Dublins Celebrating My Birthday So Im Here!

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Woke up this morning and had to get my a into g. I had but one task assigned to me, ensure Rach’s secret cake present from her dear mum arrives safely to my hostel. I had pre-warned the front desk that I was expecting a super important, super special delivery and it was scheduled to arrive at 10am. By the time I had gotten downstairs, the ETCD (expected time of cake delivery) had already elapsed and I was disappointed to find out that the aforementioned cake had not yet arrived. The frontdesk girl, who looked as though she’d enjoyed a few cakes in her time, did, however, ensure that she would call me post-haste should the delivery boy arrive. I ventured out on and not surprisingly, the crowds had already started gathering for a day of celebrating Rach’s birthday, and a few breakfast Guinessess’ were already being consumed. I decided I would attempt to track down this missing cake, called up the delivery company who informed me that the order was not registered in their system! Hmmm, this is going to please Glenda to no end. My sole responsibility for the weekend and I’ve failed. Anyway, off I trudged to find Rach and the girls (and Greg) across the bridge.

For Rach’s b’day, we decided to have brunch together, where I surprised her with her B’day pressies; some PJs (which ended up being too big), some chocolates, and tickets to Cirque Du Soluei (which were really for my benefit given Rach has seen them about 50 times!).

Brunch over, we decided that we’d better witness what quarter of a million people (my guesstimate) see every year, the St Patrick’s Day parade. We found a decent posy, crammed about 10-deep with a crappy view. We were expecting dancing lepricorns, 4-leaf clovers and perhaps Michael Flatly (the Riverdance guy) however were confronted with what can only be described as a bizarre mismatch of wheelchair bound smoking-rhinos, giant lips, giant fish and a tribute to the movie Waterworld. Rach secured the best photos of the action perched on top of my shoulders, however only briefly before her step ladder (aka...me) started complaining of a sore neck. Parade over, off to get kitted out in green. We found a St Patties’ souvenir shop (the easy part) and then proceeded to ponder with Greg on the most appropriate attire for the day (the difficult part). After getting sour looks from the girls about our matching green train driver hats, Greg and I settled on more suitable headwear, giant green jester hats with bells, plus matching t-shirts. Clothes shopping over, time for the pub! Greg and I bid a fond farewell to the girls who had to go back to the hotel to ‘spruce up’...Guinness and rugby awaited us at ze pub. We found my London-based-Aussie mates and had our first Guinness of St Patties day (time check...3pm). Unfortunately for the pro-Irish crowd, the rugby went the Poms way at Twickenham in the six-nations. Greg and I unsuccessfully tried to describe the rules to a couple of Americans, probably not the best people to ask considering our NFL and AFL allegiances. After about 5 hours of getting ready (no exaggeration), 3 green, bubbly lepricorns made their entrance...and heads turned from every direction as they squeezed their way through the crowd. “I look ridiculous” said one of the lepricorns to me, however I think she secretly knew she looked fantastic. This was followed up with, “I need a drink”. Into the evening came dancing, having shots out of our necklace shotglasses and chatting to Barry (let’s call him that anyway), the security guard, who was manning the side entrance to the pub. It was so bloody hot inside, and we managed to sweet talk Barry into opening the doors up every now and then to let the cool air sweep in. Having worked up an appetite on the DF, we ventured over to the bistro to see what the pub had on offer. We settled on a special request from the birthday girl which was kindly given by the chef...hot chips smothered in beef stew. Sound appetising? No it doesn’t but tasted amazing! Maybe because I hadn’t eaten since my porridge at breakfast time. Refueled on chip-beef stew (let me know if you want the recipe), we reconvened of the DF. At this point, my mind ventured back to the super secret mission I was assigned to complete. Katie the lepricorn and I devised a plan, I would keep the birthday girl distracted and she’d roam the streets of Dublin in search of a birthday cake. After about 20 minutes of sending my spy on her mission, birthday day girl was getting suspicious. “Where’s Katie gone?”...my responses of “she’s at the bar” were starting to wear thin. She was about to call her lepricorn friend when for some reason I said “Katie just texted me, she’s at the toilet”...hmmm, maybe not the best lie I’ve ever told. After reassuring birthday girl that she was fine, Katie rocks back into the pub, birthday cake in hand and a little candle lit! We all joined in singing Happy Birthday and this little lepricorn got her birthday cake...all be it 12 hours late. Massive well done to Katie for locating a cake (and candle) at 9pm at night! The rest of the night was spent dancing away to Irish folk music, who we convinced to play another rendition of happy birthday Irish folk music style and the whole pub joined in celebrating Rach’s b’day!!

Well, that’s it, my first blog. Not quite sure whether you guessed it was Ben writing this one...watch this space as I make cameo appearances throughout the Adventures of Rachel Stewart

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