Blogs from Ireland, Europe - page 371

Cork is boring as hell, but I must say, it gave me one of the best stories I have from the trip. The area where we are staying is a bit in the middle of nowhere part of town. This leaves us with little to do and I believe the Contiki plan is for us to get some sleep. For some this is what happened. For the rest, the night was LEGEND- wait for it- DARY. We begin with a bit of, what they call, 10 pin bowling, which was a fun way to unwind. From there we crossed the street to the hostel bar across the way. Here we proceeded to drink as much as possible again (I believe that we are all dreading the end of this trip and a return to the real ... read more

Today is a bit interesting. For starters we get to explore Dublin for an hour or so, which was very uneventful and mostly consisted of getting pre-packaged sandwiches (the Brits LOVE these things) and wandering around before being carted off for a tour of Kilmainham prison. For those unfamiliar, this is the oldest prison in Dublin and is creepy as hell. We got a quick background on the place, outside of town (originally), lots of disease, lots of kids, one of the first prisons with individual cells, that sort of thing. Then it got more specific as we were led to the main cell block. This is the room where all the prison scenes from “In the Name of the Father” were filmed. It is also where Emon DeVelera was held during some of his many ... read more

Happy Canada Day! Too bad Dublin isn't a very exciting city. I'm glad that we came here because if we hadn't I would have regretted it, but having been here I wouldn't come back. Everyone we talked to was rude and unhelpful, save for our eastern european hostel staff, and the sketchy, dirty, loud hostel really didn't make for a fun place. We went on a small bus tour and saw the Guinness brewery which was pretty cool but by the evening we were both so frustrated with Dublin, and I felt sick, so we didn't go out for Canada Day, oh well. Next year. On the 2nd we wandered around a bit, saw some more of Dublin and then caught a bus to the airport which arrived at 3:30, for our 7:15 flight. A little ... read more

So I have decided that I'm in love with Ireland!! This has been such a fabulous weekend (minus the ferry ride over here!) Okay, so I'll try and remember everything we've done the last two days.... yesterday after getting here and having some breakfast, we went to Sadie and Charley's (the people that we are staying with) and just got settled and chatted a little bit with Sadie. After that, we took the bus back into the central part of Dublin. Although the city is quite big, it is very, very different from London. People are not as dressed up and it just feels more laid back. Although they are not very nice if you accidentally run into them (I ran into a lady and was basically given the look of death!!!). When we first got ... read more

So, the coach got broken into last night. I though the stuff I bought so far had been taken, but I was lucky and only a few people had some liquor stolen. Slight delay, slight pain in the ass, but nothing so bad and we finally got on our way. We worked our way to Chester, which was a bit of a mixed bag for me. For starters, it has a really outstanding combination of old Roman, gothic, and Victorian architecture. The bad is that it really looks like it was cobbled together for the benefit of tourists only. Not awful, it was a bit like York only York had a far more authentic feel. We pretty much were here only long enough to get lunch and walk around a bit before being shuffled into the ... read more