Ireland Part 3: Pubs & Rugby

Like I said in the last post, when in Dublin right??  I didn’t plan to spend my whole trip in the pubs but I knew there would be at least 1 night spent out.  We had a Literary Pub Tour booked for Friday night with the group and we weren’t sure what it would be like.  There are a lot of famous writers from Dublin (Yeats, James Joyce..) who I haven’t read yet (still working on Tolstoy) so I wasn’t sure I would follow well.  At least we could enjoy our drinks if we were lost?

The tour was actually great!  And I would recommend anyone visiting the city to do it!  Two actors were the hosts.  They gave you lots of historical information on the writers and the pubs they visited (the ones we went to of course), plus they acted out some scenes from plays and things written by those writers!  It was really enjoyable and entertaining.  The 4 pubs we visited were all really different too, each one with its own character.

I think this was my favorite “tour” and everyone seemed to like it, even those who aren’t into the literature.  After the tour, we decided to stay out on the town.  While walking around between pubs, we say Mark Whalberg coming out of a restaurant!  There was a mob scene around him so I couldn’t get close but he was really nice to everyone, stopping for pictures and stuff.  One of the guys from our group shouted out that he was from NJ.  Mark stopped to shake his hand and ask him what the hell he was doing in Dublin.  Haha!

Very exciting night.  The only other pub I want to mention right now was the Bleeding Horse.  It was apparently opened in 1649 and is argued the oldest pub in the city (it says 1710 on the door but they found written mentions of it as old as 1649 which is why “argued”)

We had eaten there the first night and had much more a feel of a local pub than the ones on the pub crawl (those were somewhat touristy).  We also hit Temple Bar the last night which is famous but it was waaaaay touristy so we really didn’t enjoy it there.  But we went!  That’s it on the pubs for now!

Ireland Rugby
The real reason for the trip was of course to watch the Ireland v Italy Rugby game on Saturday!  I was pretty excited about it.  The guys were having drinks at the pub in the morning but Rob and I got coffee and headed toward the stadium (OMG the coffee! more on that later).  Our host (the guy who set up the trip used to live in Dublin), told us of a spot where we could “tailgate” before the game so we went in search of it and found it!

We just got burgers but you could get Guinness (of course) in glasses (glass???  Not in the USA!  We might break it!).  It was fun and interesting.  We laughed at all the American music playing over the radio.  We ate and decided to try to find the stadium since it looked like a long walk.

It ended up being really far since we had to walk around the whole thing to get to our gate.  On the way, we stumbled across one of our friends!  In the middle of a crowded Dublin street!  This happened more than once with the same guy on the trip so it was a running joke.  Anyway, I was really excited for the game and got all in the spirit!

I’ve seen lots of rugby before (friends were on the Syracuse team in college, she played for the US team too, and Rob’s games plus watching it on TV) so it was nothing new to see but the way the crowd acted was cool.

First, everyone sings the anthem together while a marching band plays the music.  They sing the anthems for both countries too.  It was much nicer than listening to some horrible rendition by a hired singer.  The introduction of the team was crazy too.  Fire and everything!

The stadium was interesting too.  It was pretty small for being brand new (the taxi driver verified this too, that is was rather small) but it was pretty.  What we also thought was interesting is that, unlike in the US, there were no stores or anything in the stadium, just some spots to get food (and few choices too).  I was bummed because I was hoping to get a women’s jersey since the stores near the hotel only had men’s.  I find it funny when you notice differences like that.  I wonder if all the stadiums in Europe are like that?  Anyway, the game was great!

We really kicked Italy’s butt with a final score of 42-10!!  The coolest part of the game was that after someone scored a try, you get to kick for extra points.  Well, the entire stadium gets quiet when someone is kicking, even the opposing team’s fans!  Imagine 50,000 people in complete silence.  Weird!  There would be all sorts of heckling in the US!

After the game, we just putzed around the city looking for things to do.  We ended up heading back to the hotel early that night.  I just wasn’t feeling it and started to feel really run down like I was getting sick.  Luckily I felt much better the next day and am still healthy!