Chapter 2: Paris and Brussels

Ireland passed by verrry fast. On the last day we went to the cliffs of moher, one of Irelands main tourist attractions. 500 ft straight drop cliffs all along the coast of a place called dooley. On the way we saw the burren which is all the huge hills made entirely of stone. There are a bunch of fields on the way that were created by villagers long ago by moving tons and tons of stone just for less than what looked like a city block. While there we saw a few ancient burial sights from the Celts way back in 3000 BC, not too long ago...Afterwards we went to the Allile Cave which is deep in one of th burren's hills, it was a long walk in and dark as all hell. That night we enjoyed the festivities of the Volvo Ocean Race, a huge sailing race across the World that stops in Galway for 2 weeks. An enormous spectacle with temporary stores and restaurants lining the docks (on the other side of the street from our apartment). There were great concerts at night and plenty to do an see during the day.We went out to a couple clubs the last night and said our goodbyes.

We had to escape Ireland in order to survive assasination attempts from assets...

Got to Paris Tuesday around 3 and it was a non-stop action packed time after that. Within about 24 hours we got to the top of the eiffel tower around 11 pm, beautiful sight and terrifying journey straight up. We also toured the Notre Dame Cathedral, The Catacombs (hundreds of thousands of bones stacked underground to make walls, we thought it might be a good momento to bring one home, but the thought of being haunted for years afterwards turned us off the idea.), Arc de Triumph, The Lourve (now thats a big museum), and indulged in 6 euro cups of coffee and anchovy and caper pizza. The hostel was great and we ran into an ex-richmond tennis payer who came out to dinner with us while we watched Barcelona win the champions league and had a few drinks at the nightclub shywawa.

Then we went to the French Open Wednesday afternoon, which was the highlight of the trip. We had great seats (thanks Will) in the 3rd row of boxes and were able to watch last years womens winner Anna Ivonovic, shes a serb with quads the size of two massive roast hams. Hard to believe shes only 21, there was a heavy duty Serbian politician in the first row to watch her as well. If anyone knows who the serb is with gray hair and a huge black patch in the center of it, let us now. Needlesss to say Anna and those quads prevailed against her Thai counterpart. Afterwards we saw an incrdible match between the Russian #20 player M. Safin vs the French underdog Ouanna, who won the first two and almost blew it afterwards but held on to win it almost 5 years later. The crowd was really rowdy and giving Safin the hassle who was acting like a total D bag.

Brussels

We got to the train station with confidence that you just hop on to the next train to the direction you want to go...not a chance. After standing in several lines we finally got a ticket to Brussels (they continually told us we'd have to wait till the next day) So we connected through Lille in the North. Got into Brussels around 7 and basically got the honeymoon suite for 30 euro a piece. Private bath, tv, radio, towels, sheets, who could ask for more. We quickly went to go and indulge in the local brewhahas. We spent the entire night hanging out with a group of clemson students and had some of the infamous 10% alcohol beers at cheap. The club, delirium, was great. It had a loud live band, an encyclopedia of beer choices and plenty of friendly people. We went across the street for an glorified absinthe shot as well and were joined by some clemson spectators. The next morning we had Belgium waffles at a street stand. Duncan got the regular (delicious) while I, Ryan, got the chocolate covered one, sounded like a good idea but it was awful and tasted like a cold stiff sponge. Not too much to see around the city, but certainly a great nightlife and a huge row of restaurants. We hoped on the eurorail to Amsterdam at about 1 pm and thats where we are now....certainly more stories to come

Chapter 1: Ireland

For anyone who cares to check up on us on our european adventure we hope through our trip to create the 4th installment of the Jason Bourne films, both in fiction and in extreme reality.

We hope that the only things that may be lacking in consistency to the original trilogy will be...severe amnesia, hand guns, bullets, russian gypsies, huge wads of cash, hundreds of fake passports, and high powered binoculars (but there will possibly be displays of learned martial arts.)

This is our 3rd day together in Ireland and already we have done some very "Bourney" things. We've sprinted through subway stations in Dublin to reach a bus with 3 seconds to spare, jumped off a 5m high concrete structure into the freezing cold atlantic (although we were not being pursued by any government officials), we beat the crap out of 2 serbs, 2 spaniards, a frenchman, and a slovakie (it was street basketball, but it did involve martial arts like spin moves and steals) and finally we've laid witness to a high speed boat chase (Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway...sailboats). 

Otherwise, introduced Duncan to the local brews (Guiness, Druids and unfortunately Buckfast), the local people (had a big ol' party at the apartment), and the local sights (not much usually, but the Ocean Race is a huge deal, the boats arrived at 0400 hours to fireworks, bonfires, and a huge uproar)

Upon my arrival in Shannon Ryan and I hopped on a bus bound for Dublin. There we saw Dublin castle, O'Connol Street, and Ha'Penny Bridge. Then we headed to a pub on the campus of  Trinity College in Dublin to celebrate the end of exams for students there. We capped off our day in Dublin with a late night burger from "SuperMacs" (a blatant rip off of Mcdonalds, Ryan had the "Biggy Mac" burger)

Yesterday Ryan organized a huge pick up basketball game (we had enough for 2 games, Ryan knows everyone here). The games were surprisingly good. Ryan blatantly split up the players into a good court and a beginners court, but he was nice enough to tell the beginners that they were in the "A" league. After the game one of Ryan's friends thought it would be an awesome idea to jump in the ocean. It wasn't that good of an idea. The water might have been warmer than the air which isn't saying much because it was 50 and breezy yesterday. Galway has a beach with life guards and a diving platform. We jumped off the high dive once, and it was freezing. Needless to say we didn't go back for seconds. After our swim we ate some Mexican food and went out to the pub for a Guinness. We have posted pictures on Facebook where you can see our adventures in color. We hope to post one more time before we leave Ireland and then once from every city if possible. 

Photos of Ireland