bad BBC sounds like a fun evening.

I'll try to get some more updates soon if the internet will cooperate