Trip of a lifetime

Myself and 3 of my best friends just returned from a bachelor party in Ireland.  The trip created one of the best memories of my life.  It had everything I wanted and more; adventure, beer, golfing, and good ole fashion rousing.

St Patty's day in Dublin was quite the treat. We saw the official parade in downtown Dublin where ~100k tourists were present. Then we toured the wonderful Jameson distillery where I was selected to be an official whiskey taster. See if you can tell from my face which shot is scotch and which shot is Jameson!

Here is the whole gang at the Jameson distillery:

After a few days in Dublin and finding our way around the morning after St.Patty's day (they lit the light rail train on fire that night so we had to find alternate means of transportation back downtown the next day). We were off to Northern Ireland.

Here is my first attempt at being on the wrong side of the road :)

We arrived safely in Belfast after a 2hour drive and lots of help from the friendly GPS in our Audi A6!  There to great us when we drove into town was the warm welcome and spirit of the people from Northern Ireland.  Obviously their past is a troubled one and this was a marker from that past.  The town was great but we all could feel that it was just a little different here than it was back in Dublin.

We met some great people in the hotel bars at 2am. Amazing how many interesting folks you meet in another country after a night of partying when everyone just wants to stop in and have a pizza before bedtime.  That long night turned into a rough morning but we were all so excited to play golf that it didn't matter how hungover we were.  We went to Royal County Down in Newcastle and played one of the best rounds of golf I will ever remember.

The signature 9th hole and me making a birdie on the back nine are posted below:

The next day was a trip up to Portrush.  Home of Rory and Grahme.  Royal Portrush (Dunluce links) was equally amazing to County down.  The course was different in the sense that it didn't have as many gorse bushes and it had a lot more views of the waterfront.  Dan and I both loved the short par 4 5th shown first and what would a trip to Portrush be without a visit to Big Nellie on 17 fairway.

We finished the trip off with a walk through the Giant Causeway.  I would say that this is a must see if you ever travel to Ireland.  The scenery is absolutely amazing and it is a good way to burn off some of those calories from the few hundred Guinness that have been consumed.

A little video of the waves crashing in for you to recreate the moment yourself

 

Golfing in Suzhou

After a 8 hour battle with food poisoning I was able to get a good nights sleep and not cancel my teetime with my work counterparts at Suzhou.

I was a little weak but nothing some water and watermelon couldn't fix!

First we stopped at a little proshop before the course.  I got 6 golf balls (prov1), a golf glove (callaway) and a nike stocking cap.  Normally this would be about 60-70bucks.  Not in china!  15 bucks for everything!  What a deal

We headed off to the course with our supplies and checked in.  Started the warmup on the practice green and I took a few shots of the clubhouse.  Remember it is winter here right now so the grass is all dormant.

Then it was off to the course.  I was playing with taylormade r7 irons with graphite shafts that were at best ladies flex.  It made for quite the test of my golf swing.  Some good some bad.  I shot a 43 on the back in 37 degree weather after food poisoning so I will call that a success.

Here are some other shots of the course and our group.  Great day golfing with lots of good people.

KS, KT, Bruce and Me on the shrine next to the teebox.  Praying for a hole in one!

Bruce, KT and caddy posing while KS hits his teeshot

Bruce with our caddies

The whole group on 17tee.  Bruce birdied and I made par!  Good hole for Shakopee vs. Suzhou

Amazing dinner in China

We found a restaurant tonight where they cook right in front of you.  It was lots of fun and the food was amazing.  We had Oysters that were 8inches long, lamb chops, whitefish, mushrooms and grilled Asian veggies. All thanks to this chef who had some wicked good knife and spatula skills!

1st Shanghai Experience

So if you saw my previous post about Harrys bar then you know I was out late!  We had planned to go to the SIP train station at 815 on Sat morning to head out for Shanghai.  I woke up at 805 by a phone call from a co-worker.  Rough start to the day.  However, things got better.  We got to the train station okay and purchased our high speed rail tickets.  The train goes 280km/hour.  There was 7 of us traveling to shanghai and only 5 of us were able to get on the 1st train and two others (Eric and Gary) had to take the 2nd train which was 10 mins behind ours.

The train ride is smooth and awesome and we got to shanghai in 25mins.  Coming out of the train it looked like the picture below

We waited for 10-15 minutes and no Eric or Gary.  Luckily we all have cell phones so we gave them a call. For the next 1hr we tried to help guide them out of the train station to the street and could not.  We decided to give up and told them to get in a taxi and call our local contact who could tell the cab driver in chinese how to get them to a location where we could meet them.  We then headed out on our adventure

First stop Pearl Tower:  It is one of the most recognized landmarks in all of Shanghai.  We bought a ticket for 180RMB to go to the top of the tower.

The tower is higher than the Sears tower and the tokyo tower.   From the top you could see very far and it was really cool.  It overlooked the river and the finanical district.  Such an enormous city.

In order to see out the windows someone obviously has to clean them.  This is 380meters up in the air and there was a window washer on the outside of the building strapped on by a bungee cord washing windows.  No way in heck would I want that job.

Then we found out that we get to go outside as well (not just the window washers).  They had a glass floor observation deck that we went to.  We still had not met up with Gary and Eric yet so we took their pic so they knew what they were missing.  A bunch of random chinese people wanted to take their pictures with us too.  The picture below shows what its like to be standing 380 meters int he air and looking straight down to the ground through glass.

Random chinese people asking us for our pictures.

After we finished our experience at Pearl tower we started to head for the shopping district.  We still hadn't heard from gary and eric so we thought we would take their photo on the subway

We made it to the shopping district.  The subways are quite easy to navigate and relatively inexpensive.  Just like tokyo or chicago in my opinion. Next up was a quick beer to prepare for the shopping.  We also met up with our friend from work Ling Sun.  Still no Gary and Eric so we let them have a beer with us via photo.

Finally at the completion of our beer Gary and Eric arrived and we got the whole story of their adventure.  They got on the wrong train, took it to the airport, couldn't find their way out once arrived and ultimately ended up getting in a taxi and just driving.  They had no idea where they were going until they got ahold of Ling sun who speaks mandarin and got the taxi to bring them to an area where we could all meet.  We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening shopping and sightseeing.  Shanghai is a really cool place with tons of stuff to do.

View of Nanjing street

Thermometer building for current temperatures

Eric and Gary with Kirk enjoying a beer and some rest after lots of walking

Nanjing Street at night

Massive Shark and Turtle tank outside of a restaurant

Kirk, Jason and Yao Ming

Harrys Bar

First friday night in Suzhou.  My co-workers and I want to unwind after a hard week of work and we found an ex-pat bar called Harrys.  They served 190RMB towers of Tiger beer, Carlsburg beer and had a great Phillipino band playing. Really cool place (except that they allow smoking in the bar) and all of the people are really friendly and cool

Japanese Dinner and 1st Day at work

6 of us went to dinner at an all you can eat and drink Japanese place.  Fantastic dinner and when you get all you can eat and drink for 120.00 RMB (ie 20 us bucks) you can't go wrong!

The walk home behind the hotel showing how the town is lit up like a christmas tree

And finally here is the office where I went to work today for the first time.

Chinese Dinner

Official chinese dinner complete!  Shrimp with peppers in spicy peanut glaze and doughy noodles(delicious).  Some weird greens with something that looked like earthworms in it (delicious whatever it was), rice, chicken in ginger glaze and a soup that we thought was hot and sour by the looks but didn't have the same vinegar taste.  High class I know.....drinking beer from a wine glass!

The menus here are quite a bit different as well.  There are a lot of foods with heads still on it.  Sorry the pic kinda stinks but I think you can get the point.  They are small birds that they fry whole.  No thanks