Dublin with my mom

---

Well having my mom here could only get better by us traveling to Dublin for three days. My mom not going to lie got tired of Belfast and wanted to see someother places and I thought Dublin couldnt be a better place to go. Just a quick note also which has made the trip great, is while she has been here we have won two super league games in a row and one college game, she is the Ulster Elk's good luck charm! We got down to Dublin Wednesday afternoon via the train which is the best route from Belfast to take. Of course being the Neal family we were hungry first thing so we decided to have some tapas. This was my first experience of tapas and they were amazing. The rest of that day was just walking around Dublin, showed her Grafton St. and Dame St. I have started to enjoy walking around and sightseeing better the more I do it, I used to not be able to stand it and get so frustrated (mom you have to admit I did a great job on this trip!) For dinner we went to his restaurant for a three-course meal and Irish music and Irish dancing. Irish music by the way is growing on me everyday, it is actually really good music and fun to listen too (I advise people to check it out especially Christy Moore). My mom had a tough time understanding what he was saying, so dont know if she was a huge fan of it. Irish dancing for both of us was a first and I have to say it is pretty impressive and looks very hard to do. We got up the next morning to do some more walking around. We went to the Dublin Castle which was really neat (will post pictures for everyone). We took a tour of it and it resembled the White House a lot and we found out the architect for the White House was Irish and he did both the White House and the Dublin Castle. We also found out some more interesting facts. Bet you people didnt know that the National Emblem for Ireland is a Harp and not a Shamrock and this one will fool everyone, the National color of Ireland is NOT green, but St. Patrick Blue...very interesting considering everything is green over here. After that we did a lot of shopping, bought my first Paddy Hat (for people who dont know what that is, it is the hat Payne Stewart used to wear), also got an official Irish sweater and a scarf. I slowly becoming more and more an Irish everyday, I LOVE IT! Went to Trinity College as well, which is equivalent to Princeton or Yale of Ireland, a very old school with great building structures. That evening we had a game against the Shamrock Hoops in the National Basketball Arena. This was by far the best arena I've played in so far. Almost reminded me of comcast minus about 13500 seats. We won the game and I had 27 and 10, but an overall great team effort. I have to say us Elks are starting to turn things around and mathematically are not out of playoff contention. We have four games left and we HAVE to win all of them, starting this weekend against Neptunes at home. Lost to them earlier in the season, but we are a whole new team now. Will be back next week with results...Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Peace&Love

P.S- If people have any suggestions of how I can make this blog more interesting to read, I am open to anything, this blog is for you people to read about my life over here in Northern Ireland, hope everyone is enjoying it so far, thanks for all the support!

---