2 adventures fueled by curiosity.....guiness and coffee shops

wow,
been a while since i've written anything down, but for good reasons. i've experienced dublin on st. patricks day, as well as amsterdam and brussels the following week. both trips were a great time, and deserve to be explained in a tad more detail.
a group of 11 (technically 12, but we lost one girl the entire weekend...woops) travelled to dublin via bus and ferry across the irish sea. the ferry was one of the best parts of the trip, it was so windy that on the top deck you could lean all the way over and the wind would keep you standing. on the big day we watched the parade and washed it down with hefty servings of irelands most famous beer. all of the bars were jam-packed with as many irish as non-irish and plenty of live bands. the city of dublin was much better than i expected as well, great buildings, canals running through the city centre and lots of history to explore. we slept the last night at the airport along with hundreds of other travellers who didn't want to pay for a hotel. at 2am we found the american girl that we lost over the weekend, everything was fine because she was befriended by a group of canadians from mcmaster university (!).
the amsterdam travelling crew was much smaller, consisting of joe america, angelos from cyprus, and yours truly. let me begin by saying that amsterdam is the craziest and most jaw dropping city that i've experienced. the combination of the physical city, BILLIONS of bicycles, museums, red light district and "coffee shops" on every corner and down every alley made amsterdam a city to remember. i rented a bike to get a better feel for the city, and proceeded to cause a countless number of near accidents. luckily, everyone who rides a bike in amsterdam was better at navigating than i am.
to top off the trip, we missed our plane back home...i thought that only fools and idiots could be ridiculously stupid enough to miss a flight. i guess that gives me a bit of an outside perspective on myself haha. but not to worry, 12 hours of train rides later i was safe and sound back in birmingham.
pictures will be coming soon. stay tuned.