what's the craic?

Hello world-

I’m back, relaxing, and moving verrrry slowly.  Traveling for almost three weeks with barely a break apparently takes a toll on the immune system, and I subsequently spent the whole week sniffling, sneezing, and coughing up that gross looking stuff that nobody wants to talk about (whoops).  But no need to fret (I know you were about to), my superior genetics have been kicking this thing out of my system in record time, and this morning I woke up feeling nearly invincible.  The score is now as follows:

Jessica’s immune system: 1

Stupid cold: 0

I really didn’t want to write this blog, but after so many people (the voice in my head being the loudest and most persistent) subtly reminding me how I haven’t posted in awhile, I really had no choice, lest everybody I know and love disowns me.  So this is how it’s going to go.  Today I’ll write about Ireland and whatever other random anecdotes that pop into my head.  Then, I’ll work on putting up some stuff about Carnival and try to get it posted little by little within the next week.  Unfortunately I’m going to try and power through this as quickly and effortlessly as I can, so it will probably be lacking the pretty little word pictures I usually like to paint.

So here we go!

Let’s see… I was in Ireland, and um, it was pretty great.  Biggest disappointement?  There were not NEARLY as many gingers (redheads) as I was expecting!  Talk about false advertising.  The accent was pretty stellar though, so I guess that makes up for it.

But anyway, after a ridiculous plane ride where the middle-aged couple behind us threw a big temper tantrum and were literally intentionally pushing up on our seats (Pam and Dan, if you even think about acting out while you’re over here I swear I will disown you), we finally arrived in Dublin around midnight and ventured out into the city for a bite to eat and a nice pint of Guinness.  Mmmmmmm, Guinness…

Not much exciting to tell about that night (that I can remember), so once we got back to the hotel room and tied the two twin sized beds together with belts and TV cords (three girls paying for a two person room is really most economical, we’re in a recession!) we crashed and then got up for the St. Patty’s Day parade the next morning, which happened to pass by right outside our hotel.

The streets were packed for the parade, though I suspect most of the crowd was made up of tourists; I think the majority of the Irish folk venture into the outskirts of the city during the holiday.  The parade started off pretty average, with assumedly important people waving out the windows of their smart cars and middle aged, kilt-wearing men playing the bagpipes.  After that things picked up a bit, and the parade turned into some crazy circus show interspersed with random high school bands, including a few from the US.

Pringles?

The rest of the day we used to enjoy the general atmosphere and see a couple sites in Dublin.  We ventured to Trinity College where the Book of Kells is housed.  I can’t really remember the exact details of the book, but it was written in Latin and had some sort of religious significance – something about the four Gospels – but I was less than impressed with the exhibit.  It’s not like we could pick up the book and flip through it to see all the marvelous writings and pictures or anything; the book was open to one page underneath a bullet-proof slab of glass, watched over by a bored looking security guard.  I was more impressed with The Long Room, this beautiful library that we exited through that had hundreds of volumes of old books stacked up to the ceiling and those sliding wooden ladders in every aisle.

Trinity College

Afterwards we joined in the celebration with the green crowd and dropped into a few pubs, where, surprise surprise, they actually ask to see your ID before entering!  I guess I’ve been living in Spain too long, where the concern for the drinking age is so low that our 16 year old students are sometimes seen out in bars, so we were taken a bit off guard.  Anyway though, since most of our group had to go back to the hotel to get IDs, Callie and I ventured off on our own and had pretty much decided to fly solo for awhile.  That is, until Callie sat down to get her face painted and I was ambushed by “JESSICAAAA!!!”  More surprises in tow, as my two Kiwi (New Zealander) friends that I met by random coincidence in Spain a couple months back charged me.  Small world, isn’t it?  So before we finally set off to meet our American and Scottish friends, we spent a good portion of the rest of the night with the Kiwis having fake mustaches drawn on our fingers, getting hit on by 65 year old Irish men, and eating shish kebabs from a guy who swears the other kind he was selling contained horse meat.  Yelch, still cringing from that one.

The next day we hopped in our rental cars and set off towards Galway on the west coast of Ireland.  Thankfully we had our Scottish folk with us; I’m not sure how we would have fared trying to drive on the left side of the road…. The drive from coast to coast was only about three hours, but we stopped once for lunch in a tiny little town and then again at the beautiful Cliffs of Moher where we explored and watched the sunset over the ocean.  Not a bad day, overall.

The Cliffs of Moher!

Me with my gigantic Scottish friends.  6'5", 5'2", and 6'4"

they make me look so short

this was supposed to be a shot of the "super moon" but i don't think you can see it unless you enlarge it

We finally got to Galway around 9ish and settled in for some nice fish and chips.  I absolutely loved the city of Galway -- much, much more than Dublin.  It’s a lot smaller, with a permanent population of only about 70,000 (smaller than Ferrol!) but you’d never know as it’s got a pretty diverse and lively university-age crowd.  That night a couple of us went to a great little reggae club with our CouchSurfing hosts, but unfortunately we had to leave at 8am the next morning to make our trek up to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland – a 6 hour drive (or so we thought).

 

So Saturday was a bit of a struggle.  The “6 hour drive” predictably took longer, and though we left Galway at about 9am, I don’t think we actually got to the Causeway until about 6pm.  Giant’s Causeway was pretty cool, like nothing I’ve seen before, but quite honestly it wasn’t really worth being in the car all day.  It was all the way up in Northern Ireland, and it probably should have been left for a different trip.  So by 10:00 when we finally got back to Dublin, we were all pretty exhausted, and Callie and I headed to the airport to sleep a bit before our 6:40 flight back to Spain the next morning.

pretty pretty clouds :)

on our way to the Causeway

friends Jek and Sheena

they look like little stacked pennies :)

All in all, it was a pretty fun trip.  I’d still like to go back sometime for a more relaxed vacation when the country isn’t so flooded with tourists for the holiday and see a bit more of the country.  Oh yeah, so there’s all that hoopla about Ireland being all beautiful and green, right?  Well, I just want to set the record straight – Galicia is greener!  And prettier! I’m not trying to take anything away from Ireland, it’s a great place, but I’m just saying, when the world finally finds out about the hidden gem that is Galicia, it is going to explode with tourism.  It’s kind of interesting because apart from the landscapes being similar between the two countries, the culture is pretty similar as well.  Galicia has a long Celtic history from all the immigrants who have slowly moved over here from Ireland and Scotland, so we’re just flooded with all those bagpipes and Celtic folklore.  Also while we’re on the subject, let’s all take a second to ponder the stupidity of the dual existence of the words “immigrant” and “emigrant”—so pointless.

The rest of this week has been pretty calm, mostly because I’ve been sick and stuff in bed.  To the right you’ll see a new album posted on Ireland, which includes some pictures from the Giant’s Causeway and the Cliffs of Moher.  I’ll get working on some stuff about my vacations over Carnival and get them posted as soon as I can.  In the meantime, enjoy a tune from one of my favorite Irish singer/songwriters, Fionn Regan:

Cheers!