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Published: November 14th 2009
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The End is Near
Once again I have been very lazy about getting a new blog entry up. But I have some time today so I am going to type until my fingers fall off in hopes of covering everything that has happened over the last two months. So here we go...
How does it happen that the first trip I take outside of Ireland brings me back to Canada?!? I returned home for the first week of September for the beautiful wedding of my beautiful friend. It was nice to get a quick visit back home but even more exciting to get back to Ireland and realize that my travels around Europe were only a few more months away. It is incredibly bitter sweet to come to terms with the fact that as of Sept. 10 I had been in Ireland for 7 months leaving only 4 and a half months until my visa will force me to leave. But then my leaving will be for some amazing adventures around Europe. If my budget allows me I will be traveling around Europe for 100+ days!!! Is that not exciting beyond belief?!?
While I was in
Canada my neighbour Kathy had mentioned that George Stroumbo will be doing his show from Dublin. My first thought was that it would be fun to see his show and my second thought was that seeing as Dublin is pretty small I would probably run into him eventually. So surprise surprise when I was at work and kept hearing a lot of noisy construction at the other end of the shopping centre and a surprising number of construction workers coming into our shop for coffee. Well one of the construction workers says to me "you sound a lot like the people that we are working with this week, where are you from?" and I replied with "Toronto, Canada" and he says "Ohh do you know some guy named George Strommmbo-something" at which time I pointed out that you couldn't be from Toronto and not know of George Stroumbo. He told me that the construction they were doing was to set up the stage and filming area for stroumbo's show and that I should come by and watch the show taping that weekend.
That Sunday my friend Carol and I went to catch the taping of the show. We were
sitting outside the stage area when Stroumbo walked out and introduced himself and thanked us for allowing him to come to Dublin. I let him know that I was also from Toronto and it was nice to have a piece of home come to visit me. We watched the show and it was, as always, highly entertaining. He had an Irish Economist, the old Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and an incredibly funny comedian Tommy Tiernan. Overall, the show was very good and now I really want to see Tommy do a live show because he is hillarious.
Following the run in with Stroumbo was the Arthur Guiness day on Sept. 24. I had to work but my coworker Esther and I met her boyfriend and his friends and we went out to Temple Bar to check out the Guiness festivities. Temple Bar was a complete mess. People were EVERYWHERE and there were smashed beer pints and garbage all over the street. It looks like we arrived just a few minutes prior to some major throw down in the streets of Temple Bar because the gardai were still talking to people. From what I heard people got a little carried away
at the 5pm celebratory hour and started smashing drinks and getting a little rowdy. We decided to go into the Ha'Penny Bridge Pub so that Rueben could get his Guiness in. It reminded me a lot of St.Patty's Day with the people everywhere. The streets teaming with people and everyone well drunk. We went to a few pubs trying to soak up this unique atmosphere and ended up staying out in the middle of the street where everyone was drinking pints of Guiness completely in the open streets while the gardai just stood and watched, only getting involved if people started getting too rough with eachother.
The next day was Culture Day in Dublin. This mean't that practically all cultural places would be free of charge for the whole day: museums, art galleries, churches, and art schools. Following work Esther and I decided to try to visit as many places as we could before everything closed at 10pm. We were able to visit the Book of Kells and the library at Trinity College (savings of 8Euros), we then made it to Dublin Castle for the guided tour (savings of 2.50Euro), then over to Christ Church (savings of 6Euros), and
finished the night off in Temple Bar watching a FREE dance/singing show.
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Kathy K
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Countdown's ON.....
Glad to read back from you!!! Hope all is still going good....your busy, so that's a good sign. My, my time flies, doesn't it???!! Enjoy! Everyone here is good! Santa came to Pickering yesterday and then Toronto today! The Kids enjoyed the dinky Pickering parade and it was a warm day too...so, that was a bonus! Glad you got to meet and see Strombo! Take Care and I'm sure I'll hear from you soon! PS....your dogs bark "hello" to you! Cheers, K