Partytime again!

We have been pretty busy over the last few weeks! We've been to various social functions including a netball party and a trip down to Cork by Bex for her Gran's 80th birthday .


We've even just got back from an awesome long weekend in Manchester but more about that later on in the week because we first have to tell you about the weekend before that....

With the arrival of our Scottish friend Karen from Edinburgh over for a weekend trip, Johnny and I thought that it would be a great time to have a bit of a party so that all our new friends could meet and get to know one another. It ended up being a huge success with over 25 people at it from at least 12 different nationalities! I am not kidding! We had Kiwis, Aussies, Frenchies, a Scot, a Pom, Paddys, Finns, a Saffa, an Austrian, a Hungarian, a Yank, and of course a Taiwanese guy! ;-)

We stayed at the apartment until about midnight and then went off to a club called 'Four Dame Lane'. When that shut at 3am the five of us who were left went off to McDonalds for a feed before stumbling home at 5am. It was a great night but hard to get out of bed the next day!


Not only did we show Karen how the Paddys (okay and the other nationalities) can drink, but we took her to a few touristy sights on the weekend too. On Saturday Karen and I left Johnny behind at the apartment and went to vist the Book of Kells in Trinity College. The Book of Kells is one of the oldest books in the world, dating back to around 800 AD and written by monks. It was interesting to see but I don't know if it was worth the expensive 7.50 Euros for the privelage of seeing it!

After checking out the Book of Kells we met up with my friend Anita and jumped on the Dublin Bus Tour. Here we spent a very wind-swept hour and a half on top of a double-decker bus checking out the sights. I find that these type of tours are great for orientating yourself with the city and hearing what it has to offer in the way of tourist attractions. The hop-on-hop-off style is handy for getting to see more of these sights too. Unfortunately, most of the trip we had a not-so interesting tour guide/bus driver showing us around though and we regretted not changing buses sooner when we jumped on another bus after our late lunch to be pleasantly surprised by a very interesting and fun tour guide!

Sunday was a very slow start and we only got the chance to have a walk down the Canal, through St. Stephen's Green and down Grafton Street before we headed to the Arlington Hotel to check out some good old Irish music and Karen's first real Irish Guinness. The Arlington also offers a free Irish Dancing show every night but we were too tired to stay so went home and watched a movie instead.


It was a tiring but very fun weekend and nice to have someone to stay with us. We look forward to all the other guests that will be coming to visit us over the next few months!