Dublin

Seeing as how you all read the recap of the drunken bash known as my birthday, you know that Thursday, while experiencing the worst hangover my life thus far, I, along with Emi and Paulina, embarked onward to the Emerald Isle.

The journey to get to Dublin was a journey in itself. We needed to take a train to Paris and then catch a flight from CDG. Much more arduous after a heavy night of drinking. I passed out on the train and Paulina took a video of my head falling. TGV, which is the super-awesome train system, lets you off right in the airport. After running around like chickens without heads (it's a French airport after all) we find the gate and wait for the plane to board. Emi's sitting in front of me and Paulina but we have no one next to us. We both sprawl out on the three seats we have to share. We're passed out, facing each other with one leg on the seats. All of a sudden we hear a BOOM and jolt awake. We landed. No one woke us up. No one told us to fasten our seatbelts our put our seats up. They did, though, let us off on the tarmac! It was so cool. I am such a nerd but it was totally awesome.

I call Mikey, tell him we're tired and hungry. We hop on a bus and witness the tail end of the Irish celebrating Arthur's Day - the 250th birthday of Guiness. And I can't even imagine what the earlier part of the day was like because the end of it was absolutely insane. We get off the bus and Mikey's waiting there with one out of his 6 rooommates, Seth, from Denver. Tall and sooo cute. We walk back to their house and it's brick outside. They don't lie about Irish cold. Now Mikey and his roommates live in a house. We walk into the house. "Should we take off our shoes?" I ask. "No, better if you don't. There might be broken glass on the floor. Bill broke a lamp a few days ago." Uhhhhh, what?

To cut to the chase, the house was a fucking mess. The funny part is that before boarding we were taking bets on how dirty the place was and I didn't think it'd be that bad considering how anal Mikey is. Well, I was mistaken. It was so dirty it makes my blood pressure rise just thinking about it. After having the best kebabs ever on the dirty kitchen table, we go to bed. Friday morning we wake up relatively early because we want to do touristy sightseeing. We come downstairs and basically have seizures looking at the state of the kitchen. We can't take it so we start cleaning it. Paulina attacks the table and the stove and stuff while Emi and I have a go at the dishes. One of the other housemates, Gaurav (pronounced Garv) comes in with his friend Trisha from college, who is visiting from Redding, and we give him a verbal beating. It went something like, "HOW HARD IS IT TO CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES?! YOU MAKE US SICK!" And we felt sort of bad because Mikey, this other kid Teddy who was at Oktoberfest that weekend, and Gaurav are the clean ones. But whatever, we ripped him a new one. No big deal.

After cleaning, Gaurav offers to take us around with his friend Trisha, who's super sweet. We walk all around Dublin and end up at the Guiness Factory. The factory was really cool and they give you a complimentary pint with ticket purchase. I couldn't stomach it so I gave my pint to Paulina as Trisha gave her pint to Gaurav. Emi was a trooper; she drank all of hers. And then Paulina and Gaurav just shotgunned 2 pints. It was incredible. Paulina was so drunk at like 4 in the afternoon. Afterward we went for lunch and Mikey joined us - he ordered the weirdest things. We took a post-lunch walk to the Harp Bridge and the Spire before going back to the house and passing out before going out.

That night a gigantic fight ensued between my loving and myself so I'm just going to skip it. Although I did spend some time in Temple Bar, which was fun, but no matter. After what was in my opinion an absolutely disastrous Friday night, we woke up Saturday morning to go hiking. Paulina was absolutely dying to see green Irish countryside so we took a bus ride to Marlay Park, which was supposed to be the start of the Wicklow Way. Except it wasn't. After walking ten minutes to one part and then walking back to the Farmer's Market to get food and then walking back to where we started, we realized we weren't at the start of the Wicklow Way at all. It took a good 3 hours to get from point A to point B but it was so worth it. The view of Dublin from all the way up there was just gorgeous. Flipping cold, but gorgeous. Paulina got her nature fix. Mike and I made up. All was right with the world.

Until the trek down. I would rather walk up than walk down because walking down is just an unnatural movement for me. I have to work extra hard not go to flying downhill and it's just not fun. We finally got down and while waiting for the bus, me, Emi, and Paulina passed out leaving Mike to watch out for it.

After eating Irish-Thai food, which wasn't half bad, and lots of napping, we went out to Copper Face Jacks, which was a great Irish club/bar thing. Exponentially better than the fiasco that happened Friday night. Some Irish dude was in love with me and would come up to me every 10 minutes or so to kiss me on the cheek.

Sunday was time to go home. We got to board on the tarmac! It was just as awesome. We got into Lyon around 8, came home, and fell asleep. And it was good.