October 31, 2005 - Dublin, Ireland

HI Everyone!

I know it's only been a couple of days but Luke and I are here at the internet place so I thought I'd throw up some photos and tell some stories...

First of all, I forgot to mention that Sarah and Tom, an Australian couple we met in Lagos, Portugal have ALSO moved here to Dublin so we got together with them last Saturday night. We went to a couple of pubs and had a good laugh. The following day we had them over for dinner... Luke made chicken curry. They were staying in a hostel at the time and were STILL eating out so we thought they could use a home cooked meal and a nice place to eat it.

Back to present.....

Luke, Sarah, Tom and I all went out last night to celebrate Halloween and the long weekend. We met Sarah at the statue of Molly Malone (See photo of Sarah and I sitting) at 10pm. From there we went to the oldest pub in Dublin (McDade's off of Grafton Street) where we had a nice pint of Guinness. We then pub-hopped. One bar we went to was nuts. There was a main bar on the ground level that played pop rock/radio friendly stuff where we drank our pints until Sarah discovered that there was a lower level. There was a hip-hop bar and another heavy metal bar! We opted for the heavy metal bar (A wee bit scary but fun...) where we had a pint surrounded by long haired head bangers. (See photo of Luke). We stopped at a very fancy shmancy looking place on Grafton Street that had a red carpet out and men in tuxedos standing at the door. We thought 'What the hell, lets see if we can get in...' (We were all in jeans and t-shirts and most people around were either dressed nicely or in costume - 'fancy dress'). One of the gentlemen in at the door told us that it was a nightclub and said that we could come in even though we were dressed like shit because it was a 'fancy dress night'. (I guess we were dressed as poor-looking foreigners for Halloween....). We walked inside this club we were shocked. It was like a mansion/nightclub. There were beautiful chandeliers, normal house-like staircases and beautiful furnishings. It was incredible. (We probably won't go there again though cause 4 bottles of Heineken was €23!). By the time we left the bar it was 3:20am so we all decided that it was time to head home. They really love their Halloween here. There were TONS of people in 'fancy dress' at the bars.

Today Luke and I were feeling pretty lazy (Didn't get home until about 4am and slept until about 1pm) so we basically got up, had a wonderfully greasy breakfast c/o Luke and stayed home cleaning and organizing the apartment. We've printed some 8 x 10's of our best photos from the trip and put them up around the apartment so we were feeling inspired as now the apartment feels more 'finished'.

MOM & DAD FAULKNER - Please take & email us some nice photos of Brutus 'shit disturber' Faulkner and some photos of The Landing that we can have printed.

MOM & DAD PALUCH - Please take & email us some photos of Gillian that we can have printed.

EVERYONE ELSE - Send us photos! First snowfall, autumn colours, anything and everything... we miss all of you.

Thanks.