DUBLIN for Patty's!

This past weekend I spent in Dublin, Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. The city itself is great because it is very small so walking everywhere is almost easier than using other transportation. We saw many things while here but the highlights were certainly the crypts underneath St. Michen (spelling?) church, the Guinness Factory tour, Stephen's green and many more. The catacombs/crypts were very interesting because the bodies of famous Irishmen lay there and were preserved due to the way it was constructed keeping the temperature always constant and the humidity as well. Thus, the bodies were mummified without actually intending to do so. The Guinness factory is unbelievable. From taking this tour you can really tell how much they love their beer. It was 7 floors of history and procedure of making Guinness. It was actually very interesting to see what makes it so different than other beers. With the ticket you also get a free Guinness, straight from the factory, which tasted amazing. In fact, because of the way they have it on tap, it comes out brown with less head on the top but ferments in front of your eyes. You see it mix and eventually turn black, which signals that you can drink it now. The videos they had though were almost humorous because they were talking about Arthur Guinness (the creator) as if he was the most significant Irish man that ever lived and that he was heroic for what he did.

The first night I was there we actually went to an Irish comedy improv show similar to whose line is it anyway in a very small venue, which was hilarious. Before it even started they took the opportunity to make fun of people in the crowd. And us being the Americans with the tourist big green hats on were pretty easy to make fun of. I didnt get some of the local references but everything else was relatively easy to understand even with the thick irish accents. The funniest was probably a skit they did where they would have to constantly change their accents from australian to irish, to scottish, to french, etc. They did an unbelievable Texas accent which I assume is taken from Bush and I found the French accent to be hilarious as well. The New York accent wasnt all that great though, it was basically a Robert De Niro Italian type accent. The Temple Bar area, which is the city's main cultural quarter was always packed full of people all celebrating patty's. The food here was also amazing. Everything was meat and potatoes, which certainly suits my kind of diet.