And then it ends....

On Monday I flew back to the US. London to Dublin, Dublin to NYC. So far the strangest thing to me is to have people that I know well to talk to on a regular basis (I'm staying with my friends Stu and Mike on the Upper East side for a bit.)

Before I left, I managed to get really smashed, decide I was too lazy to take advantage of my last shot at seeing a soccer match, piss off locals, get my brother so drunk he could barely stay awake on the busride to his friend's place, and be too hungover to go to Cambridge. On the plus side, I got to hang out with Numra, Scott and Tom, who I met in Prague, and introduce them to my brother. I also went to a baller, if not expensive, fish and chips place in London. The fish was so beautfully breaded, tender on the inside, yet crisp on the outside. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. I've decided I like vinegar with my "chips", but I will approach a "when in Rome" approach to french fry condiments, which means back to good old Heinz 57 here in the states. Vinegar on fried potatoes also applies to our chips, what the Brits call "crisps." Salt and vinegar is now officially my favorite flavor, followed by sour cream and onion, plain salted, and bbq.

Although I only spent a few hours in Dublin, I managed to get aquainted with a time honored Irish tradition - drinking. I made my first duty free purchase, two bottles of Irish Whiskey for 20 euro. They had a woman there with free samples from Ireland's purportedly "last independent distillery", and she convinced me to get two bottles instead of one. It's proven valuable, as drinks here in new york are really expensive, and the whiskey has a pretty good affect on me. I also managed to get a Guiness in the airport bar, I didn't need it, but I felt like it would be a shame not to have one. I got ripped off a little, but I suppose if they hadn't let me give them $9 for a 4.50 euro beer, I wouldn't have had it at all.

If anybody has been accustomed to reading this blog, fear not, I'm still technically travelling for two more weeks in the US, and I'll have a lot of summary kind of stuff when I get back to Wisconsin. Who knows, maybe I'll even keep it going for a bit, Madison can be strange as well.