Dublin after a night's sleep

We make friends with two fellow Five Iron Frenzy fans - two old church friends from Portland meeting up in our hostel - Monnica and Patrick. Jenna and Christa - Canadians - and Johnna and Thea - Austrailians - join us as well. No Brits in the group, we all have laments about the exchange rate, and all gather our various dinners around themselves at the big table in the self-catering kitchen.

We join a three-and-a-half hour, free tour led by Seamus, a fiery-witted Irish student who's not shy to make jokes at the expense of England. We see Dublin Castle, Christ Church, Trinity College, Temple Bar, St. Stephen's Green, and the largest Viking settlement outside of Scandinavia, which was promptly bulldozed to make room for Dublin's government buildings (though years after the police forcefully remove the archaeologists from the site in protest to the leveling, the city admitted they made a poor decision). We learn of the Vikings' two arrivals in Ireland, and how their warm, dark huts had a smoke vent, a door, and no other openings; how two small rooms could house twenty people, and Seamus imagined it was a "spoon fest." We learn how St. Stephen's Green was shattered in the Easter Rebellion and, as the swan's pedal through the area that looks much like Boston Common, Seamus tells us an important fact: "A male swan can break a man's arm with one swipe of it's neck, yet a female swan can break a male swan's heart with just one glance..."

We have community today, it's nice to have slept, and we've gotten a great deal with our hostel. We've seen Dublin, had the required Guinness, and, as I promised Ryan in our mission statement, I've taken time to write. It's relieving. Even more, our farm cannot take us until Sunday, and we were scared, not wanting to spend more days in spendy Dublin. Then we met our new friends, made a reservation in Cork, and will be on the road tomorrow, with jokes and fanfare.