-- You love this town

Even if that doesnt ring true

Youve been all over

And its been all over you

Its a beautiful day --

U2, Beautiful Day

I couldn't get U2 songs out of my head when I spent a weekend in Dublin, Ireland two weekends ago. Since this is like the busiest week ever for me with finals, papers, and presentations, I've not much time to post.

I flew the discount airline Ryanair to Ireland, which was a new experience for me. We had to take a bus about an hour outside Paris to Beauvais, which was like the Hyannis Airport, except with 8,000 foot runways. The terminal may have been smaller than Hyannis'. The flight over was uneventful and we arrived in Dublin about noontime. We headed to the Brewery Hostel, which was the place where we were staying for Friday night. The deal was that not everyone on this trip was able to book the place for the second night, so the few of us opted out of the second night to get our money back and decided to stay out all night and get on the 6am flight back to Paris on Sunday morning. We were ambitious..

As soon as we checked into this place, which wasnt much of a place at all, we headed down the street to the the Guinness Storehouse (which is under a 9000 year lease from what I learned), of course. After the tour, which was pretty insteresting, we headed to this circular bar on top of the Guinness Building to get our complimentary pint of the "black stuff." The sun was very yellow, peeking underneath a deck of clouds off behind the hills and lit up the bar in a great light. The rest of the city was lit up as well, which made for a stunning panoramic view of "Publin." We all slowly downed our pints and headed down to the gift shop to poke around. I ended up getting a couple postcards and a shirt. Definitely a fun hour or two there!

That night we ate at a buffet style place called JP Rielly's I believe. Ladies and gentleman, it was there that I ate my best meal of Europe. And I ate way more than I should have. I had beef stew with mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, carrots, and gravy. A huge bowl of it, which I mixed up thoroughly. It was amazing. It was like a dream meal almost. I was so full that I opted out of beer that night, especially Guinness or Beamish because they are like a meal in themselves. That night, we carried onto a nice little pub, where I was introduced to my new friend Bailey's Irish Cream. Like egg nog with a touch of alcohol...it soothes the soul! We took it easy that night because we had plans spend Saturday outside the city and we knew Saturday night would be a long one. So we headed back to the hostel, and crashed. By the morning, I realized the weird smell in the air was coming from Guinness! It smelled like a lot of barley..

Saturday, we got up and headed to the train station down by the river Liffey. Thirty minutes later, we found ourselves in a town called Howth. We were very much out of a city setting, and into the type of Ireland we were all hoping to encounter. It was a small fishing town, much like the North Shore of Boston actually. There were fishing boats in the small harbor, and a quaint town nearby. We walked out to the end of a huge breakwater and hung out there for a bit...the wind was blowing and it was bitterly cold. But the sun was shining, without a cloud in sight. A beautiful day. We went down to the water and put our feet in the Irish Sea. It might have well been the water off of Consitution Ave that I know so well. Cold. Then, out of nowhere, a Golden Retriever strolls up to us looking for some attention. Of course, I gave him a good rub...he looked just like Pasta. Same light color, same snout,same personality...theyre all the same, which is a funny thing. Also nearby Howth, were some magnificent bliffs that dropped off into the Sea. We walked up there, and were taken aback by the beauty of the place. Just incredible...if you've been there you know. We spend a good 3 hours walking the cliffs and throwing rocks down, etc. Totally carefree...it was awesome!! A few more meetings with the same Golden as well, which was pleasant. We got a delicious Irish mean in a small restaraunt in town, and hit the train back to Dublin.

That night we signed up for a pub crawl. By the way, "we" was the 8 of us that came on this trip. Anyways we signed up for the pub crawl that was supposed to take us to 4 or 5 bars that Dubliners go to, not tourists. We went to a couple really cool places which was a lot of fun. That ended about midnight and we still had about 4 hours to kill before heading to the airport. So we found more bars to go to, nothing too exciting there. But fun still.

So then it was time to figure out how to get to the airport, and most of us were not working to full capacity if you get my drift. Ok, we get to the airport, check in, and have an hour or so to sleep before the flight starts boarding. We all fall asleep in awkward positions in those made-to-be-uncomfortable airport terminal seats pretty quickly after about 7 hours of bar hopping. It comes time to board, next take off. I had to put as much concentration as I could muster into not losing my lunch during take off. My stomach was not sitting well as a result from the night, and I was not about to break a streak of 20 years of flying barf-free. A little blue in the face, I made it to the cruise portion of the flight, and I wasnt took concerned about the landing. Except for the fact that I was unaware of the 30 knot direct crosswind that was waiting for our 737-800 at Beauvais airport. The approach to landing was with, I'd say moderate to severe turbulence. Many of the passengers started to freak out a little, which didn't help my stomach. But I wasn't nervous for the same reason they were. As the plane went up and down, left and right, I looked out at the winglets on the tips bouncing up and down. Thats cool, I thought. We crossed the threshold, and I looked at the ailerons; they were moving from all the way up to all the way down. Definitely a landing for the captain to handle. We slammed down with a lateral skid on the wet runway and came to a stop with less than a thousand feet left of runway.

Turns out the captain of the plane was next to me in line for customs, and I looked at him and said "Hell of a crosswind, huh?" He said "For sure."

Thus is the end of my weekend in Ireland. It is strange yet true: I was the only one out of the 8 kids on our trip that had any amount of Irish in me. In fact, at one of the many pubs we visited, an Irish kid got talking to us and asked our names and where we were from. I said Michael Patrick (yes, I played up the 75% of Irish in me that weekend..) and I'm from Boston area. He says to me, You've finally come home! I thought that was pretty funny, he said I looked like I was born in Ireland. I said Boston is the U.S. equivalent. Also, in one of the pubs, was a map of Ireland with family names on it. Fahey was on there (minus the E) in Galway, and DeCourcy was on there in Cork. It was definitely very cool to go and experience where my family comes from before America. It didn't feel strange at all, I think because of the many Irish traditions we still celebrate in South Boston. I grew up with many of the same things they did in Ireland.

Next will be about Amsterdam and Brussels, which I experienced last weekend. I will get to it next time I have time free...until then, Slainte.