Eurock 2007 - First post

Hello everybody!

So yeah, I'm finally in Europe! I created this blogspot so I can keep everybody posted with my adventures here.

I'm traveling with my friend from Berklee Lance "Romance" Riley and we're gonna be backpacking all over Western Europe during September and the first week of October.

We left Boston on September 3rd at 4:45pm to the JFK in New York and then from the JFK to Dublin, Ireland that same night. We got to Dublin at 7:35 am (Dublin time which is 5 hours later than Boston and I think Caracas, and 6 from Houston).

The first thing we did was of course changing some money. Then we took a Bus that was going to the city. We had no idea of what we were going to do, where we were going or where were we going to sleep, so yeah....

After a while in the bus with a lot of traffic we finally got to the "downtown". From here we decided to walk around the city but in direction to the Trinity College which was our first official stop. The College is beautiful! you guys can see some pictures. We spent a while walking around here.

Our next stop was the St. Stephen's Green. This is a very famous and big park here. It was beautiful. We crossed the whole park and once in the other side we decided to start looking for a place to stay that night. We walked for a bit without any luck, so we bought some snacks and went back to the park to eat something and rest for a bit (after all we've been awake for almost 48 hours or even more and we've been walking all day around the city with our very heavy backpacks).

After the park we kept walking and we ended up in a zone called Temple which is full of bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. We walked for a bit and then we sat outside of a cafe to steal their internet jeje (yeah.. we sat outside.... things are very expensive over here...). After being seated in the floor for 5 min 2 girls approached us and ask if they could take our pictures and make us some questions for a magazine called the "Dubliner", so yeah... we're famous here already. The girls left us with some recommendations of good pubs with live music. Lance and I found on the internet some places where we could spent the night and we decided to go check them out. That's how we ended in Jacob's Inn.

Jacob's Inn is a hostel not far from where we were. Once here we rented 2 beds in a 10 beds room (our cheapest option). The place was nice. It was full of young people like us that were traveling and we had the breakfast included! Once in the hostel Lance realized that he had lost an envelope he carried with him with $800.... what a way to start our first day right? He checked all his stuff and went back to the place where we met the girls, but nothing.

After cursing the heaven for a while we decided it was time to move on and also time to meet Lance's friend Mark. Mark was great! He graduated from Berklee a couple years ago and then he returned to Belfast, where he's originally from. We walked even more with him and then he took us to the Guinness Storehous and Factory, but unfortunately it was closed, so we decided to go to the Temple Bar and have a beer.

The pub was great. Irish people LOVE drinking beer. Mark even told us that they actually have a serious alcoholic problem! We had a beer at the Pub (yeah, even I had a beer! come on! is Ireland! and Mark bought it for me without asking... so I thought it would be rude not to drink it). After the Pub we went to a Indian restaurant in the same are. The food was great! and once again Mark paid for us! I'm gonna say it again: What a great guy! jeje.

After the restaurant we went back to mark's car and he drove us to the hostel. We finally made it to our room with 8 strangers and I realized I had lost my glasses... I checked everywhere, called Mark to ask if I had left them in his car, and also to the restaurant, but nothing... so yeah... once again what a great first day.... I suck!

It was almost midnight from Dublin when we died in our beds.

Today we woke up, had our free breakfast and now we're going to the Guinness Factory again. Then we're going to the airport to fly to London! or to sleep in the airport.... we'll play it by ear!

Fernando