My Goodness, My Guinness, My Hangover

Tim here. The title pretty much covers the bases right now. Tim and Tom Dublined it up last night. Hard. If the first Guinness don't get ya, the last 12 will. We only got the first B of the B&B, as we slept until 1:30. Nice work gents. We actually met two guys at different bars that had recently lived in Chicago. Both good guys. One guy was working on sailboats at Belmont harbor. He mentioned his "success" with the ladies with the combination of an Irish accent and 24-hour boat access. This did not surprise me. I've seen the effect of an Australian accent at American bars, and it isn't pretty. Anyway, we arrived in Dublin yesterday around 4pm and proceeded to flex our Rick Stevesesque travel prowess by driving around the city for about an hour and a half searching for some accomodation. This is with 2 maps, and asking three different locals (one twice) for directions. The city of Dublin is an absolute abortion of urban planning. The street signs are no bigger than the side street signs at home, and are conveniently bolted to the walls of buildings on MOST intersections. The city is layed out like a more complex Riverside, IL. With lots of one way streets. The people give directions like we live here. I'm constantly reminded of Funny Farm in this place. "How could you get lost? I drew you a map!" pretty much sums up me sitting in the passenger side with the two travel maps whilst Tom circled Dublin for the ninth time. Anyway, as Tom has pointed out every hour on the hour, every Irish stereotype is 100% true. Friendly? Yes. Pound Guinness all day every day? You betchya. Sheep? Everywhere. Other than trying to find anything, the city of Dublin is pretty sweet. It is a big modern city, but still has the old feel to it. Cobblestone streets and old Irish pubs abound. They do have double decker commuter buses, thus adding an extra bus worth of space. If this technology exists, I fail to see how any major city is without them. Wake up, America. So, to sum up, we came, we drove around, we saw, we were conquered (by Guinness).
I haven't mentioned our stat on the Dingle penninsula. That's not because it isn't noteworthy, it's just becasue I'm a bad blogger. So this is where we took in some amazing Irish countryside. And sheep. We rented some bikes and I amused the hell out of myelf by riding along yelling out "what's up sheep!" about every two minutes. I don't think Tom was as entertained. The brakes were reversed, thus throwing in some near death experiences for good measure. I just figured that I would just use both brakes, and have no problem using only the front brake on accident. Wrong. So we went around this 30 mile loop around the area. It was really a great time until about five miles before the end when there was a long uphill and Tim and Tom almost couldn't hack it. As Tom pointed out, this is a heavily recommended travel activity, and we're in decent shape for the average human being. And no books mentioned that it might get a bit tough. Hardest bike riding I've ever been a part of at one point I didn't think we were going fast enough to keep the bike balanced. But the effort was a small price to pay to take in what we saw. I can't really do it justice without pictures, so i won't try. One thing to note however, was that the property was all divided by three-foot walls of stacked stones. Including the property all the way up the mountainsides. After seeing hundreds of miles of these walls, Tom astutely commented " So apparently the Irish spent about 100 years just building walls." I found it pretty amusing. That is until I asked someone about the walls and he said that they were built during the potato famine and that the workers did it for a meal, not money. The comment was somehow less funny.
So that brings us pretty much up to speed. After posting this we will head over to the Guinness Factory. Because what Tim and Tom need right now is more beer. We then plan to fly to Belgium, where they apparently don't eat waffles for breakfast. Who knew. I should note that this could be my last ever blog. There's a good chance that because I always look the wrong way before crossing major streets, I will be struck by a car driving itself on the wrong side of the road. But seeing as Tom really isn't much of a "you go, we go" type of guy, I think he'll carry on. Just kidding Tom. By for now, Americans.