Weekend with Friends

And so it's Monday again. Did everyone have a good weekend? I did. Our houseguests left yesterday morning at the crack of dawn, while I was still snoring. We really made the most of our time with our old friends from PE, taking them out pubbing in Temple Bar on Friday night, and to see Riverdance on Saturday night.

Temple Bar is an amazing place. It consists of a few blocks of ancient cobbled brick streets in Dublin's city centre, just South of the river. On Friday and Saturday nights you can be guaranteed of a great night out no matter what the weather. It consists of probably 90% pubs and clubs, with a few shops in between that are open during the day. But it is at night that the place truly comes alive, brightly lit from streetlights and neon signs and just general decoration, with people and music spilling out of the pubs and into the crowded streets.


Temple Bar at night

Visitors to Dublin inevitibly end up spending at least one evening in Temple Bar, and it is a favourite destination for travelling Hen parties, as confirmed by the number of groups of girls waltzing around in matching outfits or bunny ears, mostly British, and mostly smashed. The noise both inside the pubs and outside in the street is phenomenal - people from all over the world joining together in one massive continuous street party, everyone getting along with everyone else and making friends at every stop.
A young American guy was kind enough to take a photograph of the four of us (which I'm NOT posting because there's a good chance my mother will see this!); we made friends with two Italian guys, from Rome, because one of them was wearing a Springbok rugby jersey (good choice this weekend!) and spent a good 15 minutes laughing our asses off with an African dude who was dressed in a 'traditional' outfit to make some money on the streets. He told us he walked all the way from Kenya to Dublin in 3 days and he was a great warrior... and then we told him we were South African and he almost laughed his head off cos he knew he'd been bust! But hey, the Irish will believe anything an African says (go figure!) and he seemed to be making a good enough living anyway.


The Great Masai Warrior with D & Big D

It was a good pub crawl, all in all, which we ended in a pub called Oliver St John Gogherty's, which was crammed with foreigners singing along to favourites like "American Pie", watching the desperate singles playing tonsil-tennis like mad. Hubby could no longer contain himself and ended up dancing with us gals and Big D looked on in amazement at the chaotic revelry of Temple Bar on a Saturday night.
It is courtesy of Big D, by the way, that I have these photos to show you.

In contrast, Saturday night was an evening of quiet culture. Okay, maybe not quiet, since a large part of the Riverdance show consists of lots of dancers in tap shoes. Fortunately our hangovers had subsided somewhat by then so we all enjoyed the show immensely - even the guys. There's an awful lot of talent in there and you can't help but be moved by the haunting Irish music.


Riverdance

Best of the weekend, of course, was watching the Boks beat the Aussies - woo hoo!!! I've been looking all over for an Aussie to rag today, but they all seem to have disappeared.

And finally, I have to leave you with an image that disproves my theory that Irish sunsets are boring. This was taken by Bex last week when the two of us went for a walk along the Estuary here in Malahide.


Sunset over Malahide Estuary - Thanx Bex!

So I can't take credit for any of the photos this week, unfortunately, but I figured all this writing needed some brightening up.