So fire up that fiddle boy, and give me one last drink!

So it’s been FOREVER since I updated this thing, sorry about that. I’ve been so exhausted and updates have become a chore. Since Morocco I’ve been to Carnival in Nice which was AMAZING. Lots of floats, fireworks, setting the king on fire and dragging him across the Med, and a city-wide silly string/confetti fight. It was really fun, and I absolutely love festivals; I really wish we would have more of them in the states. Lauren also came over for a weekend and we took her to Eze, which was really fun, I love it there. We had a nice picnic on top of a cliff viewing the Med, then explored the medieval town and the parfumerie. The next trip we had was Ireland! And this is the one I feel deserves a blog out of the three, because it’s a place that I haven’t been and one that I enjoyed the most.

Devon and I left the night of the 16th and spent the night in Heathrow Airport in London to make our 7am flight out to Dublin on time for St. Patrick’s Day. London was exciting simply due to the fact that they speak ENGLISH there. OMG how we love being able to communicate with people lol Heathrow itself was kind of a meh experience. We initially arrived in London Gatwick and had to take a 22 pound bus (killer!) to Heathrow, and once we got there we soon discovered that there were hardly any places open for overnighters. Plus, all the chairs had metal arm rests separating them, so there weren’t any places to lie down. Devon and I got a few hours of sleep before our flight that morning, and needless to say, the entire plane was super excited to get to Dublin for Patty’s Day.

When we arrived in Dublin (a place I will now refer to as Publin), we got on the bus to go to our hotel. As I looked out the window at the massive crowd trying to also board the already packed bus I am on- I see Shae!!! So naturally, I start hitting the window and frantically waving to catch her attention. Her friends are the first to see me, and by the looks on their faces think I’m a total spaz lol, and then Shae sees me, but doesn’t recognize me, then she does, and we have this minute or so of “omg! You’re here! Wait….what do we do? We’re both not on the bus! I don’t have your number! What do we do?” miming through the bus window…..and then it drives away, both of us making sad faces at each other. We both appreciated the irony (my phone doesn’t work in Ireland and we had made no plans to meet at a specific place, so we were pretty much outta luck), but it was kinda a bummer we didn’t get to enjoy the parade together.

The parade. Yeah. That was a total let down. It started late, had nothing to do with St. Patty’s day, green things, or leprechauns, and was super crowded. I really didn’t enjoy it at all, and if Devon and I weren’t so close to the front, we probably would’ve left half with through. The night scene however, was AMAZING. Everyone is all dressed up, ready to party, and in an awesome mood. Devon and I did a pub crawl that night, but as we were soon to find out, St. Patrick’s Day drinking isn’t too much fun if you don’t have a big group of friends to do it with. It’s hard to party with two people lol Plus, everyone ALWAYS thinks we’re dating, so people tend to avoid us, and since everyone else came with big groups of friends it was hard to jump into social circles. Oh well. We still had a fun time checking out the pubs and talking with a few people. Drinks were WAY pricey though, so we bailed on that before everyone went to the night club. I’d say the best part of that day was eating dinner at Eddie Rockets lol Ireland soon became a place to satisfy all of our American food cravings, and it was the best thing ever! That’s right. Chicken wings, milkshakes, cheese fries, bagels, you name it, they had it. It. Was. Awesome. :)

So far Devon and I aren’t really feelin’ Publin. You have two main stretches- O’Connell street and Temple Bar, but other than that, there’s not much to do without going broke or drinking. We spent the next day in Publin, cause we had to wait for Lauren to arrive from Germany (and she couldn’t get in until Friday morning), so naturally, we went to the Guinness storehouse. That was also meh. Granted, I don’t like beer, let alone dark ones like Guinness, so paying 11 euros for a tour of what was basically a museum of Guinness was not the most exciting thing ever. Afterwards we did some more souvenir shopping and then headed back to the hotel for a nap before dinner and a movie. Domino’s pizza for dinner was delicious but we were struggling to decide what to go see for the movie. We both wanted a comedy, but all the good movies from America hadn’t been released yet, so we eventually narrowed it down to Shutter Island and I Love you Phillip Morris. We couldn’t decide, so we asked the guy who sold us our tickets, but he hadn’t seen either, so we ended up seeing Shutter Island. That movie sucked. I don’t recommend it at all. Now, I bet after a page of “the best thing in Publin is the American food” rants, you’re starting to wonder, “Katie, why did you like Ireland do much? It sounds like you’re not having the best of times.” Well, this is where the trip begins to pick up. After the ticket ripper flirted with me, and after encouragement from Devon, I went back and asked if he wanted to go out with us that night (we were planning on scoping out a few clubs). After some awkwardness with cutting the massively long line to buy tickets and skipping someone to ask this in front of everybody, he said yes and we met up after the movie. It was awesome meeting the locals, they are so amazing and so funny. Liam (ticket-ripper guy) and his roommate Robin were SO fun to talk to, I felt like we had been friends forever and I was back home. They also were huge fans of Joss Whedon (director/creator of masterpieces such as Buffy, Angel, and Serenity), which was the best thing ever. Anyways, that was a super fun time, and it made me sad to leave them, but Lauren was arriving.

Lauren met us up at our hotel, and though our original plan was to hitchhike the Ring of Kerry, we were worried about time constraints, so Devon and Lauren came up with the idea of biking the Dingle Peninsula instead and then going to Killarney (which is the first city on the Ring of Kerry) and hitting up things there, like the national park. Ecstatic to get out of Publin, we all take our leave and train it to Tralee where we then take a bus to Dingle. We leave around 1 and get to the bus station at 6 for our bus that leaves at 8. The weather has been forecasted to be dreary and rainy, which it is, but we’re all in pretty good spirits nonetheless. We take the bus ride over, and as we get off the bus, the driver asks us, “do you guys know where you’re going?” I have no idea why he felt compelled to ask us this, I suppose we just look like the kind of people who would show up an dwing it, but since that’s EXACTLY what we were doing, we were glad he asked! He ironically recommend “the Grapevine Hostel” and gave us directions. We thanked him exponentially and headed on our way, not exactly knowing where he was talking about, but figuring that the town is so small (I mean, hello, it’s named Dingle lol) we’d eventually stumble upon it. We did, it was cute, and we stayed there for the night.

The next morning we woke up early to go get a bike rental, we’ve headed out at about 8am. Nothing is open til 10am. Well that was a mild fail. So we wander around playing tourists and checking out how absolutely adorable the little town is. We explore the harbor, and walk the colorful streets, and even come across where the Dingle Film Festival is being held (in a “mobile cinema”)- a truck with screens inside lol Eventually we head back to the bike rental place, where we go in to find the owner drinking a beer at 9:30am- not even kidding . We pick out our bikes, and make our way to circle the peninsula! Our two goals are to see the cliffs and to see an oratory that everyone keeps telling us about. Half the reason this trip was so amazing, was for the scenery, it was absolutely gorgeous. Another reason was that the Irish weather gods were smiling upon us! Despite the fact that it was forecasted to rain the entire time we were in Ireland, it was sunny, cloudless, and at times WARM! It was a miracle, and there was no one more appreciative than us Floridians (one of which who comes from Manheim, Germany). We rode by the cliffs, a BUNCH of sheep (which made the entire peninsula pretty much smell), the sea, and rolling green hills. By the way, rolling green hills are awesome…..until you realize you’re biking them. That got rough and the three of us are in pretty decent shape. We stopped to take pictures pretty much every five minutes (me obsessing over the sheep, the green, and the yellow daffodils that were everywhere), and we stopped in a small town for lunch (we were all famished). In fact, I was pretty sure that if Devon didn’t get food, he was going to pick off one of us lol After the food boost we continued to the oratory. Upon getting there, we were told to go watch the informational video, so we stumbled over shakey-legged and exhausted to this wooden building to see the video. This video was the most hysterical thing ever. It could’ve been that we were exhausted, so all we could do was laugh, but basically, this oratory is a ten by ten stone place of worship for monks back in the day. That’s all it is, an ancient man-made formation of rocks. This video…..I have no idea how they could talk for 45 minutes about this thing. I mean, after FIVE minutes, they were already running out of camera angles, it was just the same shot over and over again! Needless to say, we only stayed for five minutes, and then went to go see what was called in our guidebook, “the highlight of the peninsula.” Wow. To put it gently, the oratory was not worth biking all that way to see. Moving on…. The final stretch home was this HUGE, STEEP upward hill and then you coast the rest of the way back to Dingle. At the point, we’re closing in on 20 to 25 miles of biking. Devon’s totally over being third wheel (something that tends to happen if you’re stuck alone with Lauren and I- even though we really try hard not to let it happen!), we’re all EXHAUSTED, pissed about that stupid oratory, and not really in the mood to hike up a giant, steep hill. But, it’s the only way so that’s what we do. Devon, being the former Yankee that his is, is always a step ahead of me (literally- he walks way faster than my southern stroll) and soon leaves Lauren and I in the dust. This is when I see a patch of daffodils and insist that we go take pictures and play around. We’re having a great time, when we realize that it’s this guy’s yard….evidenced by him staring out the window of his house at us. We get up and awkwardly leave to go tackle the big hill, and later I saw him checking to make sure his flowers were okay. I think it made him proud that we wanted to stop and take pictures with them, because he later waved to us from his car. I love the Irish. We finally meet Devon at the top of this giant hill, panting and walking our bikes, and earn a scolding look. Finally it’s time for the downhill coast back into town. Yay!!! …..too bad we took a wrong turn and ended up back in the middle of our loop. Oh yes, it was a joyous occasion and really helped our moods. Lauren and I also had total wipeouts on our bikes. Mine was a groin injury, she fell into thorns. We have skills  The good thing about this whole thing, is the scenery truly was amazing the entire trip, which made missing our bus back to Tralee so we could get a train to Killarney a little more bearable. We end up hitch hiking (this really does come in a lot of handy in Europe, and I love it) and this cute little old lady and her dog Rocky take us half way to Tralee where we then take a 30 euro cab ride make our train on time. This old lady was quite a character, in all honesty, I’m not sure she was all the way there, but she was chatty and fun, and it was an enjoyable ride.

We get to the hostel in Killarney and it’s a great place. We go grab a late dinner and plan on going out to the pub after a power nap. What started as a power nap, with the goal of waking up an hour later at 11, ends up turning into 8 hours and we wake up early the next morning to go to the park. The park is really cool. We run across Irish springs, more hills, and a lakeside castle (that’s not really a castle. Why do they put “castle” in the name if it’s not a castle?!) We decide to take a boat ride across the lake to go see the famous “Muckross House”, and upon getting there are unwilling to pay the 7 euros to go inside, so we just look through the windows lol we are such cheap students. We then do some more shopping and go hike to where the Torc waterfall is. After enjoying that amazing scenic walk, we head back to town….an over 13km walk. If you ever go to Ireland, make sure you’re over 23 so you can rent a car! After getting back to town, we get icecream (at a place ironically started in Dingle), enjoy the shops, grab our luggage from the hostel, and grab a bite to eat before heading back to Dublin. We stay at a friend of Lauren’s in Dublin, which was super nice, and then the next morning depart ways to head back to France and Germany. It was SO nice being able to see Lauren again, and so terribly heartbreaking to have her leave knowing I won’t see her till we’re back in Gainesville.

The airport in Dublin was an airport with not only a bagel place, but the starbucks had chai tea lattes! I have not been able to find these anywhere in Europe!! So yeah, Ireland was a really fun and amazing place (outside of Publin, anways). The people are wonderful, the food is American, they speak English, have a beautiful landscape, and though we didn’t have the luxury of a car, it was really fun biking and walking across a country. Okay…not across a country, but randomly, sporadically, often pathetically throughout it, enjoying the scenery.

I miss you all terribly! I feel like I haven’t talked to you guys in ages, and that makes me really sad. It also makes me really sad that this semester is almost over, I’m so not looking forward to coming back to the real world! Love you all and sincerely wish you could be here with me!


Pics:
http://s884.photobucket.com/albums/ac43/kolormekatie/The%20Emerald%20Isle/