The day I almost saw a plane fly into a ferris wheel...aka Airshow in Bray

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Let me just begin by saying that I am no good at coming up with super creative blog names. I noticed that many other bloggers on the web have the most creative, interesting, mysterious, draw-you-in blog entry titles that always put mine to shame. So, in order to try and fit in with all the cool bloggers I changed this entry from 'Airshow weekend in Bray' to something about a plane flying into a ferris wheel. Pretty sick huh?I mostly do this so I can have more interesting blogs for yourself to read, and realize that it is slightly immature and corney but I do it all for your literary enjoyment. You can try it too. When thinking about writing about something that happened, instead of just writing what you did, try discussing the main event or something shocking that happened or went through your mind while you traveled there. I will cite some examples here for your reference:

My (or boring) blogger's entry title: 'Our trip to Scotland'

Creative blogger's entry title: 'walking down the royal mile with bagpipes and a kilt (with no underwear!)

Boring entry: 'A fun weekend'

Exciting entry: 'The time I made out with a Polish transsexual named Aleksander who I met while on a train that I slept walked onto going from Kiev to Prague!'

You get the idea. It may require lying, or over sharing, but it's all in the name of pleasing your reader. Enough 'blog entry title naming 101' from Emily, and on to the fun stuff.


Bray is a smaller town just south of Dublin and you can get there by rail. Facts about Bray according to what I picked up as well as what I could find on wikipedia(how classy): It's where porterhouse originated, it is the 4th largest town in Ireland aside from the 5 main cities, james joyce lived there briefly during childhood, a lot of dubliners spend weekends there, and Braveheart was shot near by.

We took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit, kinda like BART, only Dooblin) there...which I had previously always confused with the LUAS, another rail that just takes you from one end of town to the other.

I met up with my friend Des and his friend Joe at Temple Bar in the city for a chocolate festival (yeah i know, a chocolate festival!!! only in Ireland) that was REALLY crowded so we left pretty quickly. Temple Bar is the most touristy district of the city...there are a ton of bars and restaurants and in the summer there are festivals and open markets and stuff on the street. People of all types go to Temple Bar I think. It does attract a lot of tourists but Irish people go there too. I don't really like to go out to the bars there a lot, especially since I've been introduced to more local places and Temple bar area is always jammed, but the good thing about it is it offers pubs that play LIVE irish music--which is great because a lot of pubs play justin timberlake and britney which may make you feel as though you are in the United States.

The characters in this story include: Des Delaney, Joe (no last name), and Emily Castle. Quite a group if you ask me. Des is my friend from Dublin, a northsider too. His name is actually short for Desmond...a Dublin name. At first I pronounced it as though it rhymed with the word 'less', but it's actually pronounced more like...Dez, with ah "Z". Joe is his friend, didn't catch his last name so i will call him Joe No Last name. He was from Mayo (in the west of ireland). I just met Joe through Des who knows joe from back when they were studying at DCU together...political science guys. I guess you could say we have some stuff in common, but we didn't talk politics, for the most part. Then there was me, from Plymouth, MI, USA and although my name is emily i was sometimes referred to as the 'american girl'. That's what i was called when i was listening...who knows what my name was when i wasn't! HAha.

Des bought some chocolate but I didn't...mostly because I am 150% broke, outta cash, outta luck really. One of the pieces of wisdom I'll be bringing home from Ireland is that money is the most important thing in the world. I will cheat, steal, work hard (imagine that) in order to make sure that I don't struggle with paying bills for the rest of my life. Being poor really blows, and I've sort of gotten over the whole, 'I just want to make enough to get by' attitute. Screw that, I'm selfish. And this all sounds horrible, I realize, but I'm kind of a terrible person. I'm also partially kidding and being sarcastic, and would be glad to elaborate on this in greater depth at a later time with you. If you know anything about me wealth is a subject I can talk a lot about because I have a love/hate/very complicated relationship with money.

Bray was great. There was an airshow going on...so when we first got there we stopped for a pint and hung out and watched the planes almost fly into the ferris wheel (seemingly). Then joe and des decided to go on this monstrously scary carnival ride that looked like it would kill me so i stayed behind while they decided to pay the 3 euro for mild entertainment and the chance of dying...heh. I'm a bit of a chicken when it comes to rollercoasters...and im pretty sure all my family members would say this is a VAST understatement. What can I say? id rather go on fun rides that don't give me partial heart attacks.

We returned home that evening after more pints and delicious food. Yay for fun days...

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