A Few Days in Ireland.

Well, here we are on our Shamrocker tour of Ireland, at last! After a fitful night of sleep in Dublin (and some Irish guy's continuous renditions of Metallica songs at the bar next door 'til one in the morning), we were off first thing Saturday. We piled on the bus and headed out into the Irish countryside. It's pretty, and shockingly looks exactly like it does in the movies. The fields are separated by these rock walls that are all grown over by various types of foliage giving it this wonderful old-worldy feeling. The roads are narrow, windy and bumpy, but you get used to it after a while.

Our first stop was the Rock of Cashel. Kevin, our lovely Irish guide (you have to picture me saying that in a very convincing Irish accent), told us a whole bunch about it's historic significance, all which I no longer remember, and that was only yesterday. All I know is it looked damn cool, and was, what I considered, the first real castle we've seen so far. It was wicked cool, with turrets and towers and all. You could even see an old celtic stone cross just on the other side of the wall. We didn't have time to actually go inside, so we just stood outside and took picutres. But it was still exciting.Our next stop was the Michelstown caves, which I unfortunately don't have pictures of, owing to the fact that you aren't allowed to take pictures inside them. They were caves, really. Caves are pretty cool in themselves, but these ones had these funky staligmites formations called curtains that hung down from the ceiling. They literally look like a solid set of curtains hanging from the ceiling. They're apparently formed from the water dripping down just like staligmites, only the water runs down a little before evaporating, and forms a little curtain-type thing. There were also your regular stalactities and staligmites (apologies if I got the terms wrong, I'm not exactly a cave expert), and a bunch of smooth formations where the water was flowing down over the walls. Not an exceptional stop, but still something to see.

Next up it was Blarney Castle, which was the definition of awesome. First thing we did there was go and give the Blarney Stone a big smooch. It's notexactly as you'd expect it to be. It's attached to a part of the top of the castle that hangs over the open air for a couple hundred feet. There are bars to keep you from falling down, though. First, you get in a queue. Then when you get there, you lay down on your back while this old fellow hold onto you to make sure you don't fall. Then you grab 2 railings over your head, hang your upper body over this couple hundred foot chasm, ans stretch out to smooch a random stone on the lower part of a turret of the castle. It's very odd, but there it is. I might add that height is an advantage in this case, since the taller you are, the less hangs over the edge. April had almost all her butt hanging over the edge. If it weren't for that guy holding her, she would've been a little smear on the rocks below. So now both of us should have the gift of the gab. We'll see. Oh, and you'll be happy to know that he does, in fact, disinfect the Blarney Stone after every few people. So hopefully I won't die of any weird mouth diseases anytime soon. The picture below is of me just after smooching the Blarney Stone.
After that it was off to Killarney for the night. We were set free on the town, and April and I managed to find a place to get soup and a sandwich for relatively cheap. That night we went out and had our first and last pint of Guiness. One of the girls in our tour group described the feeling after "as though you've had a bowl of soup and a thick buiscuit". I'd have to agree. A pint would be a meal in itself. It's really bitter, too. April said the aftertaste was like cold coffee, which is exactly what I thought, though I'd also add stale in there as well. So after that we're sticking to Bulmer's. It's Irish cider, which really tastes more like the champagne form of beer than beer. It's really sweet, though, so I kept it to one pint and headed back to the hostel for the night.

The next morning it was wonderfully dreary and rainy. Everyone else complained, I was pleased as punch. I love the rain. We set off to see the coast and the islands beyond. Well, we saw the coast, but no islands. Too foggy. We made a couple of picture stops, though few of us actually got out into the rain to actually take a picture. The one below is of me at the most westerly point in Europe. Then we were back in Dingle for a quick lunch. In Dingle, April and I actually managed to find a place that served Tim Horton's coffee, tea and hot chocolate. So naturally we had to buy some. A little piece of home in a foreign land.
In Dingle there's apparently this dolphin named Funghi that likes to hang around the bay and pander to the tourists. He does tricks and all the like, and they theorize that he escaped from a zoo in Whales somewhere. Apparently he likes people more than he likes other dolphins. And he's become a tourist attraction, so they put a statue of him down by the water. Below is me riding him, Timmy's cup in hand.
From Dingle it was off up the coast to our final destination for the night, the town of Ennis. The hostel here was just renovated so it's really nice, and there's free WiFi, hence the actual decent layout of this blog. April and I went in search of a supermarket for food, and managed to find the Ennis Franciscan Friary, which was free of charge to get into today. So we went it. It's very cool inside. It's really just an old ruin, but I still find it fascinating that they let people crawl around all over the ruins here. Especially since it's so much more fun that way.

It's off for a shower and bed soon, but I'll share a little bit about my experiences in Ireland so far.
It's a really colorful country. Everything that's alive is green, and all the buildings are painted bright colors. There are tons of ruins of old buildings, and they're all fascinating to look at. The roads are, for the most part, windy and very narrow. We've had to stop the bus more than once to wait for vehicles going the other way to pass. The buildings in the towns we've been in so far are really close together, which makes it very convenient if you're on foot, since everything becomes really easy to get to. And if someone asks you how you're doing, no matter how you actually are doing, you must respond, "grand, thanks. And yerself?". I'm honestly having a little trouble not mimicking the accent when we're out. I predict it's going to get me into trouble at some point. I'm getting a little sleepy, so that's all I've got at the moment. But stay tuned for more. I'm told there is internet at all the hostels on the tour, so it shouldn't be long before you hear from me again. Cheers!