Dublin by Mathieu
Hey Guys
Last week end I went to Dublin to visit Alan. He's now working for Accenture Dublin but he's actually working his ass off in Leeds but he's coming back to Dublin every second weekend or so. Then that's where we met.
So On saturday we made a tour by foot over Dublin City Centre : we passed by the Irish National Gallery, the Parliament, the Prime Minister House and then we went to Trinity College, the place where he used to study. It's a really unexpected place for me, the College is made of old buldings and more looks like a Museum that a College. The inside of the buildings are really dark and look like an old castle (I'll show you some pictures as soon as I come back to my parents' place). Then we went by the river Liffey till O'Connel Street which is Dublin major street and compared with the "Champs Elysees" in Paris (or Kunsports Avenyn in Gothenburg ;)). In the middle of this street is a thin metal cone of more than 100 meters high. It has been built a few years ago after a Column with a statue of Amiral Nelson at its top was destroyed (It had been bombed some years ago by the IRA because it was a symbol of the english domination over Ireland. The government then decided to bomb it properly to rebuild this metal cone but while bombing they did more damage than IRA because a lot of windows in the area were smashed during this destruction). Then we went to Dublin Castle, Dublinia (a Museum about Dublin history) and Christchurch (Dublin Cathedral).
But the most important was the Guiness Brewery tour ;). They made a museum out of the old brewery. The decoration made me feel like in a modern art museum with a lot of metal, projectors... The museum is about how guiness is brewed, you can smell at each stage of its process what it smells like.....and sometimes it smells like shit. Once we've visited the 4 floors of this "museum", we went to the top floor where is a skyview bar where you exchange your ticket for a pint of Guiness. By the way the view was really nice up there because of the setting sun and because we could see all of Dublin (there are really few high buildings there). In the end I think this museum is just a pretext to make you pay a pint of Guiness 13€ because they didn't even check our tickets.
On the evening we went to an Irish pub but as it was Halloween there were not a lot of people there (by the way, Halloween is an Irish tradition) but what's really nice is that pubs are non smoking.
On sunday we went in Dublin countryside in the monastery of Glendalough south from Dublin and what I can say is even though it hasn't rained during this weekend, Ireland is really wet. The fields were litterally leeking (but not drop by drop, it was a really big flow). Ireland is the country of sheep, you see them everywhere (they have something like 5 sheep per inhabitant).
Then we went to the seaside in Bray to eat fish & chips....
In fact Ireland is really like..... Engl.....no, I shouldn't say this, Alan (and every single Irish guy) would kill me. The thing is that the architecture is the same as in England due to the long history in common between England and Ireland but the countryside is much more green and fancy. Irish Pubs are cousy and Irish people seem to be open minded.
I guess that's it, I'll post some pictures later
Math
posted by Blue @ 2:51 AM
