I may take the blame for the lousy weather, but it’s not actually my fault...
It is usually a pleasure to entertain foreign visitors and friendly Americans can be great guests, appreciative of the stuff we want to show them and positively enthusiastic about the stuff we'd forgotten about. You can learn as much about your city from visitors as they can from you, sometimes.
But all this mutual lovey-doveyness and hands-across-the water carry-on is only really attainable when there is a certain amount of good will on both sides, and it can be surprising how easy it is to squander this good will and leave your willing host just about ready to strangle a person (you).
Dublin's weather - there's no point lying about it - is changeable, and that's about as much as can be claimed for it. We've had sunny blue skies and lounging around in parks for the last while but last week was very wet and disappointing, so let me just say it here up-front: if you come to Dublin you may get rained on. If the possibility of getting rained on is enough to destroy your chances of enjoying the city, it will be sad for all of us but probably for the best if you go somewhere else. And if you are being taken around the city by friendly natives, while a brief joke about the weather is traditional, constant high-gear moaning about it is not only futile but kind of wearying after a while.
This is how I spent last Friday, absorbing the whiny misery of two young American students whose travels on the continent of Europe have only served to confirm them in their conviction that Paris, Venice and London are inherently and fundamentally places as miserable and soul-destroying as whatever part of Michigan they came from. (I have friends from Michigan, I have nothing against the place, but whatever part of it these girls come from must specialise in depressive whining. "We never see the sea. It's awful" "It's depressing, actually, it's kinda sad" "I hate your wallpaper.̶ 
In fairness to the two women, they had just come from Venice and London, both by their accounts very disappointing cities. ("There's nothing to do in Venice" What about checking out the Tinterettos and Titians and Tiepelos in the magnificent churches, girls? "We're not really that into churches," replies the student of art history.) In addition to this they had miscalculated the stupidity of the left luggage room in Dublin airport which meant lengthy trips to the airport and back again, and the prospect of hours waiting for their early flight. That would be enough to make anybody glum, fair enough, and if you want to be brutal about the entertainment on offer in Dublin, it is more of a hanging-around city than a sight-seeing city, but hanging around is exactly what I do best and I had a friend, Fred Farkle, lawyer, inventor and dog walker to the stars to help me escort these visitors.
It didn't help. The pub was too crowded and noisy but at least they liked the cider (or rather, when they observed how hard it sucked that such hard cider was not available in Michigan, I chose to see the remark in a positive light). Since the plan was to go to Dublin Airport for eleven and to wait there until six o'clock, I suggested that they might get their luggage and return to town where I might cook for them or at least take them to a restaurant or a few pubs. By this time Farkle was making grumbling noises and his normally bold spirit had retreated into his noble breast like a kitten threatened with a water-pistol. His attempts to win favour with jocular banter were met with blank stares; his efforts to draw them into the most general conversations about travel/ music/ politics/ shopping/ the weather, even, the bleedin' weather all resembled the desperate efforts of a mad doctor trying to extract blood from a particularly anaemic lump of stone. We even tried poetry on them, for goodness' sake, surely an instance of desperation. But they weren't interested in travel or music or politics or shopping or the weather or poetry; for them the city of Dublin was just a large, wet, inconveniently located waiting area, preferable to the one in Dublin Airport solely because the lighting was less harsh. When we tried to crack jokes they looked at us as if they were not sure whether to make us offerings of glass beads or to call the embassy in panic. Instead they sat silently drinking my wine and insulting my wallpaper (which, in fairness, really does need to go).
The point of all this is not to complain about America or Michigan or tourists generally. Travel can be tiring, the weather can be demoralising, I don't know what it was that our two friends were expecting but clearly whatever they got was profoundly disappointing. But what struck me was that they had no conception that their enjoyment of the city might have been enhanced by even a tiny bit of effort. They were tired, but worse they were tiring, and they seemed to think that it was our job to entertain them rather than to help them enjoy themselves ("Everybody makes their own fun," David Mamet has a line somewhere, "If you don't make it yourself it ain't fun, it's entertainment".) To judge by their expressions, my guess is that they actually felt they were being cheated financially, conned by a city and a host insufficiently dedicated to providing them with laughs.
(It would make you wonder if there are city planners in Paris and Venice scratching their heads as they take a long hard look at themselves and their cities and saying "What can we do to make our boring cities more appealing to the students and alumni of the University of Michigan?̶
We were unlucky, my American companions and myself, to find ourselves so mismatched, but if there is a larger point to be made out of all this it is that travel is not entertainment in itself. It is an opportunity to experience stuff or to learn stuff or to have fun, but it is not a guarantee of any of these things. The blank passivity of these two girls was not only rude and insulting, it was depressing for them, and it was a waste of an entire continent. When good-natured visitors find themselves in a downpour, I don't mind taking responsibility for the rain, but these two girls treated my friend and me as if we really were to blame and as if we'd done it on purpose.
I like Americans, I like showing my city around to visitors, but you should be aware that some of your compatriots out there are giving you all a bad name.
