Escapade to Barcelona

Thursday night I came back from work, switched on my laptop and checked my email to see if there were any news about my house hunting. I found out that I had won a return flight to any vueling destination for the week end. So I decided to organize a last minute escapade to Barcelona to see my friends Steve and Eoin. I booked the flight for Friday and only when I received the confirmation email I realized that I had booked the 6am flight! I tried to change it but it would have cost me €100. So I decided that I had to accept the consequences of my mistake. That meant that I didn't go to bed on Thursday night. Went to see my friend Ashley in La Latina, and then took the taxi to the airport. So it was a photo opportunity for the new Terminal of Barajas airport! It was 3am when I got there. The boarding time was 5.30am.
So got to BCN, went to Steve and Eoin's place and spent the next 4 hours sleeping. On Friday evening we went for dinner and on to a gay club called Metro. Where the drinking got a bit out of hand... Hey but what the hell, not every week end I am in Barcelona having a good time with my friends. Anyway I paid the price next day. Infact on Saturday we only had the energy to have a walk to the waterfront and then go back home cook dinner and watch Apocalypso. We were in bed by 10.30.

My first time in Dublin

The grey sky and the green landscape are welcoming me when I arrive on Friday night. But they’re silent and unseen, is 8pm and the Dubliners are lining the streets for the cash machines before they go on with their business of spending as much as they can on their drinks.
I go for a walk in the Temple Bar area but pushed away by the amount of tourists I end up in a pub a little South of Connelly’s street. There’s live Irish music and I attract the attention of a group of Danish old men, who like me have just arrived in Dublin for the weekend.
Another old man invites me to dance and talks to me in a strange language I don’t understand. Then finally a girl shuts him up, and tells him not to talk to me in Gaelic, since am a foreigner. That’s my first night in Dublin.
Next day the sun is shining, believe it or not, and I explore the city. I take a few pics of the Central Post Office, the Halfapenny bridge and the statues of James Joyce and Molly Bloom. I have a stroll at St Stephen’s Green and wonder around the shops in Grafton Street.
A young student with the cutest accent gives me and a group of people a tour of Trinity college, and the book of Kells. And he makes me realize that it makes sense that a country that has such an ancient tradition of veneration for books has also such a big literary tradition.
I can’t help walking the streets and imagine how it must have looked like when James Joyce was living here and writing The Dubliners.
Dublin is poor. This is the first thing I thought when I arrived. It has all the Georgian and Victorian buildings that one would see in London. Only doesn’t have the same wealth. But that is if your thinking of money wealth.
One only needs to spend a few hours in one of its many pubs, talking to the locals and listening to their music to understand that the wealth they have is of a different kind. They hug you and offer you a Guinness as if you had been their friend for ages. And they talk to you in their cute accent and you fall in love with them.
The landscape outside of Dublin, that I got to see doing the “Celtic Experience” tour is as green as can be. As Ireland is. And there’s a sense of peacefulness in their venerated cemeteries, where the ancient Celtic crosses are. Or on Tara Hill and where all the legends have shaped the land and united generations of Irish, proud of their history and of their country.
The evening that I spent at the O’Donoghue’s after 5 minutes I had met a group of old folks, that were singing along with the musicians and taking their Guinness business very seriously. A man called Mick talked to me all night of his work experience as an extra in the Tories BBC series. I will have to look out for him if I ever get a chance to see that.
This morning when I had the last walk around Connelly’s street before I took the 16A bus to the airport, the sky was gloomy and the people were busy going to and from their workplaces. I wondered if I d come back and if I’ll get the chance to see a bit more of the country. Next time I hope to go to Galloway.