Paddywagon...the downside to conducted tours

---

Back from my 10-day All-Ireland Paddywagon trip, and it was a bit of an up-and-down kind of affair. Unlike in Scotland, our tour bus was huge - being end of season they were combining the 3, 6 and 10 day tours together so we ended up with almost 30 people on board. Not the most condusive to getting to know people, especially when half the people you befriend end up leaving the trip a few days down the road.

Our first tour guide, Joe, was spectacularly bad. He was completely uninterested in giving us any information, herding us in and out of the bus like one of those 'follow-the-red-umbrella' tours. I later learned it was because his wife had caught him out cheating and he was having a bit of a rough time at home. And yeah it sucks that his home life was difficult, but given that he was cheating, then hey, he probably deserved it. Besides, if you're not in the right frame of mind on one of these trips then you really shouldn't be taking people on it. Which probably explains why he left us three days later to be replaced by Steve. Thankfully Steve was pretty cool though (which reminds me, Resh, we need to talk!), and stopped a bunch of people from just up and leaving the trip altogether after their experience with Joe. Unfortunately, Steve had to leave us a few days later because he was taking a bunch of rich Americans out on a Rick Steves tour as part of a tour company he and a friend had set up themselves, and was replaced with our third tour guide, Mike. Mike was okay, but kind of obnoxious at night - going after almost every girl on tour and unfortunately ending up with the most innocent of us all, a poor Israeli girl who just didn't know any better.

But all that aside, Ireland was nice, but not quite as spectacular as Scotland. The people WERE friendly though, and that's probably what I'll end up remembering Ireland for. Well. One of the things anyway.

Oh, I also broke my camera while I was out on tour so I have almost no photographs from the last few days of my trip. Which sucks not only because my insurance policy won't cover nearly enough of it, but also because to replace it here in Dublin took days of searching because apparently Irish people have never heard of the model (I have no idea why...) and when I did finally find it in perhaps the only store in Dublin to stock it, it was of course, ridiculously expensive. I guess these things happen though, think inner peace and all that, and hey, I guess at least now I've finally got my camera back...

---

Photos

Derry
Note the red, white and blue colours on the street. This is the protestant side of Derry.

Derry
The walls seperating protestent and catholic Derry have for the most part come down, but the signs and banners and slogans and tension still remains

Giant's Causeway
please excuse my wonky horizon..

Two irish policeman
who tried to chat me and the girls up

Knock
where the Virgin Mary appeared

Holy water this way
what next? Body of Christ, Isle 4?

View from Croagh Patrick
I only managed to walk about a quarter of it, but in my defence, I'm neither Christian, nor crazy, so that's okay then. Croagh Patrick is the place where the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, banished snakes from Ireland. It is now the only country in Europe that has no snakes.

like the surface of the moon
The Burren

Random sign
But how did they get the fine so exact?

Cliffs of Moher
Where I'm sitting is supposedly actually private property, but everyone walks along there anyway - it's where the best views are, afterall

Killarney National Park
I broke my camera not long after this

Beach
where the filmclip of 'Yellow' by Coldplay was filmed. Sharon kindly lent me her spare camera for the next couple of days after mine broke, until her camera also broke and she had to take it back again.

Blarney Castle
All that way but I still didn't kiss the stone, supposedly to give you the gift of the gab