Werner's European Adventure: 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.