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City Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the old Jameson Distillery - I missed a fair bit of the Dublin toursit sites the first time around. But as per usual, it was the new and interesting people I met that made the return memorable.

The first night I returned to Porterhouse (where Sean and I previously discovered amazing burgers) with a couple from my hostel: the guy was British, and the girl was from Northern Ireland. I discovered that Porterhouse had that fruity, barely carbonated, no yeast added beer Carli and I discovered in Belgium - lambics - on tap. And the couple were an interesting study in how diverse the UK can be. All three of us were pronouncing words strangely in different accents. We resolved to meet the next night at a literary pub crawl.

The next afternoon, I was walking through a park when I had a sneaking suspicion that I was being followed. Every time I paused to snap a picture or inspect a statue there was a blonde girl playing with her cell phone nearby. I was a little unnerved, but eventually stopped walking and sat down. She took the spot on the bench next to me. After confronting her and getting around some broken English, I discovered that her name was Maria, she was a student from Russia studying in Dublin, and she had no friends in the city. Her host family is two hours into the suburbs, and the other students in the program are very cliquish. She was following me just because she thought I looked nice and about her age, so she thought we might be friends. It’s really mundane, I know, but after travelling through areas when I’ve been alone and had no one speak my language, I could definitely sympathize. We talked for about an hour before she left for class, and at the end she said, “Speaking to you has made my mood go up.” I guess even though I couldn’t be a friend in Dublin, at least I made one part of her day a little better.

When I arrived at the literary pub crawl (where actors are tour guides taking you through pieces by famous writers in the city and then bringing you to the same pubs those writers drank at) the couple from the previous night was no where in sight.

I had been stood up.

It was the best thing to happen to me in Dublin.

I had already bought my ticket, so I was going on the crawl anyway, and I quickly befriended two boisterious and hilarious Scottish girls from Glasgow, Morven and Rachel. They reminded me a lot of Jim, so of course we got along swimmingly. For example, an early part of the conversation went like this:

Me: “Do you know Bunker? The bar in Glasgow?”

Morven: “Bunker? I live there!”

Me: “Umm…what? In the bar?”

Morven: “Yes! I’m the resident drunk!”

The crawl itself was very entertaining, and stirred in me the desire to get back into acting, after seeing the unique way these actors combined their talents with their love of literature.

Afterward, I suggested we head back to Mssrs Maguire, and we stayed there until closing. I learned a lot more about Scottish and Irish culture - including a silly children’s song about song woman named Molly selling live oysters, and the fact that Gaelic from the two countries is the same language, but the accent is so different they can’t understand each other!

I woke up this morning with a mild headache, and a jaw sore from laughing so much. And then I dragged myself to the airport so I could catch a plane to my final destination: London.