I can't stress enough how wonderful it was to talk with someone who knows me, who I dont have to explain the background information before telling a story. I could spend five hundred pages talking about how college changed me (It will undoubtedly come up in the future), how I made such great friends, how unbelievable much I miss college. The night at the pub, was like a little taste of the old times. Sure there are the wild and crazy stories(I will always have those), but the stuff I really miss is crashing on the couch at the end of a long day with my housemates. Doing our makeup together before we would go out, homework at the island.
Anyway back to Ireland, hahah, no but really, back in Ireland we crashed for the night back at the hostel, but not before I was buying rounds for anyone I could find. The next day we the typically tour around Dublin and ironically the exhibit for the book of Kell's was closed that day and Kelly who lives in Galway, and has been to Dublin three times has still not seen it. And then I had another Costa Coffee, I think I like it better than.... Dare I say it? ............Starbucks... *gasp* I KNOW. Blasphemy, but there it is.
We walked around and slowly our friends left us, Aileen caught the early bus back in the morning, before we tried the book of Kells. Sam caught the afternoon bus after Costa coffee and wandering around and lunch.
Lunch was fantastic. We ate at this small bistro, located right over a vintage store, where we all tried on costumes and fantastic apparel. We spent a good hour trying on clothes before exhaustion and intense hunger got to us. There I had the most wonderful sandwich and razamataz tea. After which we wandered around the city. I am pretty sure Kell and I didn't stop talking the whole time. Maybe twice.... to breath... But we had to much to talk about! and Kell left me that night. It was tragic. I spent a good hour convincing her to stay and then convincing the bus driver that he shouldn't take my friend to Galway. (It didn't work).
We wandered around the city some more, and got thoroughly lost, as per ush. and we stumbled upon this interesting looking bar! I thought why not, we will probably meet nice locals and have a wonderful time! Wrong. We happened to find the only Irish pub is all of Dublin that was ALL Italians and ALL of them were guys. Super uncomfortable. I sat down with the girls and we just were chatting when I heard them speaking in Italian(HA I KNOW WHAT YOUR SAYING) .... Well and to be honest I wont repeat it as it wasn't very nice. After that I very intelligently still ordered a Blummers(Hard cider and sat with the girls but we left within 15 minutes. We left, and it was a bit of relief as although I am Amazon woman status, I would be no match for these guys if they tried something as they were quiet sizable. We were about a thirty minutes walk from the center, and I know I should have just left as soon as I walked in, but call me stubborn - I don't back down from a challenge(again . We had our Blummers and then we left (but not before we had to push our way out of a group of intimidatingly large men, forgot a scarf pushed our way back in, and finally back out.) phew.
 |
| Exhibit A |
 |
Wellll, remember earlier how I said the free walking tour was canceled due to the marathon? Well so was all tourist buses in the city, and the jail is pretty far. By pretty far I mean over a half an hour, without the added bonus walking time for getting lost. Plus it was raining. So by the time we got to the jail we were; soaking wet, tired, and rather grumpy. The tour of the jail was amazing, and I loved hearing all the stories of the Irish rebellion and what happened to the whippersnappers who thought that Ireland knew what was best for Ireland and not the English crown. It is a good mix between the visuals of the jail, paintings and actually feel of being in the jail and the stories our guide told us. By the time we left we made it to damp status, and there was no way I was going to walk back to town like that with two teenage girls in tow, who were probably more miserable than I was, so I hailed the first taxi I saw, even though by this point my wallet was running on empty. He was a nice man with two daughters of his own, and when I asked if he could take us the farthest ten euro could get us(as between us that was all that was left), he brought us all the way back to our hostel. Saying that he didn't want us to catch our death in the rain. Really, I mean sometime you just find amazing people in this world.
Monday rolls around and its HALLOWEEN! SO EXCITED! No really, I was very excited to be celebrating Halloween in Dublin. We met a very lovely man who told us, that he was the only Irish man we should ever trust(uhuh), the rest of the night was great and that was all there really is to say on that.
Tuesday was just as entertaining if not more so we went to the cliffs of Mohr It was truly a once in a lifetime sight, our trip coincidentally was the only sunny day Ireland had, had in three months. And it stayed sunny all day! We had one the most breathtaking views down 702 feet of pure cliff face. The views were like nothing I had ever seen. I just stood there for a minute just awestruck at the amazing sight I was looking out on. These were the landscapes that inspired poets, these were the cliffs that could make people believe in magic because they were too fantastic to no be fake. According to the people we talked with the view we got that day was one of the best ones that year, there was no fog and we had almost 100% visibility of the cliffs.
We went to a farm where we saw cows and sheep and gorgeous landscape. I was talking with the owner a man named Conner because I was interest in knowing how long his family had owned this parcel of land. He said that there had been carbon dating on bones that had been found from 1000 B.C. and they compared them to all the school children, they found a significant match meaning that almost every person who lived in that town was related in some way to those bones. So he postulated that his family had been there for a while.
Later the bus driver dropped us off with the passing line that 'no one fall off, it would hold up to tour.' and I looked down, my toes on the edge of a straight cliff face. Looking down, I just wanted to speak my arms, lean forward and fall into the ocean. Mostly because it looked fun, but I will save cliff diving for another day. Plus the water was REALLY cold. Plus well... Falling from a height of 500+ feet into ocean with an unknown depth, with unknown rocks in it is... well... stupid. But it would have been really freakin cool. Another day, from a more reasonable height.
Our trip then went to Galway, where I met up with Kelly again! We had a lovely dinner and she showed us around Galway for an hour before our bus had to leave to return us to Dublin. Of course - Ironically the girl who sits next to me is a freshman as University of Dublin who spends the. whole. trip. crying on the phone. I thought it would be rude but I really just wanted to shake her and say STOP CRYING EVERY FRESHMAN GOES THROUGH THIS. but I didn't want her to think I was intruding on her very loud conversation she was having with her mom on her cell phone. Legit though, I also found it kind of funny that - no matter what school you go to, what country your in you will at some point in your college career doubt; your major, what you want to do with your life, and if all this crap is worth it. In addition to that, it was another reminder that although I was on vacation, #freshmanyearproblems will never leave me alone.
The next day - and our last day concluded in us checking out of our hostel, and wandering around Dublin. On the way we found a piercing place and why not - we went in. We each got something pierced - my little memento of the trip, a lovely nose piercing. I really like it a lot, it almost feels like I have had it forever it fits so well on my face. We then made our way back to the airport concluding this epic adventure.
Well sort of..... All the direct flights out of Dublin had been booked so I may have booked two flights, and those flight may have been only an hour apart, and I may not have been aware that on flights through the UK one must exit security/customs and re-enter. So this begins on of the most harrowing flights of my life. It all started on our plane ride to London from Dublin. I told the girls that we would have to run to our next gate and that if we made our next flight I would but them each the largest Gelato money could buy. They did not seemed convinced - explaining that the flight out of London was the last one leaving and that we would have to sleep on the airport floor, or pay for a hotel plus pay to have our flights changed that motivated them a little more. I can't tell you how it happened but we pushed our way through security and customs and full on ran all the way around the airport to have our boarding passes stamped. Meanwhile security was laughing at the crazy Americans running around the airport. We got to the counter ---- and no one was there. After searching for five minutes we finallly found a representative and convinced her that even though our flight was scheduled to take off in an half an hour we would be able to make it to our gate on time. In her words there was "absolutely no way for us to make it as the gate itself is 20 minutes away" and she moved (in my opinion) purposely slow, she was not a nice person. As soon as I had our boarding passes in hand we started running and stripping to get back through security, of course they also took their sweet time. Anything they said they wanted to check I told them they could keep. We bolted to the gate not even putting our shoes back on and we made it just in time! --- wait---- Just in time to see a line forming. After all that panic and running and people saying we weren't making our flight they hadn't even begun boarding the plane. Gheeze. Well I guess it was better that we get there early as the alternative was missing our flight by 30 seconds. So we made it back. It was a fantastic feeling of accomplishment to just be in Florence. Back home. In my bed. Sure I didn't actually get there until 3am but still. It was my bed, in my room and I was home.
No comments:
Post a Comment