Guinness, construction, British wigs, and Irish carveries

so we're actually leaving tomorrow. I can't believe it's been a whole five weeks in some sense, but of course I'm ready to go back in others. Especially since almost every city or region we visited in France has now had some riots. It's absolutely insane.

Let's see ... Sunday we visited the Guinness Factory, and I saw several things in more detail than last time; Joe certainly enjoyed himself, and it's always fun shopping in the store there ... genius advertising. Unfortunately we mistimed our attempt to go on a musical pub crawl that night, so we had to settle for watching The Legend of Zorro in the same theater Ken and I saw Bruce Almighty in two years ago. The best line of the night came from the bartender at a pub near our hotel, who informed me that "we don't serve orange juice at 11 o'clock on Saturday nights" and had me going for a few seconds.

On Monday, I think the Rice women's soccer team made my day by beating UTEP 3-0 to reach the NCAA tournament for the second straight year. I didn't find that out until the end of the day, however. The main point of the day was to visit the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) museum at Croke Park, where they play the particularly Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the bus stop and ended up walking there, missing the last tour by about 15 minutes. So we could only go in the museum. But I did end up walking on the field and going into the interview room underneath the stands, so I'm sure that'll make a few people jealous (weird people like me, but they still count).

On Tuesday, we rode the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) in the morning to Sandycove, where I intended to have lunch at the Eagle House, a favorite of my crew from two years ago. But the whole darn thing was under construction, so we had to walk back and eat in Dun Laoghrie. Then we went back to Dublin and got the train to Belfast. When we arrived around 1720, it was almost completely dark, pouring rain, and freezing thanks to icy winds. Definitely worse than Lyon. We wandered into a few hotels dripping wet and finally settled on the Jury's Inn ... I dripped while signing the bill. But we warmed up and enjoyed our dinner at a nearby restaurant ... man do I hate spending pounds.

Yesterday was just an awesome day. We took a black taxi tour, which I had taken before but Joe had not. So he got to ask a lot of questions about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and I got to see some things that weren't on the last tour. We even got to stand outside the Sinn Fein headquarters and the vice president of the party passed us ... turns out they were negotiating amnesty for some exiles that day, so some of the big guys were in town. We arrived back in the city center in time for a free tour of city hall, after which we wandered around town for a while. Then we went back for dinner before the day-of decision to see Miss Saigon. It was playing in the Grand Opera House right near our hotel, so we got tickets and went to see it. Miss Saigon was the first musical I ever saw, so it was really neat to see it again, and it was also definitely cool to see a musical so based on concepts of the United States while traveling abroad.

Today we checked out and went to the Royal Courts of Justice. We ended up sitting in on some hearings about the logistics of prisoners' bail, and it was really interesting. Crazy Brits. "M'lord this," and "M'lord that." And they still wear those ridiculous wigs! It was hilarious. In the afternoon we took the train back to Dublin and caught a cab to our airport hotel. The cabby was terrificly entertaining and recommended a pub in walking distance from the hotel. So we eventually checked out and were able, somewhat to our surprise, to find it. And it was terrific. Don't let anyone tell you the Irish can't do food. Just ask for a pub with a carvery. Man. Great eating and that truly authentic Irish atmosphere everybody looks for.

And that's it. We go home tomorrow morning. And then I'm bound for Texas for a week, which I'm really excited about. But it's been an unbelievable five weeks, and we successfully avoided any riots and had a great time. I feel amazingly lucky to have done this, but I'm glad to go home and get on with my normal pastimes.