I headed back on the way past Ha’ Penny Bridge to see the Temple Bar, a district in Dublin centered around the street for which it is named. Temple Bar bills itself on its website as, "One of Europe's most innovative and successful urban renewal projects, it is a vibrant, living community, in which residents, artists, visitors, cultural organisations and small businesses co-exist." I think it could save itself some verbiage by describing itself as "New and Used Records". However, it was a pretty neat area, the rare sort of place where college students, artists, punks, Goths and people in suits all look like they belong there. The problem, of course, would be differentiating the students, artists, punks and Goths just because they all wear nothing but black.

Yet another travel tip: I have found a great way of dealing with meals when travelling. For instance, should you be somewhere and you feel like you seeing more of the city but don’t feel like slowing down for a meal, here’s how I handle it: I don’t bother eating. Hard as this may be to believe for those who know me, I decided I wasn’t going to be hungry until I’d seen everything I wanted to see. I was walking the city, I was occupying myself with soaking it all in, and my stomach was told to quit whining which, oddly enough, it did.

After a trip to see Dublin Castle (another sight I’m not sure if I saw or not, the structure I saw seemed kind of small to call a castle) and a stop at some sort of castle-like corporate building fronted by a lawn inlaid with paving stones in a large Celtic symbol comprised of intertwined snakes, I headed to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

It's a church all right.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral is, quite imaginably, pretty frickin’ old. Though not as ornate as a true Gothic church, and no flying buttresses to boot, it was still a nice piece of work. The grounds near it were filled with a neat garden and a stone commemorating the spring in which St. Patrick baptized Irish converts. Of course, the funny part about it is that St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin isn’t Catholic; it’s Anglican. Catholic Dublin, I’m sure, is very happy about this because it gives them one more reason to be pissed off at the English.

By the way, I tried to find Scott’s family crest in the gift section of St. Patrick’s but I couldn’t find the name "Klein" anywhere (For those who don’t know Scott, he is Irish on his mother’s side. Get it? Oh well, the joke wasn’t that funny anyway.)

From St. Patrick’s I attempted to find the place any decent American should visit while in Dublin: the Guinness Brewery. However, there was a small problem with that. I didn’t know where the silly thing is located.

Let’s Go mentioned the Guinness Brewery, as well as the Hopstore, your Dublin source for Guinness merchandise. It also included directions on how to get there. The problem was that they were quite unclear on whether "there" was the Hopstore or the Brewery and they made is seem like they were in two different locations entirely. The directions had something like three to five steps in them as well and that was more than I felt like memorizing. So, I picked a direction and headed that way.

After attempting to follow a sign that pointed indiscriminately, I realized I had no clue where to go for either the Hopstore or the Brewery. I decided to cash it in and head back toward my hostel.

I hit a cybercafe on the way back, since I wanted to check my email. I had received a response from Lindsay (the girl I met at the wedding, for those who forgot) to a previously sent email. She expressed a desire to be "swanning around Europe" like I was doing at the time, as well as the fact she was "knackered" from working so much. It occurred to me as I read these expressions that I had no way of knowing if she was just making up these expressions to confuse the foreigner. Then I made the wonderful realization that I could do that very thing to her. I mean, there’s no waffles in the kitchen, but there’s pancakes for Troy.

Upon deciding it was time to be hungry, I stopped at one of the omnipresent fast food fish and chips shops found throughout Dublin before returning to the hostel so that I could figure out what to do next. The obvious answer was, of course, drink a lot of Guinness, but I didn’t know a good place to do such a thing. I asked the guy working the desk how to begin doing that and he recommended a pub just down the street.

Unfortunately, sitting in a pub, sipping a Guinness and watching Formula One highlights on a muted television is dull. Desperately dull. Painfully dull. Dull enough to make it impossible to appreciate the fact I was sipping a Guinness in a pub in Dublin, Ireland. I finished my drink and decided to try someplace else. The gentleman at the desk back at the hostel directed me to another bar in the area, which had a live band. Thinking this would be a much better way to enjoy my evening, I headed there.

At the next location, I ordered, you guess it, a Guinness and the evening was actually a great time, okay? I met up a Canadian couple of collegiate age, right? They were winding up a two-month trip through Europe, you see? And we ended up getting plowed over pints together, you know? It was an absolute blast, okay? And I didn’t have to spend the night drinking beer by myself, right? And I though I should let you know that Canadians don’t always end their sentences with the work ‘eh’, okay? I’m glad I could set the record straight, you know?

Incidentally, I did see an Irish band that evening. There were two of them playing, so they were a band. They were from Ireland, so they were an Irish band. Any other resemblance was purely coincidental. Out of all the songs we (that being the Canadians and I) requested, the only one they knew was "Folsom Prison Blues", which I requested as a joke. That included the request of "anything by U2" made by the Canadian girl, who shall heretofore be referred to not at all, so I feel no need to invent a name for her.

After God knows how many Guinnesses, the bar was closing and the band played the Irish National Anthem (should you ever be in Ireland, be sure to remember to stand for that, because it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on). As fate would have it, the next day would prove to be very, very interesting and altogether too educational.