Ireland!

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Finally found out why part of Ireland is with the UK and the other part is with the EU...apparently a long time ago with the IRA (Irish Republican Army) wanted to break completely away from the UK, but the UK would only agree if they got to keep 6 provinces...so... there ya have it!

Picking up from Wales... I took the megabus from Cardiff to London, but the megabus had broken down, so I had to take a metro (around town sort of bus) to London! Luckily no one sa next to me so it wasn't that uncomfortable. I arrived in London at 6:30pm and I was so tired so I took a 2 hour nap and then wandered around to get some food. I ate at this Aussie cafe and had an Aussie meat pie!! Weird to have that while in London, but.... made me think of Australia!! Since I had a tour early in the morning, I thought I'd make a quiet night of it. I ended up just going back to the hostel and took a shower and did some laundry. There were 2 Aussies in my room that were staying in as well and I ended up talking to them for awhile until we all went to bed at 11:30. The next morning I made my way to the place for my tour. I left really early which turned out great because my hostel was *not* in fact right by the pickup place and I got a little lost. I made it alright onto the bus!

I was a little sad because it was mostly a full bus, and there were only 2 open seats...one of them next to me. So I was a little sad because that meant everyone would have one friend andI wouldn't have any 😞 Luckily 2 girls were late and I did get someone to talk to and she turned out awesome. She had a sister who also made a friend...and that comes important about an hour later. An hour later we made our first stop at a servo station to get food/drinks/gas...etc....and the news that our bus's suspension was b-r-o-k-e-n. Yea, that's right. So we had to stay at this service station for 3 hours waiting for a new bus to come and get us. This actually turned out ok because it kind of forced us to all talk to each other. I was one of the first people back to the bus because I didn't buy any food and I talked to this British guy (who also becomes important later) and that's when we found out about the bus situation. So we walked back to the servo and I saw Brooke (my seat buddy) and I sat with him, her, her sister, and her sister's seat buddy, a Canadian named Marco. We thought the British guy was a little bit creepy and WHOA were we right...more on that later.

So we finally all got back on the bus, and our tour guide was amazing. Oh, and by bus I don't mean the yellow bus we were supposed to be on, a different, bus. We had to switch buses everyday~ But back to the guide, he had an adorable accent, was really funny and quick on his feet. You never really know how much the tour guides just memorize things to use on all their tours, but he was able to keep us all laughing and smiling despite the circumstances. Our first stop was Stonehenge. It was SO cold. I think I even saw some snow? This was when I found out my digital camera was stuck in the "take pictures" mode instead of take pictures mode. Fabulous. Luckily I still had my video camera so I took videos~ I was keeping my camera in my hoodie pouch along with a tshirt that said "Everything I learned was from the Druids" to wear in front of Stonehenge, so I had a nice little muff in my pocket to keep my hands warm. And I had headphones from my ipod that I plugged into my audio guide which kept my hands out of the wind whenever I wasn't taking pictures. I was the only one who had that and everyone's hands were frozen once we got on the bus. Yay me~ Stonehenge itself was a lot smaller than I was expecting, but it was still immensely impressive. The audioguide was really informative too, and I can't wait to put it all into my movie~ -There aren't any exclamation points or parentheses...weird, so ~ is exclamation and - is parantheses-. I'm not going to put everywhere we stopped, mostly because it is written down upstairs, but also cuz I wanna go see Dublin~ We slept in Newquay for two nights which was excellent sorts of fun, saw Land's End, and lots of circles of stones. One is so large that it even has a village situated inside of it~ That's in Avesbury. I saw the Isle of Avalon...which is now just a hill... no more water~ It took quite awhile to walk up it and it also had a fountain of youth sort of spring. The guide explained that if you drink it a lot it turns you crazy, because there certainly were a lot of weird people. Not 5 mins after we got off the bus some guy yelled "GOD DAMN IT" at us and we looked at him in surprise and he finished with "have a good time"....ooooo...kkkkkk.

We stayed in Bath the 3rd night and that was pretty cool. Took a tour of the Roman Baths in the morning which were amazing. The Romans were so far ahead of their time, it is crazy! ok, so exclamation marks work again! !But not a lot, you can apparently only do one. Parantheses? ) YAY!

Uhmmm.....Well, yea the Cornwall Crusader with Radical travel Haggis Adventure group was PHENOMENAL~~ Fabulous places, fabulous tour guide, fabulous trip. I recommend Gary...he's the best guide I've ever had.

I got back to London at about 6 pm and immediately made my way to the airport. Even though I figured out how to take pictures with my video camera, they weren't as good of pictures as a digi cam, so I went to Duty Free to buy one, but they weren't so great and super expensive....ah well. I landed in Dublin and went straight to my hostel and went to bed. Turns out everyone in my room was on the trip as well as 2 Canadians on the Cornwall tour. I tried not to expect too much outta this tour because Cornwall was so great...and it wasn't as good. The tour guide was pretty good, but the people on the bus weren't as cool. Plus, we didn't have as many stops and the stops weren't as cool. However the Irish people are exceptionally nice. When I was dropped off by the airport bus and was going to my hostel, some local people invited me out with them, but I declined...and then our first night on tour in Doolin, I was walking int he pub and some guys complimented my hat and talked to me for a bit until I went back to the group....and then our second night in Killarney, I left the bars to go home and other guys were talking to me and I went to a bar with them but then decided to go home again cuz I was a little tired...and then a girl asked me directions and I told her I was from America and had no idea, so then she invited me out as well so I did go with her. So friendly!

Got back from the tour last night and thought I would have a nap at 8 before going to mingle...which then I didn't wake up from until 5 o'clock in the morning...so then I just slept some more, got on the internet and watched some TV and had some lunch. Now here I am finishing up before I go to the Guinness Brewery!! Tomorrow I'm off to Paris where I'm meeting up with Tobias...I haven't seen that boy in like 7 years... I'm SO excited. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's my ex-bf from high school who's from Denmark, but he moved back to Denmark while we were still dating. YAY I'M EXCITED!!!

Ok, off to go oot n aboot (lol, Canadians) and I'll see y'all around!

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