Ireland 2003 Log 3

Woke up at 4:00am this morning and could not fall asleep. Daniel fell asleep within a half hour and Erik within an hour, leaving me with my own thoughts to keep me company. All I had on my mind was all the work I had to do and the emails I had to send out in the next few days. Being gone during week 8 of a 10-week term leaves me with a little bit of work to do while on vacation. This is my last term for my undergraduate degree. Though I am excited to be finishing my degree, I am very nervous about “the real world.” The job market in Oregon and Washington pretty much sucks, so we’ll see how the job hunt goes. I spend most of my time at school working on group projects and my internship. I think I have actually spent more time this term with Chase, one of my really close friends (& classmate/ co-worker) than I have with Daniel. Mom keeps telling me that the real world will be so much easier than all the stuff I have taken on with full course loads, work, extracurricular activities, etc. I have decided that I will need to book lunch meetings with friends just to feel busy and involved still after this term. Anyway, I finally got to sleep at 6:30am only to receive a wake-up call at 8:00am. Got ready to go and went to our rental car (a LandRover Free Lander, a small SUV compared to American SUVs—we upgraded from a Ford passenger car as we would have all been holding our luggage to fit in it). We left to head into Dublin and found that the M1 (the main highway) had construction and a “diversion.” Following the diversion, we found a McDonald’s nearby and stopped for breakfast. There were only about 5 items on the menu breakfast AND lunch included. Left from there and almost made it back to the hotel before I finally convinced everyone that I knew the right direction to go to get into town. Finally made it into town, found a parking garage, and made our way to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, dating back to the 8th century. We spent a bit of time there and in the Long Room, the library above where the Book of Kells is housed. This library was built in 1732 and houses 200,000 of the library’s oldest books and manuscripts, mostly leather bound and far older than the library itself. It is also home to a 15th or 16th century harp, the oldest in Ireland. (More info at http://www.tcd.ie/Library/Visitors/kells.htm) From there, we walked to the Guinness Storehouse at St. James’s Gate. The building has 5 floors chronicling the history of Guinness beer with each floor showing how Guinness came about and how it is/was manufactured. The first level has an inset in the floor with the original 9000-year lease on the land signed by Arthur Guinness himself in the 1800s. The 6th and 7th floors housed restaurants and bars. We decided to catch lunch there and the guys all redeemed their free pint vouchers. Though I like dark beers, Guinness is too bitter for me without having had a few other drinks prior to it. On the 6th level, you can look down the glass-paneled center of the building and see that it is shaped like a Guinness pint glass. If full, it would hold 14.3 million pints of Guinness. Left there and headed back towards the car. Took some pictures while we were about town and headed back to the hotel through traffic—a bit of a surprise for a Saturday evening. Back at the hotel, we napped again and ate in the lounge for dinner. Crappy service and no two items of food or drink came out at the same time. Daniel & I received our teacups first, then our muffins, then Mom & Dad’s sandwiches, then their Cokes, then our toast, and finally, after asking, we got our pot of tea. About 15 minutes later, Mom & Dad finally received their fries—after asking. The fries were horrible, too. Headed back to our rooms and Daniel and I have been wide-awake since. Sat down and got some homework done and am patiently waiting to get tired now.