Ok,
So my wife Angel so eloquently explained the first 2 days of our trip, and now I'll try to shed some light on the next 1 (Wednesday). But first, some general observations. I've noticed a few things about this country. First of all, it's very beautiful in many ways. The architecture is great and amazing and it has modern zeal with many ancient historical buildings too. I'm also humored by the accents. It's amazing that they are speaking English but I rarely understand what the heck they're saying. It's probably more my fault, but it's funny nonetheless.
Another thing and probably most surprising is the lack of attention given to customer service. My experience in Texas has always been that you'll usually get a waiter or waitress that will bend over backwards to give you what you want. Doesn't matter how complicated your order is, how pissy you are to them, or any of that. For the most part, you will get someone who will show a lot of effort in making you happy. There are exceptions of course, and it's probably like 70/30. That is absolutely not the case here in Ireland, at least not my experience. In general, people are still polite. But they are not afraid to rush you and they are not overly apologetic if they can't make things perfect for you. My spoiled U.S. attitude was not gonna fly, from the first moment we stepped on the bus. The driver quickly snatched my money and gave me my change and motioned for me to get out of the way. Then, as I was dragging my 2 bags of luggage to find a place to put them in the luggage rack, he took off and punched on the gas, almost making me fall and I still hadn't put my luggage away. So, I ended up just standing up and holding my luggage against the side of the bus for the whole 30 minute ride. And I've come to learn that that type of service is not the exception to the rule, it IS the rule. We've been to about 8 bars, and I've asked every bartender for advice on what to drink. 6 of the 8 responded with something like "What the hell do you want!!" before moving to another person then coming back to see if I had made up my mind. All the restaurants have closed 15-30 minutes before the posted time and if they aren't closed (like McDonalds and BK) they are not usually in a good mood at all and not afraid to show it. In summary, I've come to appreciate good customer service while here, and our luck has been changing a bit lately. But I know now that nobodies bending over backwards for me so I better be on time, know what I want, and I better like it cuz nobody cares if I don't.
So, I digress, a summary of our other days here. I believe angel left off mid-day on day 2 (Monday), so I'll start from there. We walked back to the Temple Bar area and went back to Quay's Pub to listen to music and have drinks. The bar tender was impatient again but angel got a waitress to suggest a strawberry cider for me while she sipped on her Guiness, or Heineken, or I think it was Carlsburg. It was something a lot more manly than my Cider. Anywho, we ended up sitting next to these 2 German guys name Haiko and Steffen and singing to some punk rockish/oldies/country music. Since it was July 4th, there was a pro-american sentiment and the atmosphere was very nice. I was pretty surprized when they busted out with "friends in low places" and everybody in the pub knew the song. It was actually the only song that the 2 German guys did not know word for word. Made me feel pretty dumb cuz it was 1 of like 5 songs that I could sorta sing along with. Either way, it was a good time and very relaxing. After the band finished and our German comrades took off, we decided to try a different flavor. We walked down the street to this pub called alchemy and heard some hip hop music so we started to go in. They were charging 5 euros cover so we started to turn around (just got hustled the night before) before some tall skinny Irish guy in a suit grabbed us and gave us complimentary entry passes. The club section was down the stairs and past a pretty well set up coat check. The music was good and all but it was just a little bit too undercrowded to really feel a crunk vibe. So, we danced to a couple songs then we bounced. On the way back to the hotel Angel finally gave in to my begging and we skipped Mcdonalds for Burger King this time. She had pancakes and I had a bacon burger or something. It was all good.
Day 3 kicked off with me being lazy and finally gettin up to go to Queen of Tarts. We were excited to get in since they had closed on us the 1st day. The service here was a little better than most places and we were offered to sit inside or outside. We finally got seated and Angel and I shared a BLT before I ordered a Chocolate pecan tart while she enjoyed the apple crumple. In my opinion, it was just good, which was slightly disappointing. I would certainly recommend it though, since it was by far the best desert we've had to this point. I believe my longing for ice cream was ruining my ability to enjoy the meal. From Queen of Tarts, we went on a little bit of a shopping spree as we walked back to our hotel. Nothing too exciting, just that there was a good mix of stores you would find in America (Footlocker, Forever 21) and some stores that I recognize as unique to Ireland. We went to a big store called Penney's and they had several things for under 10 Euros, which tempted me to really shop a lot, but it was not really my style, Thank God. Angel managed to find a couple things there and in other places. After shopping, we were sore and beat, so we took a nap. Then we got dressed and went to a place called "The Living Room", a little bar right next to our hotel. By far the absolute best customer service I've had the whole trip. The guy answered my 15 drink questions, gave me some fries even though they didn't come with the meal, and suggested some other places we could visit. After eating some good fried chicken that was a great bang for our buck and having a couple drinks, we walked down to the Arlington Hotel. Our bus driver had told us to be in our seats by 8pm if we hoped to see the free 9pm show. We showed up around 8:05 and most of the good seats were already taken. however, in order to actually get a floor seat you had to buy the 30 euro meal, and since we had eaten already we decided to get a seat at the bar. There were 4 open seats right in front of the stage, so we ordered a couple drinks and settled in. We met this really nice couple named Bryan and Christie and had a good conversation. The show itself, it was interesting from the perspecitve that it was Irish music and talented performers, but it was fairly short (30 mins), started at 10 instead of 9, and a bit repetitive. A good idea if you want to chill for a bit and don't have any other plans, but not really a must see. Anywho, we finished up the show and then walked over to Whelan's Pub. Angel was pretty disapointed that the stage upstairs was closed but we decided to sit down and have a drink anyway. The place was fairly empty, so after a drink we got up and headed back towards temple bar. We didn't actually end up going into any bars though, and headed back to the room at about 12:30 am.
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