Ireland! and St Patty's Day

Wow! what a wonderful trip. It was bright and sunny the whole time...even now that I am back in Glasgow it's still cheerful outside...weird. We decided that to save on transportation and to play it safe we should leave Monday night and sleep in the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:30a.m. and we would have been really pushing it to get a bus or train(pictured) that early in the morning. So we (12 of the 15 of us...the other 3 paid for a taxi in the morning) caught a train to Prestwick International Airport (around midnight) We tried to sleep in the airport...we found some really comfy booth benches that contoured to the body....but airport security was not keen on anyone being comfortable for the night so we all ended up on the floor of the airport. Morning rolled around to the sound of Starbucks employees opening shop (I don't think I slept much at all). Some grabbed coffee while others of us found books or newspapers in the book shop and thus we passed the time till we could get our boarding passes. Ryan air does an excellent job of cramming seats close together on the plane...supposedly they came by advertising stuff every few minutes on the flight there...but I fell asleep against the window and didn't wake up untill we were over Ireland (it was a 50 minute flight so i didn't sleep long). We arrived in Dublin to 50 degree weather and bright sunshine. We caught a double decker bus into the city center. The city was alive with family's and lots and lots of green wearing people. I'm not sure if it was the sunshine, the city, the people, or the fact that it was St Patty's day but something felt much more hopeful about Dublin than Glasgow.
Anyway we enjoyed the famous St Patty's day parade from behind a wall of people...all kinds of weird things pasted us by...my favorite (and I failed to take a picture of it) was a man riding a huge mechanical bird frame. he had control over the birds head and he kept swinging it out over the crowd and then snapping its beak shut in a loud menacing manner...very cool.
After the parade we went to the Guinness Beer Storage House...a huge building and long tour that was extremely fascinating met us and we gave it the time it deserved. Guinness is currently celebrating its 250th anniversary so they had all kinds of performances going on. We even took to swing dancing to a swing band on the 5th floor at one point. The bar tenders on the top floor which overlooks Dublin did a really cool trick and made a shamrock imprint in the foam every individual pint. (picture looking down from the 4thish floor...it's like the CIA but with beer)
After Guinness we found dinner off in a corner of the city at an Asian restaurant. The food was good, but I paid way to much for them to bring me spicy pork instead of BBQ pork...I guess that's life. We finished dinner and went out to explore the nightlife. On our way a random girl ran up to me, yelled Happy St. Patty's Day! and then kissed me on the cheek...I was totally unprepared for this so i just said Happy St Patty's day back as she moved on to do the same to everyone else in our group. We exchanged pleasantries and she left convinced she'd see us again that night(we didn't see her again).
We unfortunately found no green beer to drink...well we found some it was just pricey to get into the place let alone buy it so we skipped out. Luckily we landed in a pub called legends. They had a riverdance group perform for part of the evening and a traditional Irish folk band that played after them. This was an absolutely perfect Irish setting and it kept us from needing to exert to much energy which there was not much of due to the lack of sleep the night before. Oh we also found it funny that Dublin might be the only place where Guinness is cheaper than Budweiser.
We left before midnight, split a taxi ride back to the airport...a cool Nigerian was driving us so I knew we were safe and didn't bother to find the seat belt(actually I had so much stuff I couldn't locate the seat belt).
We slept in the star bucks till 347am when security came around and kicked everyone in the shoes (we are talking about hundred people sprawled everywhere in the airport) apparently they only let you sleep if you take up 1 seat in the Starbucks not two or more...Anyway we did the whole trip process in reverse and now are back in Glasgow...somehow we brought a little sunshine with us.

Next weekend ...which I guess is 2 days away is the international Castle trip where we get to spend the night in some castle way up in the highlands...I'm very excited about it because i got the last ticket available from someone who canceled (Score!)