I Love Ireland

It came up so quickly-- I guess because so much has been going on in my life and work has been crazy busy, but the 21st of October arrived before I knew it. I worked on the 20th for a coworker who'd booked tickets to Florida, and I was supposed to have gone to Boston for one last visit to see Matt before I left the country, but that didn't happen because my mom needed so much help getting around. And I hate to say it, but I was terribly pleased that before I knew it it was time for my vacation.

Susan arrived at my house about 6pm on Saturday the 21st, we ate a quick dinner with my parents, then headed out for JFK about 7pm. When we got there and checked in, everything went smoothly. The security check went without a hitch (except for the part where they singled out my backpack for inspection and when I forgot to take off my belt so the metal detector kept alarming, but other than that everything was cool), and pretty soon we were on our way, waiting at the gate, eagerly anticipating our second annual girls' only vacation (last year was San Diego... who knows what next year will bring!). Yay! The 10pm flight to Dublin was seven hours, I think, and the seats were kind of cramped... and combine that with both of us being terribly excited and you had two girls who only slept a few minutes (I got about a half hour and Susan got about an hour and a half). Then at 10:45am Dublin time we landed, got our luggage and met up with the Brendan Tours representative who drove us to the Jury's Inn Custom House Hotel which I must say was magnificent. I mean, the room was ok, but the building itself was great and the location was amazing-- right in the center of the city and overlooking the River Liffey.

When we checked in at the hotel and put our stuff away, Susan decided we should test her new electricity adapters so I plugged in my cell phone charger and blew out the electricity in the room while blowing the crap out of the charger. Oh well! Before we knew it though it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon and we were due to meet the tour guide and the rest of the people in our group for a coach trip around Dublin. That was cool—we saw St. Patrick’s Church (which was *not* Catholic), Trinity College and the amazing Book of Kells, and learned a bunch of history about Ireland while driving through the older and newer streets of downtown Dublin. Then at about four o’clock or so, they dropped us off for the evening in front of our hotel. Susan and I went back to the room to find that the power had been magically fixed. I promised her that I wouldn’t break it again, we freshened up, and then went out onto the streets of Dublin in search of food and drink and a nice quiet evening together.

After walking for what seemed like hours (don’t forget neither of us had slept yet really from the day before) we finally found a little café that sold food I could eat, went in, and had a much needed sit-down and meal. Then we went next door and had our very first pints of Guinness. Actually, they were half-pints, which are like the wussy version of being manly with such a dark beer, but it was a good introduction to what would become my favorite drink of the trip.

Before we knew it, it was time for bed. Ten o’clock at night approached and we’d been up for somewhere just over 36 hours, so we headed back to the hotel and slept. Then, first thing after an early breakfast in the hotel, we all piled back into the coach and drove two and a half hours to the town of Blarney—complete with the castle, the infamous stone, and the wonderful woolen mills where much shopping took place. After having scouted the grounds of Blarney Castle and climbing up hundreds of stairs to reach and kiss the Blarney Stone at the top, Susan and I descended back on the town and skipped lunch, choosing instead to buy sweaters and t-shirts and osouvenirsouveniers for ourselves and our friends and family. When we were just about done (which was about 15 minutes after the driver had told us we needed to leave), we got harassed by the guide for being too pokey, got dirty looks from all of the other tour members while doing the tardy-walk-of-shame back onto the coach, and then set out for the town of Killarney.

When we got there, we went directly to the hotel where we dropped off our stuff in the room, peed and met downstairs for dinner together as a tour group in the large dining room, followed by a night of bar-hopping with the young people from the group. We started by kind of walking around aimlessly through the tiny town and then for some reason, a little pub with a big sign that said “Beer Garden” on it caught my eye and I suggested we go in. We walked in to find the place empty. As in completely empty. Like, so empty that if we were in the old west, a tumbleweed would have rolled across the barroom floor. But we decided to sit down and have a pint anyway, and it proved to be a good idea because before long an older guy appeared from some back room and invited us all upstairs to hang out with a bunch of guys who were having a little jam session on the porch. So the five of us trekked upstairs and found where the music was coming from and were overjoyed to have come upon such a discovery. Turns out there were a couple of old guys, a couple of young guys, a couple of hot guys and a couple of expatriots… and it was an absolute blast. I ended up leaving the security of the bench where the rest of the girls were and sidling up next to one of the ex-pats to sing along with a guitarist, somebody on harmonica, and another guy on a melodica. What a fun time!

Before long though the night had gone on and it was time to go. As we headed back to the hotel we stopped at another pub for a drink or two and met some local guys who were going out to a night club. Susan and I and another girl headed to the club with the one guy and dropped off the other two girls we were with at the hotel for the evening. The rest of the night went quickly and soon it was time to go back to sleep. When we got back I was inebriated and ended up making an $80.00 phone call to Matt from the hotel room for like eleven minutes. Heh.

The next morning after breakfast the tour bus set out on one of the most scenic trips I think I've ever taken-- we drove around the Ring of Kerry, which was by itself magnificent, but we also stopped at the Rock of Kashel, several different lakes overlooked by huge rocky bluffs, crazy narrow winding roads, loads of peat bogs, a really interesting mountainside, and parts of Dingle Bay (complete with a complete-arc rainbow) that were breathtaking to the point where only seeing it in person would give it justice.

Also on our drive around the coastline that day was a trip to Waterville, a small fishing village known for its seafood and for being the historical landmark that Charlie Chaplin loved to visit (they even had a bronze life-sized statue of him inside of a gazebo in the center of town!). We stopped there for lunch and a brief walk around before hopping back onto the coach for the remainder of the tour of all of the gorgeous scenery. Before long, we were back at the Killarney Towers hotel. Susan and I had decided to stay back from an additional extra planned evening with the rest of the tour, so we walked around the town (it was so small, by that point I kind of knew it like the back of my hand!) looking around and window shopping and finding someplace to eat, then heading back to the hotel room for a quiet evening together. While Susan was in the shower before we went to bed, I went down the street to an internet cafe to reflect back on the photographs I'd had burned to a CD to make room on my camera's memory stick, then I called Matt from a weird international payphone (not for $80.00 this time though!), and went back to the room. When I got there, I found Susan sleeping, splayed out across her bed, suitcase open and empty of it's contents (they were all around and under her), lights on and tv blaring. Heh. My coming in woke her up, and I put down my stuff and told her that I was going to be going out one more time since I'd forgotten to take a photograph from across town I'd really wanted to capture. Like a good friend Susan wouldn't let me go alone, and I couldn't be swayed to forget about the snapshot, so once she woke up a little bit, the two of us set out into the night, passing by the Beer Garden that I'd loved so much the night before, and headed to the Oifigan Phoist, where I'd fallen in love with the sign and knew I had to have a picture of it. When we were done there (a few extra pictures and a couple of cat-calls from some young drunk Irish guys cruising around town in a beat-up old sedan later), we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep for the next day.

In the morning after breakfast we again headed out on the road, but this time our main stop was to the Cliffs of Moher. It was freezing cold and drizzling that day, really the only day we had any questionable weather, so I made sure to pack my gloves and hat, and I wore long underwear tops and bottoms, my thick woolen socks, a sweater, a long-sleeve t-shirt, a heavy pair of jeans, and the old coat I'd brought-- my slicker. Unfortunately, when we actually got to the visitor's center and started walking up the big hill, I realized I'd left my hat on the bus. No worries though-- I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt under my hooded slicker! So much for that idea though. The rain came down sideways and while it wasn't particularly heavy, it was sharp and going right for my eardrums. Ouch! But the weather aside, the Cliffs were great. I don't know what I was expecting, but nothing on this large of a scale. Susan and I walked up as far as we could along the path, and when we got to the top, I asked a couple of Germans to take our pictures (which I will not post because they look terrible!). Then, when we'd had our fill of the overlook and the rain and the wind, we headed back down for the warmth of the guests' building. Before we got back on the bus, I stopped to pee and ended up finding a really neat sign posted outside the bathroom door, and I thought it was sweet, so I took a picture. What a weirdo :).

A few minutes later when everyone was again aboard the coach, we were off towards Rathbaun Farm, a private family business set up at a centuries-old farmhouse where we'd have a bite to eat and learn a bit about being an Irish farmer. That place was neat-- I enjoyed the thatched roof and whitewashed farmhouse's architecture, plus the smell of burning peat was interesting, and we had a little demonstration on livestock and sheep shearing, and I got to bottle-feed a little lamb. Ha!

After that we were back on the bus and on our way towards Limerick for our final night of the tour program. When we got settled into our room, Susan and I headed out to the city's center with Bhaervi (a girl we befriended on the tour) via a cab we split with a couple of Brits to the Copper Kettle, a pan Asian cuisine place. After dinner we walked around the city for awhile trying to find a cool pub or some music or something else fun to do. Instead of settling on one place though we ended up just perusing the city, window shopping and taking it all in. What a good time! Then when it started getting late, we caught a cab back to the hotel and made plans to meet in the bar for a few drinks before bed. When we got there and sat down, lo and behold, there were those same two Brits we'd split the cab with before! I invited them to join us and for the next couple of hours we had a lot of fun over a lot of laughs and a belly full of drinks. Just about midnight or so though it was time to go since we had an early departure the next morning for the airport. The rest of the group we'd been traveling with the last handful of days was all flying home to their various cities and states, but Susan and I still had a few more days left so we were flying back to Dublin from the Shannon airport. Yay!

In the morning when we were all packed and ready, the two of us went to the dining room for a brief breakfast and don't you know who we met there? Those same two British guys from the night before. Heh. A few slices of toast and some juice and coffee later and we were on our way to the airport and completely ready to begin the next chapter of our Ireland vacation!