Happy Birthday Americay

And now its the USA's turn. For the rest of the world it brings to mind hot dogs, flags, beer, american football and all sorts of good stuff! So happy 4th July y'all.

We get lots of Americans staying in the hostel, they certainly enjoy the Dublin hospitality with a special fondness for the Guinness factory and our law of being allowed drink at 18! Plenty of patriotic americans were out today, showing off their stars and stripes.

We even have our very own american working here at reception. The very handsome but quiet and diminutive (!!??!!!) Matt from Manhatten who also moonlights as a famous choral singer. See come to Isaacs and get a famous american checking you in!

Oh Canada

We're still recovering here in Dublin from Gay Pride last weekend and have reluctantly taken down my homemade decorations (made during a quiet late shift with coloured post it notes, I had no green though, as pointed out by a observant hosteller, but hey it was a spur of the moment thing and I'm sure the green people of the world will understand!).

Anyway the good thing about working in an international environment is that there is no end of holidays. This week its Canada's turn. We get loads of Canadians staying in the hostel, especially lots from Quebec, who I always find very glamourous with their Canadian passports and their Quebecois! Anyway to celebrate Canada Day, here are five fun facts about Canada gleamed from our canadian hostellers:

1. Canadians are not americans (nothing annoys them more allegedly!!)
2. Its the second largest country in the world.
3. The official winter sport is ice hockey.
4. Canada makes 80% of the worlds supply of maple syrup
5. Degrassi Junior High is a real place (I made that up, but I worked as a waitress with a guy who was a regular on the show, so had to get it in somewhere!! Anyone under 25 reading this will have no idea what I am talking about!! Sorry!)

I went to Canada once, I really like it. Niagra Falls Rocks!

So there you go... Happy Canada Day everyone :)

A crawling week

In the interests of research I decided to take one of the tours advertised in the hostel reception. After much himming and hawwing, between the celtic experience tour of newgrange to see the neolithic tombs to the wild wicklow tour to get in the set of Ballykissangel, I opted for the backpacker pub crawl! Purely in the interest of research of course (oh i said that already, maybe the more I say it, the more believable it will become!)

So I headed to Major Tom's to hook up with the tour which already had hit several pubs and were a bit ahead of me in the drinking stakes, but a free shot sorted that out pretty quickly! Then the gang took to the dance floor which resulted in serious cheesy dancing. It was a mixed group, a good few typical backpackers and then a couple of older gangsters!

Then it was on to the Porterhouse for more shots and more bad dancing to the live band. The pub crawl resulted in two couples who didn't know each other before.... I'm sure that wasn't included in the 9 euro! Nice one!!

Anyway work the next morning was a bit of a trial.... shots are bad for you folks!!

Also the Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival 2007 culminating with the pride parade on the 23rd June. Now that will be a day out and a half!!

Run run run!

Today is june bank holiday monday, which means it women's mini marathon day. 10km of women (and the odd man in a dress)will be lining up in a mad dash to get around the city. I of course have my running shoes on ready and waiting! Well in my mind at least! We had some guest from England who were here to run in it! They went off bright and early all tooled up for a big fry up, they walked the 10km, stopping for two pints on the way around and then celebrating their record breaking time of 2 and half hours will a few more beers. Needless to say they arrived back in the hostel in interesting shape!

The sunny weather in the last week lead lots of people to take tours which we book for them at reception. Glendalough and Wicklow being particularily popular. Glendalough is one of my personal favourites, perfect on a lovely sunny day like today.

Long distance lovers

This week has been the Dave Matthews Band week. Supposedly the band were playing only 4 gigs in europe this tour so people came from miles around to hear them. We had people from Norway, Israel and all over! They must be a good band live to come so far!!

The bread and jam is still going down well, this week kindly supplemented by a German group who had bought far too many yogurts, so when they were leaving, everyone else benefitted.

The wireless has resulted in lots of people sitting around reception with headphones, surfing for hours! They're not going to make friends like that! I think I will have to impose a limit... 20 minutes surfing, 20 minutes chatting... or something ;-)

The sunny weather is back... off to the beach I think :)

Brown bread and jam

We've changed the breakfasts at Isaacs. It used to be tea/coffee and a muffin, now its irish brown bread and jam. Yummo. The downside of this is that I have eaten enough bread and jam to feed a small country in the last week! Oh well its healthy so I'll survive!

And thats not the only exciting news in the hostel. The reception has been transformed in to a veritable space ship and we now have joined the 21st century and have gone wireless and best thing is its free for people staying here!! Yay! But who knew there were some many flashpackers staying here! Cute little macbooks have materialised from no where, where were these hiding in the days before wireless?

Good news the sun has returned! Good job...that rain was ruining my 'do'!

Socially Innovative!

Some hunky members of staff ;-)

Last week was the week of the Young Social Innovators. This resulted is lots of socially responsible youngsters staying with us!! Seems like a great programme... they had nothing as fancy as that in my day!

The other day I was reminded of how full service Isaacs and our sister hostel Jacobs are. I got a call on reception from a guest staying in the adjacent hotel which went something like this:

Guest: Hello, is that the hostel?
Issie: Yes it is!
Guest: I'm staying in the hotel for the weekend and I sprained my ankle and I was wondering whether you had any crutches.
Issie: Eh... this is the hostel...as is hostel
Guest: Yeah, so do you have any crutches?
Issie: Hostel.... not hospital?!??!
Guest: Yes I know, the hostel.

Very confused by the guest's determination that it was normal to assume that a hostel would have crutches, I wondered whether I had missed a section in the staff handbook on our medical supplies closet so I put her on hold and asked a manager. And would you believe it, we did have a pair of crutches in Jacobs. Now I know Jacobs is the fancier big sister of Isaacs, but I was very impressed that they had crutches in a cupboard somewhere just in case. Now that's service for you! Anyway the guest was happy and sent one of her mates to collect them!

The weather has turned a bit this week with a few heavy rain showers :( I knew the tropical weather couldn't last. Ah well hopefully it will turn back around again. I will keep you posted!

Orange Craze!

Dutch hostellers gave us great entertainment this week.

It started early in the week when Guido from the Netherlands checked in with me. He was carrying a guitar so I asked him would he do a gig for us that night. He agreed and in return got a discount on his stay. We're all in favour of musicians in the hostel and frequently have guests playing in the evenings. It can be a bit of a risk sometimes... you can imagine, people saying they are musicians and ending up performing with some spoons and out of tune singing.... no better way to clear a hostel, than with a performance like that!

Thankfully Guido was brilliant and serenaded us for nearly two hours with all the classics. He even got a bit of a sing song going. It certainly made the end of my shift pass very quickly! We liked him so much we asked him to play again the next night, so everyone was happy :)

Monday was Queensday in the Netherlands. From what I gleamed from the orange covered dutch guests, its something of a national holiday in Holland, celebrating funnily enough the Queens birthday. Just an excuse to wear orange and party by the looks of things but correct me if I'm wrong!

Sun is still shining like a mad thing. Those in the know say it will rain a little tomorrow (good to keep the grass green) but then the sun will be back. Time to hit the beach I think!

An upside down week!

The last week has been somewhat Antipodean themed in the hostel. There is never a lack of aussie and kiwi guests in backpackers hostels but this week was even more so than usual.

It started last Wednesday with Anzac Day. Anzac Day for the uninitiated is celebrated by Australia and New Zealand on the 25th April every year. It commemorates the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC.. get it?!) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey for the Battle of Gallipoli, over 10,000 of whom were killed. I was impressed to see that quite a few guests got the early wake up call to head to the dawn service in Grangegorman Cemetery for 6.30am... that's dedication to the cause! This was then followed by the traditional 'gunfire breakfast'... where they got the rum to put in their coffee at that hour we'll never know, it certainly isn't included in our light breakfast! Perhaps they were cub scouts when they were young... very prepared! Later in the day (hopefully after a restorative nap!) they headed to the Dublin aussie/kiwi institutions of The Woolshed and Down Under for a few games of two-up. Now I think you have to be from Oz or New Zealand to understand that game. Back in my Sydney backpacker glory days I spent a drunken day losing my rent money playing that game... the reason I lost.. cos I didn't have a clue what I was doing! Cheap beer and not knowing how to play, do not a successful gambling day out make! Anyway I don't think our guests won too big, but they certainly seemed to have had fun, judging by the prevalence of sun glasses and painkillers the next morning!

Then of course there was Australia's triumph in the Cricket World Cup over the weekend. That resulted in plenty of smiling but tired aussie faces on Sunday morning! Of course here in Ireland, we feel that we all but won the world cup ourselves, having had somewhat of a 'cool runnings' moment in the competition, coming from nowhere to qualifying for the super eight round!

In other news the sun hasn't stopped shining in Dublin all week which has resulted in a shorts and flip-flops uniform among the guest! The temperatures have hit 18-20 degrees most days, not bad for April in Dublin!