Emerald Isle

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Howdy hi!

I'm back in Dublin again after a wonderful weekend away on a Paddywagon Tour seeing some of the green Irish country side. We had a really good time, though we thought it was going to be a disaster as it poured with rain for the entire first day. On Day 1, we went to Phoenix Park (a huge Park on the outskirts of Dublin where there are wild deer roaming around!), a whiskey distillery where there was free tasting (surprisingly, I didn't have to work too hard to find someone to drink mine for me), a Bog (just as appealing as it sounds; a great big mud pool pretty much), a huge monastic setlement called Clonmacnoise, and onto Galway for the night. Galway is in the middle on a Cryptosporidium outbreak in their water supply, so we weren't able to drink the water or even use it to brush our teeth for fear of a lovely case of gastroenteritis (not a very nice way to spend the rest of the tour). The girls and I were sharing a dorm with a Spanish girl and Texan who were both on our tour and both lovely, but then we were suprised to find we were also sharing with two random guys, who spread their belongings over half the room, and who stunk, and snored, and farted in their sleep. So as you can imagine, we didn't all get the best night's sleep! Thank goodness for ear plugs!

On Saturday, we were really pleased to find out that the sun was actually shining! Yay! I actually wore my sunnies for most of the day! We did lots of scenery stuff, like visiting the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren (a big limestone landscape) and all our photos came out really well cos there was lots of blue sky and sunlight! It managed to rain while we were on the ferry across the River Shannon, though, cos being Ireland, it can't go the entire day with nice weather! That night was spent in Anascaul near the Dingle Peninsula (what a funny name!) even though we were supposed to be in Killarney, but they had overbooked the accommodation, so we were all split up in random hostels. Because we had had a crappy dorm the night before, we were lucky enough to get a B&B! Some of the others had ratty hostels, so it wasn't very fair, but ours was fabulous, so we weren't complaining! Sunday was nice weather again, and we went on a horsie ride in Kilarney and then onto Cork to kiss the Blarney stone (I have photographic evidence that i did it, and i didn't even use the alcohol wipe!) before heading back to Dublin. Overall it was a great weekend, though it was annoying that we didn' have very much time in these places, especially Cork, which had a HUGE gift shop called the Blarney Woolen Mill that spread over 3 levels and was about the size of a football field, and I only had 10 minutes to look around! That's not long enough!

Apart from our Paddy wagon Tour, we've also been on a tour of a place called Newgrange. I'm not sure if i wrote about it in my last blog, so sorry if this is old news, but it is a 5000 year old pagan tomb that is only lit with sunlight 5 days of the year for 15 minutes at a time during the winter solstice. They re-enacted the sunlight shining thru the tomb, and it was quite amazing. We've also visited every shopping centre in the city, and one outside the city in the suburbs called Dundrum. We were recommended to go there cos it's so great and huge and according to the Lonely Planet, is the largest shopping Mall in Europe. I'm not sure if it's recently shrunk, but it actually wasn't that big, maybe about 1/2 the size of Marion. Not overally impressive, but we rode the tram to get there which was cool.

This Friday we're off to Edinburgh, and I'm planning to line up Friday night at Edinburgh Castle to buy my Harry Potter book! V exciting, but none of the girls here are keen on Harry, so I'm going on my own 😞 I must say, an 8.30am release time is much more civilised than 12.01am, and I'll be thinking of you guys in nice warm Marion when I'm freezing my butt off in a line up of overly-excited paedies in cold rainy Edinburgh!

OK, i don't have much more to say! I can't believe I've only got 1 1/2 weeks to go in Dublin, it's been great fun so far and i don't want to leave! I wouldn't mind some nicer weather though...

Missing you all lots!
Bye for now,
Luv, Rik

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