Surprise Party

After a long day at work yesterday, i came home and met up with raf. We cooked some dinner, watched the football on the tele and decided to go out afterwards since the mood in the house had dropped after Spain's defeat. So we went out to a couple places, but i was really tired so we headed home around 11. Getting closer to my house, i started noticing lots of spanish people walking in the same direction and when we arrived at the front door there was about 10 people waiting outside to get in. So i opened the door, and surprise...there's a party at my house (not a "surprise" party, but a surprise party). In total over 30 people, singing and dancing. So raf and i grabbed some beer and joined in...lots of really cool people, even some irish and italians. Ahhhh, the happy house.

In other news, my girlfriend flies into Dublin tomorrow and raf leaves on an adventure to the west side of the island.


me & anna & raf

Search Referrals

My old travel blog which i don't write to anymore still gets about 3 views a day, almost all of them coming from search pages (yahoo, google, ask, altavista,etc). I've just gone through the list of my latest referrals and here are some of the more interesting search terms that have brought people to my site:
"nazca condor tattoo"
"stick of dynamite tattoo pictures"
"morocco sandboard dunes"
"What is the one place in North America where you can see both the Atlantic ocean and Pacific Ocean?"
"smokiest cafe in paris"
"Monsieur underwear"
"purchasing absenth from czech republic"
"pimp my bart"
"bachelor party patagonia"

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Great video of George Bush singing U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Wam! Bam!

The news papers have been covering it for days, people have lined up in masses, everyone can feel the excitment all over dublin. Yes my friends, our fellow canadian, pamela anderson stopped by dublin for 2 days. She started off with an event at the Brown Tomas dept store where she gave a $20,000 cheque to help fight AIDS...she briefly spoke about how it's important for people to get tested and prevent spreading it to other people (still bitter about contracting hep C from tommy no doubt) and then spent the rest of the time doing what she does best. Last night was a VIP only party at St Stephen's Green (a park one block from my house) where other do-gooders like Bono attended. I passed up my date with pamie and bono to party with my buddy Raf and his bro who've come from toronto to visit.

Mukkul

Mukkul, my friend from seattle who is currently working in copenhagen visited over the weekend. We ventured into a few new areas of dublin that i had not visited prior...finding a cool market, which i will return to to have some local oysters and cheese. The highlight, from a touristic standpoint, was our visit to the Old Jameson Whiskey Distillery. "Old" means it's no longer produced there but in Cork (another town in ireland). It was still interesting (although the Jack Daniels tour in Lynchburg Tennessee is way better) and ended with Mukkul being selected to taste-test Jameson whiskey verses 4 others. Being a true north american, he opted for JD. The mushy movie that starts the tour is also a good laugh...typical early 90's short film with cheesy music and scenes of ireland...lines included "Irish whiskey goes back to the beginning of time" and "Irish Whiskey is the story of Ireland".

World Cup is on

So everyone knows the world cup is here. Since ireland didn't qualify, most of the radio stations and papers have decided to support poland (since polish immigrants outnumber all others in ireland). Unfortunately, we've already had a humiliating loss to ecuador...a team who's qualified for the world cup only twice. To make matters worse, Mayra, an ecuadorian friend is visiting tonight and im sure ill hear all about it. On a more positive note, the weather has been simply perfect for the last week, but most irish are warning me that this past week has been "the summer" and not to expect this for the next three months. You wouldn't believe it, but i just realized that after a month in dublin, i have not traveled outside of dublin 1/2 (the core) except for my trip to france. Leaving the city center is for suckers ;)

Bank Holiday

It's a bank holiday today so i have the day off. The area around my house is filled with thousand upon thousands of scantily clad women :) Why? cause it's dublin's annual woman mini-marathon, and it just happens to begin a block from my house. Paris was great, i really enjoyed my time there which included an evening of house partying and clubbing with Igor & Elodie.

Party on the Seine

This weekend im in paris visiting my dad who is here on business. I arrived late last night and headed straight for the latin quarter where i had a crepe followed by some watered-down wine and shisha. In addition to the l'eau-avec-vin scam, they also charged us 2 euro for an extra coal...so i decided to leave the tourist area and head for the hotel. Walking along the seine, i came accross a bridge (that crosses the river) which had a few hundred university-aged people partying on it. The sides of the bridge was decorated with artwork and people were either sitting in big circles or standing and chatting...drinking large quantities of french wine of course. Had i not been tired i would have stayed to enjoy this very unique party. Today i bought a kilo or two of various french cheeses which ill bring back and enjoy in dublin.