Dublin, Ireland

This past weekend a group of about 10 of us went to Dublin for the weekend. The rock band U2 is from Dublin and had 3 concerts there that weekend. Chris and Kerry are huge U2 fans so they got tickets and organized the trip. I'm not a huge U2 fan (or Bono for that matter!), but it was really a great concert. It was in Croke Park, which is usually used for rugby games and holds 82,000. We even had good weather all weekend too - hard to believe I know, but there was no rain in Dublin!

Once again, I ran into someone with Kansas ties. We took a walking tour about the 1916 Rebellion (fight for independence from Britain) and this guy was our tour guide. His shirt is from a record store (or do I say CD now?) in Lawrence. He said he gave a speech at KU a while back and loved the town and store so bought the t-shirt. By the way...do you think he looks Irish!











This is an old building we saw along the tour that used to be part of the government buildings. There are no windows because part of the property tax assessment used to be based on the number of windows you had. Shhh, don't tell Obama about this if you have windows in your house.



Customs House along the River Liffey.





Instead of hotel rooms, we rented 2 apartments since we had 10 people. This is the view from our balcony.







Temple Bar - the bar and shopping district in downtown Dublin. There are stereotypes for a reason. There are pubs everywhere in Dublin!







Kerry, Chris, Andi, Jenny, Alissa, me, Luiza and Markus at lunch.





Jenny, Andi, and Luiza 2 rows from the stage. They had a slightly better view than we did!





I never knew beer was transported like milk.





We took a tour of the Guinness brewery.

Luiza, Chris, Markus, me and Alissa at the Guinness brewery.

Chris and I decided to have a few beers at the apartment/hotel before the concert, but there were no pint glasses, so we had to use the next best thing. Never thought I'd drink a beer out of a wine glass.

I guess it's impossible to get lost in Ireland. Just turn right and you'll get there.

I've got the solution for all this confusion. Who else, but this guy!!! (I love who's sponsoring this lecture).

U2 concert at Croke Park

Beautiful Day...

Crowd of 85,000

Tour de France

I convinced Chris and Alissa to go to the Tour de France this weekend. The end of the stage was in Verbier, Switzerland. We drove down Saturday night and found a place along the race route to camp. Chris and I camped outside without a tent and were lucky enough to get 2 small rainshowers during the night. Luckily they were really light, so it never got hard enough to penetrate our sleeping bags.

I wasn't sure what to expect before we went, but wanted to go to see what it was like. I just got finished reading Lance Armstrong's book and watched a few of the first stages this year and started getting into it by learning about some of the riders, so wanted to go see what it was all about. I never thought I would say it, but this was an incredible event and want to go another year! Verbier is a ski town of about 2,500, but was jammed packed the night before with every bar being crowded and also a band outside in the town square. Not only in town, but there were cars lining the entire route up the mountain already the night before. I wouldn't even know where to start estimating how many people were there during the race, but it had to be well over a hundred thousand just in the last few miles.

Not a bad view to wake up to, huh!

Want some escargot? There were slugs and snails everywhere.

House full of colorful flowers along the route. This was taken early before the race, so the riders are just "normal joes" riding up the route.

Some artwork under the church along the route.

My future BBQ grill.

Looking back at the 1km to go marker.

Standing in front of the podium.

One of the many "Lance Camps" we saw. (In case you haven't noticed, Lance is from Texas and dang proud of it)

All along the road, fans painted names of their favorite riders. Here is one for the Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank who ride for Saxo Bank, so I couldn't resist taking a picture with the truck going by. The second one is Christian Vande Velde who is an American rider for Team Garmin Slipstream.

Alissa and I sitting in our own Lance Camp in the shade on the hill waiting for the race to start. We had a great view on a hill looking back at a switchback, so were able to see quite a bit.

People and bikes were everywhere!

Before the race, the sponsors come through and pass out promotional items in a parade they call the caravan.

Andy Schleck of Team Saxo Bank finished second.

Andreas Kloden on the left and Lance Armstrong on the right. Lance finished in 9th, 1 minute 35 seconds behind. He may not be the Lance of old, but still not too shabby for a 38 year old.

And again, The Man...I mean the winner of 7 Tours...I mean Lance Armstrong.

Kim Kirchen for Team Columbia HTC.

Christian Vande Velde for Team Garmin Slipstream.

Rinaldo Nocentini in the yellow jersey. He was the overall leader until this stage. Sandy Casar is in the white in front.

Here is a group of riders that finished around the middle of the pack. They were slow compared to Contador in the 2nd video below.

Now after watching that, tilt your head and watch how fast the winner of the stage and now overall leader Alberto Contador was going! Unbelievable!!! (You think there might have been a few Lance fans around us with all the booing when he went by?!?!)

Halfway

It's hard to believe, but I'm already halfway through my 18 month rotation here. In less than 9 months, I'll be back in Denver.

Work has gotten really busy, so I haven't been traveling much lately, but enjoying the summer weather in Munich...and what better to do than enjoy the many beer gardens here. Last Sunday we went to the Andechs Monastery. It has been brewing beer since 1455.

Here's Kerry making friends.

Yesterday morning I went for a bike ride along the Isar River and then went to a street festival near my apartment. They had all the roads blocked off and had 4 different bands playing at the same time, but set up at different spots along the roads with various brat and beer stands, so was a really good time. Then, to celebrate the 4th of July, Jenny and Andi had us over for a BBQ at their apartment. Jenny is from London, so we made sure to give her a hard time about hosting Americans on such a day. She said they were happy to get rid of us anyway. HA!

Here are some pictures from along the river.