Word of the day - Whiskey - water of life

So on Sunday the other Nick woke me up at 9 so we could go see things by 10.  Turns out that his phone didn't change timezones and he woke me up an hour earlier than he was supposed to.  So we were out of the hostel by 9, it was raining (of course its Ireland) and nothing is open because its Sunday morning at 9am.  So once we figured that out, we went  back to the hostel and checked online the actual times things open and changed our socks.  And then made our way to the Jamison Factory.  The Jamison tour was not quite as cool as the Guinness Storehouse, but because we volunteered to be a whiskey taster, at the end of the tour I got to try 3 different whiskeys.  The Jamison tour is essentially a guided tour throughout a large diorama.  All the things they showed us were made for the display, none of it was original.  So the main things about Jamison is that it uses a smokeless heat to roast the barley (natural gas (previously they used something else)) and also they use old barrels for aging.  They get their barrels from kentucky and some other place.  But either way, the barrels were used for different alcohols originally, and so that gives it a distinctive flavor.  Oh, and it's triple distilled.  So anyway we did the tour, then they sat us down and gave us 3 shots, one was a single distilled bourbon (JD), the other was a double distilled scotch (Johnny Walker), and the third was of course triple distilled Jamison.  It was actually very easy to tell the difference between all of them when you get to sip one and then immediately drink the others.  It's much harder when coke is involved (like I usually drink whiskey, but then again I rarely spend a lot of money on whiskey so I don't usually buy Jamison).  I was most proud that I could tell the difference and I figured out which thing was which.  The Jack Daniels is super sweet.  Johnny Walker uses peat to roast their barely so it has a much smokier flavor.  The Jamison is by far the smoothest and most complex of the whiskeys.  Then after our tasting, they gave us another glass of Jamison just for fun.  So I had 4 drinks before 12:30 on a Sunday.  Welcome to Ireland!

So walking back from the Jamison Distillery we stumbled upon a bunch of horses sitting around a plaza.  We asked some police officers what was going on and he said it was a horse fair, buying and selling of Dublin's finest horses. Hahaha.  He's a jokester.  But they really were selling/trading horses and ponies.  After that, we ate some lunch and then walked to Christ Church - one of the famous protestant churches in Dublin, and after that saw Dublin Castle.  Dublin Castle can only be seen with a tour group (but I got student discount, score!) and it was really good.  The tour guide had a fantastic accent.  Also, I learned that the name Seamus is gaelic for James.  Who knew?!

 

original viking foundations to the Dublin Castle

After that we found some dinner and looked for a pub to drink in.  We tried to walk in a few places but it was Sunday, most were pretty empty, one was way too loud with drunk americans trying to do a jig, so really just embarassing themselves and making a mockery of anyone in the bar who was actually irish.  Eventually we found a bar with a guy playing the guitar.  The music was loud enough everybody could hear it, but not so loud that you had to yell all the time.  It was perfect.  The guy started out by playing some traditional Irish drinking songs, my personal favorite went a little something like this:

Oooooohhhhh you're drunk you're drunk you're silly you're drunk, you're drunk as drunk could beeeeee!!!! etc etc.

It was a good time.  And strangely enough, the song that got the most people singing along was Country Roads by John Denver.  So that was bizarre, but It didn't stop us from singing along.  Later on in the night, there was a 50 year old lady who came up to the other Nick and remarked how much she liked his red hair and beard.  She said it was exactly like her husbands, and red hair puts a fire in her tights!  That's what she said!  It was hilarious.  But, boy was she drunk.  So we met a few people, some girls from West Virginia oddly enough (they went to WVU) and it was fun.  (It's strange because Country Roads is is about WV.)  But since most pubs close around 12 in Dublin we closed bar and then left for our hostel.  We were planning on getting up early to go to St. Patrick's cathedral before we had to catch our flight on Monday.

So on Monday we found St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It was nice.  Perhaps I'm spoiled because I've lived in Italy for almost 8 months, but the churches were not as large as I thought they would be.  Sure they were big and impressive, but I've seen a lot bigger and lavish churches.  So then we caught our flight from Dublin to Eindhoven and our class field trip in the netherlands began.  I'll try to blog more about it soon.  Classes here are getting pazze (pazze means crazy, that's two new words for the price of one in this blog post).  And, I've been losing weight!  Unintentionally!  Ever since I stopped lifting/generally being a hoss, I've been losing weight.  So hopefully once I get back to the USA I can go to the gym more often and get big again.  Hopefully.