On Friday after work I had tickets to see Frankie Boyle in his latest, and apparent last, stand up show title 'The Last Days of Sodom'. I had never seen him live before, and even though I had tickets to his last show I landed up selling them when I was able to move my flight out to SA forward by a few days. So was looking quite forward to seeing him live.

Unfortunately I don't think he was quite as good as had imagined him to be. The audience were a bit weird with their ridiculous heckling and I think that changed the show quite a bit, but still happy I've seen him live now, think I might stick to Dara or Jimmy when it comes to stand ups.

Then Saturday morning was a real early start, with a cab organised to pick us up at 5am. Seamus was first, then Sizi and myself, and off we headed to Heathrow where we met up with Paul, ready for our rugby weekend over in Dublin. Once in Dublin, we met up in Woolley at breakfast and then caught a taxi out at Seamus' parent's house in Monkstown, south of Dublin, along the coast.

After dropping our bags in the flat, we took a walk down to the ocean road and along towards the harbour. There we hopped on the Dart train and made our way to Lansdowne Road station. We were there quite a bit before lunch, so it really hadn't start to get busy at all, so we took the opportunity to be a bit of a pub hop around the Ballsbridge area near the stadium to familiarize ourselves with the area :) We started off at Crowe's of Ballbridge for one, which was ridiculously quiet, then moved onto the next and continued in that fashion for the afternoon. We also made sure we got a decent feed along the way, just a pub meal, but good enough. The afternoon seemed to fly by as the pubs got busier and busier with more rugby fans doing pretty much the same as what we were. Then eventually it was off to stadium, together with tens of thousands of other supporters.

It certainly wasn't the best game of rugby I've ever watched. The ref, Wayne Barnes, certainly didn't allow for a decent running rugby game and made for a rather stop-start annoying game. However, SA still managed a win out of it, so I can't really complain! We were at half time nine points behind the Irish, but managed to fight back and wear down the hosts to finish up with a 12-16 win against them. The match seemed to lack any real attacking flair, but at least the second half somewhat made up for it.

After the game, once the initial crowd has dispersed, we made our way down and headed towards Temple Bar, along with the majority of everyone else from the stadium. I had arranged to meet up with Hag and Jane at The Exchequer Bar where they were all going for her 30th birthday. We managed to find them quite easily inside, as well as meeting up with Jack and Irish Steve. The only problem was that we had been out and about since about 11 that morning and everyone else was well dressed up and just making their way out then, so decided to pub hop elsewhere down the road to mix things up.

After a few pubs and bars, all of which were jam packed and almost impossible to get served, Seamus and Paul decided to head home and Sizi and I decided to grab something to eat and in that we managed to lose Woolley, Jack and Irish Steve inside the Foggy Dew pub. They somehow managed to get in and by the time Sizi and I returned, the bouncer was having none of it as they were 'too full', despite the irony that we were planning on trying to rescue Woolley from inside. Oh well. So instead we decided to head back to The Exchequer Bar where Hag, Jane and others were at, until they decided to move onto a club just down the road, at which point Si and I decided to call it a night and head back to Seamus' place.

Yesterday morning we all got up and ready around mid morning and left his place about midday in search of a late breakfast or brunch. We started off heading towards the harbour, and just couldn't find anywhere that seemed to be open or serving a decent breakfast - not sure if it was because it was a Sunday, or they didn't really do breakfasts around there, but soon we have up and hopped on the Dart Train towards Pearce Street in town in search of some much needed food. Paul was keen on watching the MotoGP, so after asking around, being directed all over the place and finding nothing but pubs showing the football instead of the MotoGP, we settled on the Porterhouse pizza for lunch, where we organised to meet up with Si and Jack.

After lunch at the Porterhouse, we decided to stop in at Eddie Rocket's City Diner for a milkshake each which we were all craving for some reason, then afterwards headed down to Messrs Maguire pub to watch the Aston Villa vs Man United football game. We watched most of the game, well, Jack mainly did, the rest of started to fade slowly. So we decided on a change of venue, Jack and Si left to make their way back to Jack's place and so Paul, Seamus, Si and myself headed over to the Adlington Hotel for their live Sunday night music sessions.

The music only started later than we thought but decided to stay on anyway until it started, so ordered some food and a Guinness or two which I kept us going for sometime. After watching the group for a while, we left and headed down to the Olympia Theatre for the free Passion Pit gig there. I'd never really heard of them or their music, but managed to grab a few free tickets online a while back, so thought we may as well use them.

Olympia Theatre as a venue was quite cool - originally built back in 1879, has being host to performances by some big names over the years. Unfortunately the band were awful, really not my cup of tea. If I were a 17 year old, then maybe. But don't think any of us fit into that demographic. So after a couple of songs there we called it a night and made our way home.

This morning was an awfully early start in time to catch our taxi to Dublin airport and then into Gatwick before all missioning off to work for a rather long and painful day in the office. After all these years, Lansdowne Road was the one stadium missing from my home nations rugby games against the Boks, and at least now that's been ticked off, plus a weekend over in Dublin always goes down a treat!