After another visit to Assisi for a field trip in one of my classes, Guy, Mike, and I headed to Dublin for the weekend. Dublin, although not as green as I had envisioned, basically lived up to what my expectations of Dublin to be. We missed the parade by a day, but on Saturday night Ireland played England in Rugby’s version of the Super Bowl, this only intensified the drinking that the Irish partook in. Ireland eventually was victorious due to what appeared to be something equivalent to a last second field goal, but the win insured Saturday night would be crazy in the streets and bars of Dublin. Every bar we went in was packed and that says something because similar to pizzerias on every block in Perugia, there are pubs on every block in Dublin. We decided to go check out the most famous part of Dublin, the Temple Bar area. The area was named after the first bar located there, Temple Bar. With the big win against England and it being St. Patrick’s Day weekend every bar; probably about 20 in a 3-block radius were packed. These bars were unlike any American bar that I had read about in books or seen on TV. These bars were basically buildings, three stories high and encompassed probably about 10 different rooms, each room in which had it’s own bar. Being that I was in Dublin, and the drink of course is Guinness, I decided to try one even though I was never a real big fan but being I was in Ireland I had to. Before I went to Dublin I had told my teacher where I was going and he said that even if I didn’t like Guinness I was to try one because they taste different in Ireland then anywhere else you can drink one. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that to me and everyone else that had one, Guinness was actually a lot better in Ireland (it was a lot lighter and didn’t overwhelmingly taste like coffee). Another thing we were told before we went was that the Irish don’t like tourists coming to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. I’m not sure what this person was talking about because the Irish were extremely friendly and social with us, I was a big fan of the Irish. The Irish acted exactly how I would envision the Irish to act. For instance I was walking by a group of guys and I heard one of them go in an Irish accent, “Cheers to Drinking!” this was followed by the rest of the group repeating that cheers. As I walked back to the table I said to myself, “The Irish would cheers to that.” After getting a late start on Saturday we decided to head down to the Guinness factory to see how Guinness is made. Although I was a little disappointed to see that Guinness wasn’t actually brewed there I did learn some interesting facts such as there is one pub for every 150 people in Ireland. What made the factory worthwhile to me was the skybar at the top of the factory with glass walls all around it enabling you to get a good view of the surrounding city while drinking your complimentary pint of Guinness. After a similar night of barhopping and sightseeing on Sunday we headed to Malaga Spain for spring break.