Alex's Summer at Sea

This should highlight the craziness that is SAS: this entry about Dublin, Ireland, was written aboard a moving ship in the Bay of Biscay, and is now being posted in a small internet café in Bilbao, Spain. Also, the blogger page automatically loads in Spanish here, so we´ll see if I managed to figure it all out to post.
---------------
Our ship was docked about 15 minutes away from the city center, in the middle of a huge cargo-terminal. We had a shuttle that would run from the ship to the city during the day, but it stopped running at night, which meant that we had to spend our hard earned Euros on cabs at night. While they were certainly expensive, the cab drivers in Dublin are unquestionably the best in Europe. They love to talk (and talk, and talk…) and virtually all rides begin with “so, should I point out some sights along the way?” In reality, it’s an inconsequential question anyway, because it seems that the tour-guiding service is included in cab fare. The best cabbie I had was when I left the Guinness factory on the second day, taking a short trip to the shuttle stop. Along the way I had asked for some of his recommendations on places to go for food and other sites to see. Not only did he have a recommendation for all of them, when we came to the destination he pulled out a map, and started scribbling on it. When he was done, he had personalized a map for me with all of the places he had talked about (plus more), and had given an “Irish-English to English” pronunciation guide for me for a couple of the confusing names. He turned around to hand it to me, and as I stuck out my hand he said, “Wait a minute.” He turned back around, grabbed a couple of highlighters and created an ad hoc path for me to follow to make sure I fit in his Dublin highlights. He got a nice tip.
------------
One of my favorite bands is an Irish group called The Saw Doctors (thank you, Blake). I managed to see them once in concert in the US, and became a big fan, though it was hard (actually, impossible) to find any Saw Doctors albums in the US, even at major record stores like Amoeba. Therefore, one of my main goals when I got to Dublin was to find me some Saw Doctors albums. I’m happy to report I managed to pick up a couple of discs, and I impressed cabbies not once, but twice, when I mentioned I liked the group. I haven’t had the chance to surf the Internet to find out yet, but one of the cabbies told me that one of the band members won the lottery. If you find this interesting (i.e. if you are Blake), check it out and tell me if it’s true.

I have to say, though, that despite a lot of clamoring in the US about the death of mom and pop record shops, Ireland taught me how nice it is to be able to walk into a Tower in the US and find exactly what you want. There aren’t really any big record stores in Dublin, all are small, with inventory for the whole store that would fit inside of the spoken word section at your local Virgin Record store. That meant that even though the Saw Doctors are pretty popular in Ireland, they had to compete for quite limited shelf space with other Irish and American bands, not to mention the “grand” Euro-pop-techno-dance-mix-rave-trance albums. Also, going to Ireland has helped me appreciate some of things the Saw Doctors sing about a bit better, as I now understand that their song N17 isn’t about marijuana use, but rather about a highway leading to their hometown in Western Ireland, and I can now picture places they’re talking about in their song “Galway and Mayo.”
------------
The Irish, in my mind, are the wittiest people I’ve ever met. Of course there’s satirist Oscar Wilde, but even the “regular folk” have a great sense of humor. The tour guide on my city-orientation tour was a little old lady, but boy did she have a mouth on her! Also, they have perhaps the best-named store ever: “Knobs and Knockers.” What do they sell there? Door accessories, of course: knobs, handles, decorations, etc.
--------------
I took a tour of the Guinness factory, but have to say it’s incredibly overrated. In fact, it’s not a factory tour, but rather a 15-minute walk through the process of making beer. Then you have 5 stories to go up, each floor with a few interesting displays, until you reach the seventh story “gravity bar,” which has a panoramic view of Dublin, and a free pint of the “Black magic.” The only part of the tour worthwhile was a section where visitors could fill out postcards and post them to a large kiosk. Most of the cards would be a combination of mentioning their love for Guinness and a “shout out” to their home-town or country. It was really quite cool to see countries as far away as South Africa and Brazil represented on the board.
-------------
Looks like uploading photos isn´t working...sorry, I´ll post them later