Ireland Day 5

This will probably have to wait to tomorrow to be completed because once again the Internet connection is shoddy. I love how they advertise it in their brochure but don't REALLY have a connection. This guy assured me they had Wi-Fi...but unfortunately it doesn't reach my room. Great. I'm writing this on the stairs down the hall. Also, while most of the Irish are incredibly hospitable, wonderful people there are certainly some crabby ones. Why would you run a B&B if you didn't like people?

On the bright side, I finally found the cute girls. They were all hiding in Dingle (that sounds weird, doesn't it?). Mary Mooney, I found your twin and sisters and cousins. Creepy. Once again, I didn't have the camera with me but it would have been obnoxious anyway. The bar was crowded and raucous. There was good live Irish music and Guinness. What more can you ask for? I know, a drunk old man dancing and knocking over stools!

Off to sleep. I keep waking up for breakfast without getting a good night's rest. One of these mornings I'm not going to make it. And I'm going to be upset. If only I had something to help me sleep...

AND THE REAL POST:

RIP José Félix Alegría. I'll miss you bro.

The morning in Kenmare was uneventful save for the obnoxious British tourists eating next to us. They were only interested in picturesque spots and admitted that Ireland "isn't quite as good as England". They did offer some pretty good advice, though. We jumped in the car (I'm just about done with the car...we'll hit 1,000km in the next days or two) and headed up the coast toward Dingle.

Killarney National Park was unexpectedly on the way so we stopped off for a quick hike to break up the driving.



The sun makes me happy. Somehow we've brought sun with us all the way despite warnings of sudden torrential downpours forecasted all week. I really don't remember exactly where this is because it all looks like this. Really.

When we hit the Dingle peninsula, the first place we stopped was a beach. It was a random stop and lo and behold:



Surfing. It does exist out here. So do the same stupid vans. It's like Scripps all over again.



Here is someone trying to surf the white water. There probably aren't too many good surfers out here yet. I guess these people didn't realize you were supposed to surf the outside waves. Sorry about the crappy photo...

The beaches are beautiful and relatively pristine. This particular Dingle beach extends for miles in both directions. The development is generally kept quite far back, away from the water. You can drive your car right up on the sand, though. Kinda cool.



There was a better view of the swells coming in but I was unable to get the shot from the moving car. It looked longboard-able and fun with the waves peeling about 100 yards both ways. The wind was strong onshore but didn't blow it out too much. I would call it waste high (maybe slightly bigger) on the sets.

When we finally made it to Dingle we ended up in a pretty shite B&B called "Fiúise". The man who ran it was an ornery old codger. His wife wasn't much better. We got suckered in thinking they had internet service, which, as I already described, wasn't much. Live and learn. Stay away from houses that look too new.

The Dingle Pub in town was the best pub we've been too by far. It had crazy music, tons of local people, and an actual vibe. The musicians looked all punked out with tattoos and piercings but were playing traditional Irish music punctuated by goofy interludes and drunken antics by the bar-goers. The bass player kept leaving to order beers and kept stalling the show. The other guys would just yell at him and play pieces of songs when they grew impatient.

In case you didn't know, people in Ireland bring their kids to pubs. It's part of life there. It's no wonder it has the highest highway death rate of any country in the EU.

I'm getting ready for a change of scenery...

Ireland Day 4

[This is going up a bit later than I had planned. The sun was unexpected so we took advantage before the rain came down again.]

I woke up this morning to the sun pouring through the windows! Great success!

We ran out of the hotel as fast as possible (note: more of a hurried shuffle, but those packs are heavy) in the hopes of making it to the coast quickly before the inevitable "showery"-ness. We hit the beach in about five minutes to a glorious display of sun and shiny sand. Strangely, I was the only person in shorts. Irish people don't believe in them.



The beach was nice but it was in a protected bay so I couldn't see any sort of swell despite strong onshore winds. I bet somewhere up North we'll hit decent waves.

The next stop was Cobh (pronounced "Cove", used to be called Queenstown). It was the embarkation point for most of the Irish heading to the US to escape the potato famine. It was the also the last port of call for the Titanic AND the home port of the Lusitania. Given all that history you'd think this place would really be something, neh? Neh...



Here I am with my luggage ready to emigrate to Boston. Oh wait, I already did that...

And yes, I rep HMV til I die. Full practice gear FTW!

The next significant stop was Blarney Castle. While overrun with tourists, the attention is well deserved. The castle itself is massive walls and parapets with little passageways and rooms that they let you climb over, into, and all around. It's a little kid's dream (or mine...). I even got to crawl into the dungeons, or at least as far as I could without a flashlight. You go up one of those cool spiral staircases all the way to the top to kiss the Blarney stone (it bestows eloquence to whoever kisses it). I had imagined a special stone out in the country somewhere, but it's placed square in the wall of the castle at an odd, particularly low, place requiring you to lay on your back, grab the rails they've bolted on, and be lowered by someone to reach it. You can tell it's the right stone because it's discolored from everybody kissing it. I'm sure I now have traces of every communicable disease in the history of man on my lips. Sorry Kat.



The castle.



Me in the old guard dog kennels. Woof.



My future summer house in Ireland. Where do you summah?

Random Thoughts:
The radio here blows. I don't understand what would make people actively enjoy this kind of entertainment. One of the self-promoting advertisements even replayed a listener's testimonial of how much she enjoyed a good balance of chat and music. Balance? It's all trivial, meaningless chat. They don't shut up. Not only do they not shut up but if/when they finally do shut up they play the shittiest music ever ("umbrella ella ella" or that one Journey song about the uptown girl, really?). Oh, Justin Timberlake is coming to Ireland? Thank you for reminding me 93 million times. They play his songs non-stop on every radio station except the yokel Irish station and classical station. Speaking of the hick station, the DJ has a lisp. I'm not kidding. Is that not the one job you can't have with a lisp? It's not nice traditional Irish music either. It's an inbreeding of bluegrass, country, and Irish to form possibly the worst music I've ever heard. Conclusion, the Irish have no future in radio.

On the road in Ireland

(This is posted from yesterday since I didn't have an internet connection in Youghal. Tomorrow's post will go up tomorrow morning since my battery is down to 26 minutes and I think the owner of this B&B wants me out of her living room -- it's midnight here.)

We got up early this morning to grab breakfast, jump in a rental car, and drive to Cork in the South of Ireland. We loaded up the packs and made our way toward Trinity where we thought the rental car place was located. After not finding the place for 15 minutes, my pack started to gain a few pounds every minute. By the time we found Thrifty, with a little help from the whelp working at the nearest Internet Cafe, I was carrying at least 900 pounds.

On a weird, but related, tangent, the super-heavy pack seems to help my hip problem. I have a slightly shifted right hip due to a nasty skateboard fall. It has caused all sorts of issues. Anyway, the weight of the backpack sitting on that hip has forced it to shift in the correct direction. It's fairly painful and causes weird shooting pains but so far I feel a hell of a lot better (when not wearing the pack of course).

The car we got was a tiny VW golf with a manual transmission. The combination of a right-situated steering wheel (gotta switch hands to drive stick) and driving on the left side of the road has been...fun. Luckily, I haven't had to try my hand yet but my mom assures me it's harder than it seems. You are fighting every instinct you have behind the wheel. At least the pedals are still the same. Maybe I'll just stick to navigating.



The madre driving us (even being lefty wasn't helping the driving situation much).

We had no plan as to where we were going to try to end up so we just drove toward Cork (why not?). On the way we stopped all over the place. The unfortunate but constant "showery" weather made the trip more difficult than need be but the countryside is nice to look at. They weren't joking when they said Ireland is the Emerald Isle. It's the greenest place I've ever seen. There's nothing but green for as far as you can see. There's a scant house or farm but generally nothing between the little towns and villages.

At one particular stop, the Moone High Cross Inn, John, the proprietor, tried to convince me to stay in Ireland. It's a fast growing country with tons of potential he said. Tech is making a comeback he said. They are hiring like crazy he said. Too bad it's "showery" 12 months of the year. I mean, they do like surfing but that's outweighed by the girls, literally. Did I mention that a third of the young women I see (maybe 18-25?) have babies? Who would impregnate them? It must be their impeccable style (Juicy suits anyone?).

The next significant stop was Ring, in the southern, Irish (Gaelic) speaking part of Ireland. The bartender at Mooney's looked exactly like Will Reppun. Maybe I was one Guinness too deep but he even talked like him. Will, you need to meet this dude. He is your long-lost Irish brother. He's 28, wears a beanie with a brim, served me beer, loves the water/lives by the beach but doesn't really surf, and ends most of his sentences with "ya". Unfortunately, I never got his name and felt weird taking a picture (I think he's the owner's son). I probably sound in the love with the guy. Only as much as I love Will, which on a scale of 1 to 10 is "amazing". Also Andy/Seamus, he lived in IV in SB for a year. Yes, I got his full life story. And no, there was no one else in the bar except for cranky old Irish men watching a soap opera.

Also, surfing is huge in Ireland these days. I should have brought my 7/6 and board from Boston. Too bad that would've taken up my entire backpack. Weak sauce.

Later in the day, we got lost trying to find this Mahon bridge but stumbled across Mahon Falls. It's a misty mountain with three waterfalls flowing into a river in the valley. There are sheep everywhere. We hiked around for an hour or so right up to the falls. Keep in mind, the only way we found this place was by taking a random right of the main road.



It was misting pretty hard (can that even happen?). To be more clear, it was REALLY windy and slightly misty.



This sheep was delicious.

The long day ended in Youghal at Aherne's (highly recommended via Ring). I was so tired and hungry that the couple of pints there did me in. Or maybe it was the Irish coffee. There were a group of elderly people seated next to us, almost too drunk to get up. Apparently one of the women owned the pub across the street. She admired my attack on the whole Sea Bass I was eating (quite thorough job I must admit) and then proceeded to tell me something about Tiger Woods. Irish people are hard to understand. Drunk Irish people are impossible to understand.

Random Thought:
People don't immediately think that my mom is my mom. I know she looks young but comon... I guess moms here look more like moms than mine does. Anywho, made for some awkward moments.

Ireland - Dublin

I packed for brutally hot weather. What we got in Ireland instead was "showery", which is the appropriate BBC Weather nomenclature for just about every day here. It's nice when it's sunny (maybe 2 hours a day?) but really cold the rest of the time. I bought a spiffy new North Face jacket (thanks mom!) and off we went.

Trinity College:

This is one of the most amazing college campuses I have ever seen. It doesn't stand up to Harvard obviously (I mean, obvi) but has it's own particular monastic charm. It also houses the Book of Kell, Ireland's most magnificent illuminated manuscript, an absurdly detailed treatment of the four gospels which was definitely worth the entrance fee. It was the life's work of several monks and still isn't finished. The color of the illustrations and illuminated text remains vibrant to this day (it was completed circa 800AD) except where the copper color has eaten through the velum. I felt particularly in touch with the monks given my tonsure.




I am too sneaky to be a monk.

Christ Church:

This church dates back to the 11th century with a really creepy old crypt underground. I understand that churches, temples, and monuments are standard tourist fare but every place seems to push these as their main attractions. There's cool history there but 15 minutes was plenty.

What is going on in this stained glass window?



Holy Knight with Yellow Halo: "Dude, I wanna touch your sword."
Holy Knight with Red Halo: "I swear to God, if your hand gets any closer, I'll stab you in the eye. And dude, how are you levitating?"

Guinness Brewery:

This was by far the coolest part of Dublin. It's like Disneyland but all about beer! You work your way up floor by floor learning about every process of making Guinness until you hit this incredible bar on the 7th floor with floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering a 360 degree view of all of Dublin. One of the floors was even about responsible drinking! ...which was empty. Did I mention you get a free Guinness just for taking the tour? It definitely tastes better at the factory. Truthfully, it was just different than the Guinness I'm used to but it does taste sweeter and truer to the roasted barley. The roasted barley tastes similar to a roasted coffee bean. Delicious.



Temple Bar:

This is the trendy bar area of Dublin, full of bars and "cultural events". Just about every traditional Irish pub features traditional Irish music and serves pint after pint of Guinness. It's quite touristy but many of the locals hang out there as well. It's also a popular backpacking destination given the many hostels and unshaven 20-somethings (see, I'm just fitting in). They need more foreigners here. Without the foreign eye-candy, I would have gone blind by now. The hottest Irish broad I've come across is Molly Malone:



Random Thoughts:

It's sad how much Boston wants to be Dublin. Did you know there really is a Grafton Street?



It's always full of people and offers some of the better street performers I've seen. On a whole, the musicians here are better than anywhere else I've been with the exception of New Orleans. People are playing everything from Beatle's covers to accordion to an acoustic metal set (weird but cool).

I've seen more lip piercings here than I thought possible. On that same note, there seem to be more young people here than most places. They loiter everywhere. It's weird. There are even signs in the bus that promote "anti-ageism week" Apparently, 60 percent of 55-65 year olds find "ageism" a problem in Ireland (the numbers could be slightly off, but you get it).


Currently listening to:
For those of you into the same music as me (you know who you are), check out Psyopus. Dillinger-esque with a mellow aftertaste.

Cheers and Goodnight

More to come tomorrow!

Introduction: Getting It Together and Going

Here I am in Ireland, sitting pretty in the beautiful Harrington Hall. I haven't slept in many hours and my hands are fumbling, struggling to type this out. Bear with this first post. It's been a LONG two days, and needless to say, quite the adventure. My mom and I set out for Dublin with nothing but one-way tickets and our backpacks, the travails of the past few days weighing heavily on our shoulders (the 60 pound backpacks withstanding). Haha, what if I seriously wrote like that? I would have to shoot myself in the face.

To start off, let's look at a few interesting moments over the last few days:

1. I bungled the original flight reservations resulting in lost tickets. I maintain American Airlines led me astray (how can they talk about penalty fees if they haven't charged me yet?!), but I'll take responsibility. Trip around the world = scrapped.
2. My mom needed medication for the trip and the insurance wouldn't pay for it. They finally paid for it but we didn't get enough. Have you ever tried getting through security with 50 pre-filled syringes in a backpack?
   
3. How do you pack for six weeks in a backpack?
   
4. The ride to LA was late due to the driver's previous client having a heart attack on the way to the airport. Bummerski.
   
5. We would have missed our flight if not for an Aer Lingus flight attendant rescuing us from the security line. We made it 5 minutes before take off. Keep in mind we had been waiting in the lounge for over an hour because we were told we would be escorted through security due to our "premier status" (remember, pinkies out). That would have been fine had we not lost our escort on the way to security.
6. My mom had a crisis at work the day we were leaving and of course left her computer's plane charger in a checked bag. Blast! So much for 10 hours to get some work done. At least the plane had some quality in-flight entertainment like Eragon ... and Wild Hogs.

Packing actually wasn't so bad once I got the system down.

Step 1.) You start off with all your crap strewn all over the floor:















Step 2.) ?















Step 3.) Profit! (Yes, that's all the stuff I brought with me.)
















AND WE ARRIVE! Too bad I have no clue about digital cameras. I had the aperture at 2 times regular size and some macro something-or-other set at ungodly levels. Most of our pictures from the first day look like this...