Word of the day: Sláinte (in Ireland) - health (but really cheers!)

So Saturday Nick and I went to Dublin for the weekend.  We planned to arrive in Dublin Saturday at 12:00 pm and then leave for Rotterdam Monday morning for a school field trip.  For some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to find the two rainiest places in Europe and visit them consecutively for 8 days.  Anyway, we landed, found the hostel and went straight to the Guinness storehouse.  It's the old barely store house that has been converted into a museum.  The building itself was just a really cool building.  And the museum took advantage of it.

So at the top of the Guinness Storehouse is a bar where you get a pint that is included with price of admission.  It's called the "gravity bar" and it's got a 360 degree view of Dublin.  Of course it was rainy and cloudy and I couldn't see much, but it was a cool idea.  I like the original Guinness commercials where they tried to say that Guinness is good for you.  There were actual doctors who would prescribe guinness to people who weren't feeling good.  Also, Arthur Guinness signed the original lease for the Guinness factory at St. James Gate for 9000 years.  It's only been 250 years so far, but he's done a great job.

After that, we found somewhere to eat, I don't really remember where.  More importantly we went to Temple bar on Temple bar.  And there was a great drunk Irish guy named Karol who we met and ended up talking to for most of the night.  When he was born, John Paul II was visiting Ireland.  All the mothers were naming their childeren John, Paul or John Paul.  But, his mom was creative and named him Karol, JPII's original name before he became pope.  He had a theory on getting drunk called "monopiss".  If a person were to drink liquor they would get really drunk and then kind of crash literally and figuratively.  But, if you were to drink beer, at a steady pace you get drunk and plateau and that's called monopiss, at least according to Karol.  His accent was really funny and it was halloween.  There were a few costumes here and there.  What was impressive was how international Dublin was.  Just sitting next to Karol we met tons of people.  We met a bunch of people from all over the place and he spoke to them in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.  It was pretty impressive.  Although most everybody speaks English.  And, they actually use it because that's what everybody speaks.