The Irish Likes a Good Chugger

Location: Dublin Airport, Ireland, UK and Barcelona, Spain

Monday May 17, 2010 and Tuesday May 18, 2010

What a satisfying last day in NYC, I ran around in between Chinatown and Little Italy running errands as Angela scrambled to study for her French final exam. Who knew life could be so good as I got to eat my favorite Chinese dish (“gon caw au hau”) and cheap fresh grapes from a street vendor?

I got into Dublin for my brief six-hour layover on Tuesday morning. EVERYBODY THERE IS WHITE. And they all speak funny. When I was flying in, I caught a glimpse of the Irish countryside. It was quite stereotypical. Think something like this:

YES. THAT'S RIGHT. I GOOGLE-IMAGED THAT SHIT. AND I USED THE SECOND IMAGE THAT CAME UP ON GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH FOR "IRELAND". You really can't get more stereotypical than the second image that comes up for Google Image Search, well other than the first image that comes up for Google Image Search. It was very Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death. I know. I know. I'm not in Wigan, but it's quite similar, is all.

I had to go through customs and security check again at the Irish airport, which was quit a pain, because my Nalgene was a third full. The security lady moved to throw the bottle away, but how could I bear to part my with “Ways that Dartmouth Students Party Safely” (complements to Angie-pie for providing the water bottle, btdubs) Nalgene water bottle over a silly matter of air-safety??? So I opened the bottle and chugged all the water at record-breaking speed. “Fair played,” said the security lady in a too-cool-for-school Irish accent.

I arrived at our (Joanne, Natalie, and my) hostel Tuesday night around 11:00ish. It was only Joanne and I for the first night due to a shitty case of lost luggage on Natalie’s airline’s part. Our hostel room was a 10-girl dormitory style with mostly Americans, two Germans, and two Chinese. The German girls are real nice. 21 and 27, both are traveling by themselves doing a Euro-tour. The younger one, Britta, was especially kawaii. We would have totes been besties if I were more German… bad-ass… bold… and sported cool grungy hair. Our salmon-coloured windows and shutters open up into a sketchy (… but beautiful…) alleyway right off of La Rambla, a pedestrian-heavy street in a main part of Barcelona.