Ireland

One perk of work is that every now and again you get to go somewhere cool and your company pays for it. So at the beginning of November I got to go to Ireland - a place I'd never been to before. Two things I knew about Ireland before going there: bad weather and exceptionally nice people. Turns out the weather isn't that bad - they say it rains all day, but it really just is partially cloudy with a chance of rain. And there were some really nice days even though it was November. It also turns out that the people are indeed exceptionally nice. It borders on ridiculous sometimes. I'm glad I can now pronounce Ireland as the nicest country in the world, especially because it displaces Canada from that position.

I was in Ireland for a whole week (after 2 days in London) to train our European finance team on some new integrations we'd made between our sales and accounting systems. Though I'm sure you'd love to hear about the joys of making Salesforce.com and SAP talk to each other, how about I just show you some pictures of stuff I got to see/do?

St. Michans Church - Handel wrote the Messiah here

Catacombs under St. Michans-hanging out with Crusader mummies

Ireland has castles

The Barge, a famous pub. Went here for breakfast and to watch the Ireland national soccer team play Latvia....or Estonia....

Getting artsy with my phone camera inside Johnnie Fox's - highest pub in Ireland. Also, Google's #1 search result for "pub ireland".

I got to see a lot of other really great stuff, including taking a tour of the Guiness Factory. It has an awesome bar at the top with all glass windows that give you a great view of Dublin. Also, the beer is supposedly to die for - I had a Fanta Orange (no supposedly-s, it IS to die for). I also toured Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells which is billed as the world's most beautiful book. I'd never honestly heard of it before, but it was quite beautiful. The book is actually the 4 gospels but it's written in amazingly fine writing with beautiful illustrations. It's ornate to the nth degree. Overall, it was a pretty horrible trip. I missed my wife non stop and I would never consider going again :)