UK, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Home

Alright, this blog will be a short and sweet recap of our last two days in the UK/Ireland. Sick and tired of London we take a train from the city to the western coast of Britan.

 

 

 

 

I can't get enough of those sheep!

 

The train has electrical outlets, perfect for charging the computer.

 

 

 

We get off the train and hop a ferry back to dublin. Irish ferries are super posh circa 1970's styles.

 

 

We float and drink brews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We get back to Ireland and promptly belly up to the mexican margarita bar.

 

 

 

 

Our last day. We take a trip up to Belfast and the northern coast of Ireland to see the sites.

 

More sheep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Antrim Coast

 

 

 

 

 

Puffins!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giants Causeway, complete with crazy hexagon rocks. This is the only reason I came all this way.

 

 

So awesome, so many ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff works up a sweat from running around rocks.

 

 

Drinking competitions.

 

 

Irish castles.

 

 

Trainrides home.

 

 

 

Leaving on a jet plane. Jeff sleeps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home sweet home, MPLS!

 

 

London

Jet, that one band. We leave Edinburgh for London on a rainy cloudy morning.

 

Bloggin' away between destinations.

 

No grids here. England is totally free-form.

 

We get off the plane and take the train into the city. To our surprise, and in a foreshadowing touch of just how ridiculously expensive London is going to be, it costs us 4 pounds a piece to ride "the tube" one way, akin to roughly $9 U.S. Dollars. Holy shit.

 

 

 

I think this might be one of the worst photos ever taken of me... Like a deer in the headlights, right?

 

London's full of weird fucking statues like this one that appears to be masturbating with a sword.

 

Buckingham Palace. I think the rule is that when the Union Jack is at full mast the queen is in residence. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet her or anything.

 

More weird statues.

 

The royal crest.

Our hostel is in Kensington, a fairly "chi-chi" (aka "toney" aka "wealthy") part of town -- not what two budget travelers are looking for. We decide to walk into the center of the city to see what we can find, anticipating that we'll run into some cool pubs or some cool people, but we're sadly disappointed.

Instead, we run into plenty of department stores, expensive "modern" bars (all lightly-stained wood and glass), and well-dressed people. We walk for a few hours, snap a few photos, get stuck in the rain. Fed up, we head back to the hostel and enjoy some bottled Budweisers in our room while watching old episodes of The Office on our computer. Total America therapy.

 

London Day 2: Discouraged by all the not-cool things we find in London the day before, we decide to take one of those famous bus tours to try and get a feel for the city. It costs us apprx. 38 pounds for the two of us, roughly $80 U.S. Dollars. Gay.

 

 

London has some weird 70's architecture in their business district.

 

They have a musical called "We Will Rock You" based on Freddie Mercury's life. Here is a 20 foot tall golden statue above the theater, totally mind blowing.

 

 

 

They've got dragons all over this city. Another goth haven. Beak would be into it.

 

 

 

Pot-bellied buildings.

 

 

 

Our tour guide is 100 percent hilarious, continually cracking jokes about his ex-wife and his mother in-law.

 

 

 

 

2nd worst photo ever.

 

 

Check out this dude's hair. Apparently it's intentional. It's our opinion that hipster dudes in London have the worst haircuts in the world, possibly (probably) related to the fact that they like to go to dance clubs for fun and listen to dubtrancehouseelectrowhatever.

 

Westminster Abbey.

 

The River Thames and the London Eye.

 

Big Ben.

 

 

I guess when the guy on the top of this statue died he asked to have his body preserved in Brandy so that they could get him across the sea and home to London without the body decomposing. After they got him home all his buddies did a cheers and drank the body brandy.

 

This is when Jeff and I start finally winning the London game. We do a little research on the interenets on where we can find record stores, deducing that the area of the city with the highest proportion of of them will be where we have the most fun. Our research takes us out of the city to Camden. We head north on the tube, hoping to find some solace from the obscene wealth of the city. We win!

 

We eat some Italian dinner at a cafe. Jeff drinks his first Italian beer and calls it "pretty good."

 

 

Our luck gets even better. After dinner we walk down the street and find a little pub that serves the original Budweiser from the Czech Republic.

 

We stop and have a few. Within minutes we make friends with our barman. He's real nice guy who tells all about his town as well as some other bars we should stop by, including a "Grunge" bar down the road that he thinks we'd enjoy. Jeff jokingly asks if Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder are going to be there but I don't think he got it.

 

 

Pub religion.

 

 

 

WTF? There was a dude in here dressed like a pirate, non-ironically.

 

A photo from the grunge bar - they've got some NIN on the stereo.

 

Late night tube rides home.

 

Young British love.

 

Our London trip in a nutshell: we accidentally spent time in a manner inversely proportionate to our interests. Trapped in the wealthy fashion and business districts most of the time, briefly discovering the cool affordable areas before leaving. Oh well. Sod off London (or some other such Britishism)!

Now we're back off to Dublin for a few days before coming home to the States. Dublin has been our favorite spot so far, so it should prove to be a happy ending.

Edinburgh

Bennie and the Jets. Next installment: Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

 

 

Edinburgh is every goth's wet dream. Medieval architecture, rainy skies, narrow dark alleyways, an ancient and violent history. If you're not a goth, then it's still a pretty fucking sweet place.

 

Tired of fish and chips, we find our first mexican restaurant of the trip and take advantage. While waiting for our food we see that they have brass parrots just like the awesome one we have hanging over our door at home, given to us by J-Chizzle aka J-Chase aka Jawsdog.

 

Scottish versions of Mexican food are actually pretty great.

 

MmmmmMargeritas.

 

 

 

Really? A chill out room? That's fantastic cause we love to chill.

 

Mcewans, the only real Scottish beer we actually found on this leg of the journey.

 

 

 

Our hostel is right on a busy strip of town called The Royal Mile, so named because it's a mile long and has royal castle and parliament buildings on both ends. There are crap tons of tourists here, like this bloke with the video camera. In this part of town it becomes exceedingly difficult to actually find a real Scottish person.

 

 

"A culture of drinking" -- as our Polish barman from the night before called it -- enables public beer consumption. Totes awes.

 

It may be hard to tell from this photo, but these whiskey bottles are super tiny, like a few centimeters long. They're sitting in a plastic bag in the window of a whisky shop.

 

 

 

 

In all the old buildings there are dozens of chimney stacks on top. In the olden days every flat in every building got heat from internal fireplaces. Everyone used them constantly, sending unhealthy amounts of black smoke into the air every night. Eventually the city stepped in and limited their use.

 

 

We stop in at a sweet Camera Obscura building. You can go to the top floor and into a dark and windowless room. There's a small hole in the ceiling that's amplified through a few lenses and projects a live image of what's happening outside onto a big bowl in the floor. Pretty sweet!

 

This section is for McTubbins, who we think would've enjoyed this crazy shite. On one level of this camera obscura building was a whole crazy cadre of hologram images of weird shit. Here is a falcon on its falconer's hand.

 

This piece was entitled "Scream." Totally intense right? Right. Kinda.

 

Werewolves dude!

 

 

 

Edinburgh Castle. Right smack dab in the middle of the city center is a massive castle on a hill. Totally looks like that old video game Castlevania. In the olden days it was a working military base that was involved in like 30,000 battles and wars and sieges. Now its designed for people like us to just walk around and check it out.

 

 

Don't mess with the Scottish.

 

View from the castle.

 

 

Diorama of Scottish wars dude.

 

Real names on gravestones: Tinker and Scamp.

 

There is a fine line between serious photo-blogging and dumb tourist photo-taking. We are proudly skirting this line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shamrock shakes on top of our Guinness.

 

We're on a nacho streak. These were from a place that turned out to be like AMERICA BAR or some shit. They had all sorts of crazy crap on the walls just like TGI Fridays.

 

Near the end of our second night in Edinburgh we are exhausted due to jet lag, time changes, and miles and miles of uninterrupted walking. It takes its toll so we head up to the aforementioned Upstairs Chill Out Bar to be tired. It turns out to be a Polish bar staffed and frequented only by Polish people who like calm dance music and faux cow skinned furniture.

 

 

Scotland is way north, did you know this? As a result, the sun doesn't fully go down until like 11PM and it comes back up at like 3:30 AM. This is right after it gets dark.

 

Friendly Scottish kids.

 

 

Beach trip, Euro styles. Tall boys of Stella Artois, crackers and cheese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, we are American tourists.

 

Back in town at the self-proclaimed "Oldest Pub in Scotland." It's basically one small room tucked into a dark alleyway off the main strip. Pretty sweet.

 

 

 

When in Scotland, one must drink Scotch.

 

Tastes scotchy.

 

Two fingers of scotch. Get it? HA!

 

Real Scottish people look awesome.

 

We find a little bar tucked onto a side street that has a piano and a guitar. Jeff annoys the locals with drunken improvisation in E Major.

 

Then, out of nowhere, these loud and crazy Scottish kids show up -- all between 17 and 18 years old. Jeff and the main kid, Cain, have a jam session on some Oasis and Coldplay tunes.

 

They take a shining to us yanks for some reason. They insist that we are going to hang out with them, all night. This sounds like a good idea at first.

 

This girl claims that she and Cain, her boyfriend, are "just like Kate Moss and Pete Doherty!" We can't argue.

 

They buy us tequila shots and try to tell us how to properly take one down. We're all like "dudes, we know alright? Mexico is way closer to us than you."

 

Then things start to get odd. They take us down the street to some crazy pub called The Chunky Monkey or something where everyone in the place is laying together on a big bed. Cain is saying that we should come stay at his place with him, 30 minutes out of town, even though we have to be up at 8AM to catch a flight to London.

 

They tell us that emphatically we really should come with them and that they won't take no for an answer and that they will be getting us ecstasy, speed and Cocaine and it will be great and we should really just come with them. We thank them kindly, pretend to go to the bathroom together and then leave. Lame, we know, but they were really starting to get strange. After all, they were like 17 years old.

 

Dublin

Leaving on a jet plane. Okay, the next few blog posts are international-styles dudes. Jeff and I are headed across the pond for ten days for fun in the (not ) sun in Ireland, Scotland and England! We're gonna try to update this every few days cause otherwise we'll have way too many pictures to fit in one blog at the end. Our goals over the next ten days are to: walk around and look at shit, talk to crazy old Irish people about stuff, visit distilleries and breweries, get "soused," get "pissed," and avoid eating any form of haggis. So here we go.

 

We start the first two days of our adventure in Dublin. The pint of Guiness and the shot of Jameson are a national institution, a daily ritual, a chance to share stories and crazy Irish nuggets of wisdom. People are very friendly, the skies are very grey, and the buildings are very old.

 

 

Guiness brewery tour.

 

Water (aka Lifejuice) is one of the four essential elements in beer production.

 

Notes to the brewmaster. The irony of this angry demand is that I think Irish kids are totally given whiskey in their bottles as infants. There probably is no "real" drinking age, no matter what the laws might say.

 

We spread our seeds.

 

Gravity Bar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brazen Head, claims to be the oldest pub in Ireland. Incorporated in 1198, or so the t-shirts of the servers say. BTW, you don't have a "bartender" in Ireland. You have a "barman."

 

 

Jeff can't resist ordering his American favorite to see how it compares to the domestic original. Most beers in Dublin are served in tap form and are served in specific pint glasses that match the brand of beer you're drinking. America could learn some lessons from this.

 

 

Drizzle on the outside patio.

 

Norwegian camouflage mechanisms - their only defense.

 

At a pub down the street called Mercant O'Shays, they have black lights in the bathrooms. This is totally my toilet paper, lit up like its ready to hit the dance floor.

 

Old person bar called The Millenium.

 

There is a traditional Irish band busting out the jams here. They find out that Jeff and I are Americans and on our anniversary trip so they dedicate a song to us. Then they make the mistake of telling us to come up and sing a song with them. We stumble awkwardly and drunkenly through "Jackson" by Johnny Cash until they mercifully cut it short after two verses. Thanks dudes. We appreciate you humoring us yanks.

 

Old ladies, on the other hand, are quite talented at busting out the hot tracks.

 

 

Breakfast the next morning in the hotel room. Irish people fucking love Pringles. Seriously, its like the only chip they sell and they're available at every bar.

 

Crazy-named Doritos.

 

St. Stephens Green.

 

I loved Die Hard 3.6 but I hear they worked out a lot of the virus-coding bugs in this new version. And its fully compatible with Windows XP.

 

Jeff is eating meat on this trip.

 

Mushy peas. That's actually what they're called on the menu, as if I would be appetized by that phrase. They're not bad though.

 

 

 

Darkness. Imprisioning me. All that I see. Absolute horror.

 

We're gonna have to go back for this one.

 

YES!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Liffey.

 

Jeff asks the barman what this jar is. We're thinking its a tip jar. Turns out they don't really do tips in Ireland. That's more of an American cultural custom. Instead, they get paid a living wage to serve you beers. Jeff thinks this serves as a disincentive for them to care about you, but it works out allright usually.

In reality, its some sort of vague and non-specific "charity" jar. The barman says in a thick Irish accent: "You know some is for cancer, some is for black babies, that sort of thing." We nod, confused. Also worth noting: dude was listening to Wu-Tang's "Enter the 36 Chambers" album in its entirety but was easily 50 years old.

 

YES! Bar close can't keep us down.

 

 

 

A map that our barman at the Millenium drew for us, explaining the basic geographical concepts of western europe.

 

 

A solid find. Edinburgh is next!

Aqua, Seafoam, Shame - Yeah, I did just say that.

Alright, okay. Prepare yourself. Above is a video that Isaac (aka Iceberg) and Jeff (aka Waff) made for a high school video project. It's a half-hour movie filled with 6 music videos set to the Lifter Puller's "Entertainment and Arts" EP. Due to the size of the movie I had to section it into 4 parts. The video features much of the old crew back in the high school days (circa 1999) when were all gorgeous, muscular, tanned, spriteful and ready to take on the world in our own awkward and ill-informed ways. My apologies in advance if this blows your mind.

 

Part 2

 

Part 3

 

Part 4

 

Memorial Day, 2007. We memorialize those who have fallen by watching the shit out of a Twins game at the metrodome. Jeff, Caylie, Coles and I head down to check out the action in full Twins gear styles.

 

Jeff "sneaks" in some new multi-colored twizzlers. It becomes obvious that these flavorful straws would make great beer accompaniments.

 

These two old guys are such wanna-be umpires. It's not even funny.

 

If you haven't already noticed Caylie is into to demonstrating some awesome new weird facial morphisms.

 

For realz, her face looks crazy.

After the game, we retardledly decide to walk a few blocks down to Sgt. Prestons, a lame frat-boy sports bar. This proves to be a near-fatal error as we proceed to enter the unforeseen realms of the Fishbowl Graveyard. Let me explain.

 

Do you know how when you start getting drunk and you can easily convince yourself that something is a good idea even when it's really not... well that's why it's called the fishbowl graveyard. I almost died. Definitely not a good idea.

 

 

 

After we make it halfway through the first fish bowl the waitress stops by with a "mess up" fishbowl. My preference is the pink fishbowl, Nicole works on the purple bowl.

 

Things are starting to get too real.

 

 

Fast forward a few days. Beak, Caylie and I are going bowling with our friend Leonard. He's 80 plus years old, recently-widowed, and absolutely LOVES coming into the Green Mill while we're all working to chat. We've been promising to go bowling with him for months and today is finally the day. Beak prepares to dominate the competition by placing a magical kiss on his balls. Oh snap!

 

Turns out Leonard is an amazing bowler, he scores a 183. Nice work.

 

Leonard has been saving up his Stove Top Stuffing "free bowling" coupons for a few months and is able to treat us to a game. We of course have to rent our own shoes.

Fast forward to Friday. 50's comes over for some piano loop recording mischievity. TPC has decided that pianos are cool and that chopped up loops of pianos are even cooler. I am drinking beers and watching from the window sill.

 

If you open up the top of a piano you get a better sound, or so they say...

 

When you're recording a song that's meant for screwing and chopping you use pots and pans instead of real drums. It sounds much cooler.

 

After laying down some initial hot tracks, we bike up some massive hills to the Saint Paul Cathedral. On this night, they're totes celebrating the shit out of being 100 years old by having fireworks, ice cream and magicians or some shit. We take advantage.

 

There's an ice cream social and Kemp's is sponsoring it with their "Twin Cities Fudge" ice cream. Guess what???? The chocolates are little Minnesota shapes with T.C.'s in the middle. Heartwarming.

 

It's just about to start raining and the clouds are crazy looking. We sit close to the church and manage to stay out of the rain.

 

Alright it's dark and time for fireworks. I have to say these are the coolest and longest fireworks I have ever seen! Not only that, they are being shot off from across the street so they're really huge and close to us. Super awesome.

 

These fireworks are some end of the world type shit. Check it out, the trees are exploding colors. That bus is about to die. The Saint Paul Basin rumbles and echo's like we're at war.

 

 

 

 

The next night, its another Beak and Cam porch drinkin' party. It's summertime so you know what that means: JayToTheEff pretending he has huge muscles by rolling up his t-shirt sleeves.

 

Jordan stops over to show us his 24oz Budweiser Twins can. Sweetness.

 

Tubbz becomez a string puppet.

 

Beak plays with dolls.

 

A few nights later, it's my mom's birthday! We're at a sweet Greek restaurant, definitely not Christos but that other one, you know, the good one. The gal on the left is totally BTF's little sister and she is dating my brother. This makes Jeff and I excited cause it means that maybe someday we could be related to BTF and Blestots. Who knows?

 

I make a layered chocolate birthday cake. My dad says it's the best he's ever had.

 

Jeff is in charge of the Birthday card.

 

Fast forward to Saturday night. We are partaking in the first ever Southside Bike Gang Bar Crawl. This involves a crew of dawgs riding bike all around south minneapolis and drinking at as many new and previously-unexplored bars as possible. We start at the Bulldog. An old favorite but a good place to get things percolating.

 

50's shows up and is dedicated to the cause, even though he has to be up at 5am for work.

 

Next stop Casey's on 34th and Nicollet. We've always wondered what this place is all about and decide to give it a try. We walk in and a regular shakes his head in disgust. I guess this bars for regulars only. I understand though. We order a $5 pitcher of P.B.R. and head out side.

 

Tubbs is sporting new wayfarer sunglasses. Jeff starts calling him "risky business". Just like Tom Cruise in that one movie. Oh yeah.

 

Funny jokes are being told.

Next stop on the bike tour. North-metro's (aka Crystal's) back yard for some brews and tetherball action. Waff and Tubbs flail their arms like little girls.

 

 

I'm sporting my hyperlush bike gang bandanna.

 

Thumbs up, these are some fun times.

 

50's approves as well.

 

No we're getting into the southeast side of the city. We head 30 blocks over to Beaks neck of the woods to hang out at the Cedar Inn. This is a weird Nascar/Motorcycle fanatatic pizza/beer joint. We steer clear of what's happening on the inside and set up shop on the patio.

 

We meet up with Beak and Cam. Cam lets us know about her afternoon... Her and Beak tried going on a canoe trip at Lake Calhoun and tipped the boat within five minutes. Funny shit. Apparently Beak loses his mind when he hits the water .

 

We head North towards Lake Street and stop in at a bar called Schooners. Free popcorn and $10 pitchers of PBR. Not the best deal in town, but we don't mind. We hang out inside for a little while and listen to the bar band. Singing drummers are always cool.

 

McTubbins poses.

 

I pose.

 

McTubbins flips.

 

We head back over to Crystals for some post bar crawl backyard fires and late night tetherball. On the way we find a snow pile outside a local ice factory. We can't resist snowballs.

 

Girls vs. Boys.

 

 

The bike gang family photo, sans yours truly.

 

\
Backyard parties with fires.

 

Blestos and Julie join the party. Blestos plays tetherball and hits the ball so hard that he breaks the rope and the ball goes flying. So funny, so many ways.

 

There's a CD player that only plays tapes, weird right? Or maybe it plays CD's but McTubbins only has one tape and no CD's. Jeff and Tubbs get into some air-guitar-style Nirvana Unplugged tracks. Jeff prompts "Can you say anything else" McTubbins replies "What else can I say" Jeff asks "Who do you think is gay?" Tubbs replies "Everyone is Gay."

 

The next day is the annual Green Mill softball tournament! A bunch of unathletic and hung-over service industry workers get together to broil and flail awkwardly in the punishing afternoon sun. Here, Caylie prepares for battle.

 

Todd, the Green Mill delivery driver shown here, is one of the key organizers for the event. He proudly struts around the field in a "no-shirt-brother" kind of a style with his trumpet. Totes weird, I know.

 

Some of Todd's musician friends are participating in the game. They start things off with Mexico's National Anthem.

 

Ladies and Gentleman please rise for the National Anthem.

 

Bottom of the first and my guy Morgan takes a ball to the chin. I'm not a key member of the team so I volunteer to take him to a hospital to get stitches and that's where I spend my afternoon.

FYI, Jeff and I are leaving for Dublin, Edinburgh, and London on Wednesday. Make sure to stop back as I will try and update the blog every couple of days.

Peacisms.