Sunday, November 5, 2006

Remember Remember the 5th of November…it comes after the 4th and before the 6th…
Hiya folks. It’s the 5th of November, a.k.a Guy Fawkes Night, a.k.a Fireworks Night, a.k.a Bonfire Night a.k.a unless your british and/or studied british history or spent any significant time with a british person or in Britain you will not have a fucking clue what I'm talking about.

Basically a long ass time ago somebody tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament where the government of Britain (and I think the King at the time) were hanging out, but they failed miserably and got hung drawn and quartered for treason. And being the strange beings that we are, we celebrate this failure to destroy Paliament by making huge colourful patterns in the sky, contribute to noise pollution and increase the chance of seriously injuring ourselves by playing with explosives.

That’s the gist of it. (me? Cynical? Heaven forbid!)


Now that our British History and Sociology lesson is over, I will continue with my post.

Not a lot has happened since Wednesday. I had a good day off on Thursday. I made up my Ground Combat Gundam. now I gotta find the time to make the Freedom and Wing Zero up too…

And I'm now working everyday this week till Friday. Work is shit like usual. On Friday the idiot builders on the floor above us screwed up and we had a delightful little shower of water coming down through the ceiling on us. Luckily it was in an area where nothing was stored, so we didn’t get food contamination or anything drastic…

On a lighter note, I'm getting to know the ward hostesses a bit better. A lot of them are a right pain in the arse, but there are a few who are pretty cool. ^^

Anyways, I know why you’re all really here. You wanna see my Dublin Piccies. Well, I'm am happy to oblige. Remember, normal rules apply. Hover your cursor over the picture to get the alt text to appear with a lil caption of wit and intellect. My apologies to the people who’s computers wont let them see photobucket pics. I will try to mae this interesting for you.

So here we go.

DARKE’S CRAZY DUBLIN ADVENTURE!

After a short flight (I blinked and missed it practically) we found ourselves in Ireland. A quick hop by bus to our nice hotel ensued and we went straight to bed…we were knackered…

The first day we were in Dublin my brother and I went into town and checked out the scene. We stopped off in the tourist information office and got ourselves geared up ready for a weekend of crazy touristing. Afterwards we headed to this massive glass shopping centre (which reminds me of a dream I had) and then had lunch in a nearby park. In the afternoon we stopped off briefly in a bookshop which had wide selection of books, from recent editions to ancient stuff. Some of the books were like…seriously ancient. One of them I picked up seemed to be pre-20th century as far as I could tell… 0.o;;
Afterwards we went into the National Museum of Ireland and checked out the exhibits, which was cool. Then we headed back to the city centre and picked up a fish and chip dinner from Dublins oldest and most famous Chippy. We sat on the wooden promenade next to the River Liffey that runs through the heart of Dublin and ate our dinner. I also took some pictures.



I really liked the green lighting under the bridge. I thought that was a nice touch.





The next day we had a lot to do. We started off by catching a Tram to the West of Dublin.



To be honest, Dublin is such a small city that you can walk from one end to the other without too much bother, but we figured a tram ride would be cool.

We started our Touristiness at the Kilmainham Gaol, which played an important part in the Easter Rising, which was the event that eventually led to Ireland gaining its independence from Britain.



The main hall was amazing to behold, and back in the day, was a revolutionary design in jail architecture. The guide said so.





This is the older part of the Gaol.


This is where the members of the Easter Rising were executed, except for one, who didn’t have the strength to make it to that end of the yard, so they shot him at the other end.



The members of the Easter Rising who were executed in the yard.

Okies, enough of the grim stuff. After the Gaol, we headed back towards the center of town and stopped off in one of Dublin’s most famous tourist attractions.



The Guinness Storehouse! This is the site where Arthur Guinness set up his first brewery, and its still going strong today. It’s a good thing it is too…Arthur Guinness rented the site on a 9,000 YEAR LEASE!!! That was 247 years ago! So he’s still got 8,753 YEARS of the Lease left!!!

Inside you learn all about how Guinness is brewed. (BTW, if you’re wondering, Guinness is a famous beer, very strong. They say it tastes better in Dublin better then anywhere else in the world.) and after you do the museum bit, you take your ticket to the top floor where they give you a complimentary pint of the Black Stuff. Nice!



Me and my pint.



The lil card we left to say that the Weston boys had visited and approved. ^^



After that we headed over to ChristChurch Cathedral. It was quite an impressive building, so much so that we went there twice! (lol, only cuz they closed whilst we were there the first time, so we went back to see the rest of it the next day)


This is the outside. Quite an imposing building.


Gothic Splendour comes to mind.

That evening we went to a Pub where we sat and listened to a Troubadour strum away at his guitar and sing what were probably old Irish drinking songs. It was a lot of fun. Me and my bro downed a couple of pints and discussed stuff, which was nice cuz we don’t get to do it too often.

The next day was also due to be a long one. ^^ We started off by heading to Dublin zoo.


A snow leopard.


And cub.


There where several tigers there. One of them was pacing restlessly, this one just didn’t give a damn. We also heard a Lion roaring, but by the time we got to the enclosure he had stopped, so I didn’t take any pictures of it.


Orang-utan and baby.


Gorilla and Baby


This guy is the Daddy though. Huge! And an impressive Silver Back. XD he’s going grey…like my dad. LMAO!!

I saved the best zoo pics till last though…



The Grey Wolf. Majestic, ne?



Wolf’s Rain fans (and fans of Canis lupus in general), this one is for you. ^^

Afterwards we headed to Dublin Castle, which isn’t really a castle as such, but more of a Georgian Palace. It USED to be a castle, but one time there was a party and it uhm…burned down. Yah. So anyway, the “castle” as it now stands is still used by the Irish Government for official stuffs, but there’s also a guided tour. It was very extravagant, very posh. I got a few piccies, but the only one I'm gonna show you is of the throne.



Officially nobody has sat on the throne for donkeys years and nobody is allowed to sit in it. UNOFFICIALLY someone has sat in it recently…a guy was allowed to have his GF sit there whilst he proposed to her. She said yes, supposedly…

We finished the day off back at ChristChurch cathedral doing the bit we didn’t do the day before, namely the crypt. Very cool. We also stopped off in this very nice pub/restaurant and had what was called an Irish Burger…homemade and huge. ^^ filled me up.

On the last day we headed to the Jameson Distillery, where they used to make Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. They don’t anymore, they moved somewhere else, but this was the original site. And of course, we got a complimentary whiskey. ^^ Irish Whiskey is Triple Distilled, unlike Jack Daniels, which is only distilled once, so it’s a helluva lot smoother and established in taste. But JD is sweeter cuz its matured in brand new barrels, whereas Jameson’s uses old barrels.

Anyways, after that we did some souvenir shopping (and I also managed to pick up Trigun vol 7…I now have the whole series!!!), and then we headed back to the distillery to do the Chimney Observation Tower, which gave some impressive views of Dublin. And that was it. We had to come back home.

I'm gonna finish off with some pictures of Dublin and a few comments.


This is the view from the Guinness “Gravity Bar” where we got our complimentary pint. The text corresponds to a site in Dublin you can see from that particular point and references it to a piece of literature in which it appeared. James Joyce…man I hated doing “The Dubliners” in English Lit…what a mind numbingly boring book…





The Gravity Bar as viewed from the Jameson Distillery Chimney Viewing Platform.


The distillery is now mostly housing…I think it would be awesome to live there…



Typical weather for Dublin, unfortunately.



You have to understand, Post Boxes in England are RED. So seeing a green one tickled me pink…uh…green. ^^



This is the Dublin Spire, which stands at 150 metres tall (and has a lil light on the top). It is a monument to Dublin’s Millennium Celebration.

I had a great time in Dublin. The people were cool (and we adore the accents) and the city itself is full of cool buildings, excellent things to see and do and holds an awesome history. I really enjoyed myself and I'm sure my bro did too. Its something we have been wanting to do for ages, and we’re glad we both managed to get some down time to do it. Next time we wanna branch out a lil further and see some more of Ireland, check out some of the more rural areas. ^^

And that’s it from Dublin. I hope you enjoyed the pictures (if you could see em). Hopefully I’ll get round to posting the crazy dodgy comics up soon that I did whilst I was out there. Sorry this post is long. If you read all of it, have a cookie. If you skipped to this part, shame on you. Go back and read it all, or come back when ya have the time to read it all. Go on. I’ll wait…


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…I'm fed up with waiting. Here’s the return of that fella we all know and love…in bed. (j/k)



Based on the Guinness adverts. Honest to the Powers That Be, watching a pint of Guinness being poured properly is like watching poetry in motion…its ART I tell ya.



See ya on Wednesday folks. Have a good un.


BIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

(a special person will get this)


Toodles.





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