City Hall

Today we went to City Hall where were shown great hospitality. The next mayor herself greeted us and gave us gifts, various counselors came in to talk to us, I met Conner who Rob and I will be working with at Intercomm, we were given a nice tour, and more information from Good Relations.

After City Hall we went to a the Linen Hall Library and saw the Northern Ireland Political Collection. Web site that might only work in IE:

http://www.linenhall.com/northernIrelandPoliticalCollection.asp

In the afternoon we went to the Crown Bar [http://www.crownbar.com/] which is famous and was awesome. There we noticed a "Stag" or bachelor's party where a large group of guys where all wearing matching shirts, the kind of thing only girls would do in the US. I asked a guy close to the door of our enclosed booth about it and got into a conversation a bit longer than I wanted. They were Kennedy's and I spoke to the father and best man/older brother who was 34 and lived on the mainland now. The father travels to the US a lot, he also frequents the Crown, apparently they used to have a live web cam.

At night we went to the Globe for drinking and dancing. Here we were able to make more cultural observances. We got a late start because it is so light out always we lose track of time. We are so far north, and it is summer, it is daylight until 10 PM and the sun rises well before any of us. The locals at this bar were well dressed; in general everyone on the street is put together to look good. Molly said the guys were "very metro". I would agree, as anyone in the US with similar clothing or a fohawk would be considered "metro". On the other hand, I think we can just consider them "European". Last summer in Italy I saw a wide mix in male fashion. Italian men are definitely not afraid to embrace trendy fashion. Irish seem to lie in the middle of the Italian and US extremes.