So now we're on the West Coast of Ireland, in a TINY town called Doolin. I've spent the last couple days driving the Irish countryside in a ultra-compact Nissan Micra (A fitting name once you shoe-horn the 4 of us into it with our baggage...lol. Ah yes, there are now four of us, Jason, an old friend of Anthony's from New Mexico decided to join us for the last couple weeks of our trip in Ireland and Amsterdam. Along with Bobbi joining us in London, we now have a full carload of folks where ever we go.
So to back track a bit, I went to Scotland after visiting Joseph in Northern England. I was only in Scotland that one night and when I got there it was pouring rain. So, I didn't see much of Edinburgh at all other than our hostel and a few bars we decided to stop in, or wherever we went to eat. It sucked not to be able to see more of the city but oh well, no biggie, one out of the ton of cool European cities isn't gonna kill me. Anthony and Bobbi got some pics that I may see about posting up later from there. The one thing that happened in Scotland, was that I left my nice REI waterproof jacket downstairs in the hostel and it was nowhere to be seen after that, damnit. I didn't really need a jacket for most of this journey anyway, so oh well... less to carry.
We took a train from Edinburgh to the coast of Scotland before hopping on a ferry to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We were going to stay a night there but decided to just head on to Dublin, another two hour train south from where we were. I can't say enough about how beautiful the landscape is here in Ireland, and every bit of the UK that we traveled through. Everything is green, rocky, and livestock is in every field you look at. If it's not a pasture and it's a big green field, it's probably a soccer field. Or Irish Football in some cases. A different game that I've seen a little bit of that I think is pretty cool. It's a mix between rugby and soccer, but closer to the rules of Australian rules football for anyone who knows what that even is. There was a huge game in Dublin that would have been cool to see in real life, but it wasn't in the plans, since we had people to meet up with and beer to drink.
When we got to Dublin, we went over to the Temple Bar area of Dublin, (pretty much the place to go drink beer) and saw an 80's cover band called Delorean play on a stage about the size of my couch, which was cool. Europeans tend to love 80's and 90's music, so the place pretty much went nuts all night. The bar we were at is called the Porterhouse and they do make a bunch of their own beers, so I pretty much tried all the reds, ambers, stouts, and porters... before being shitfaced and making my way back to the hostel and passing out.
Our second day in Dublin, we met up with Jason Zenotti (sp?) from New Mexico. He's also worked in Oregon a bit, I think, so a few people may know him from work, but I'm not sure who all would. We walked around a bit that morning, did a walking tour of the center of Dublin, and then me up with Jason later on in the afternoon. Where we then ended up finding food and another pub or 3 to drink at. Another long night of drinking and we all ended up at the hostel again, nothing spectacular that night, well, nothing I can think of right now.
The following night we met up with some Intel Ireland folks that Anthony and Jason have known over the years and we hung out with them for a long time. Aiden and his g/f Shawna were a blast and could hang with my beer consumption so at one point everyone else made their way back to their hostels and we hung out for a few more hours visiting another pub after the first two we sat at all night. They had to wake up at some point so they made their way home around 2am, when I decided I needed to do my own little pub crawl and caught 4 other pubs on my way to my hostel... yay, another night of getting home and passing out only to wake up and say, "cool" when I find myself actually laying in my own bed...haha. I realize at this point that anyone reading is sure that I'm a total alcoholic, but frankly, I'm in Ireland, what do you expect? I'm sure when I get back to the states I'll have at least a day or two where I won't have any beer or wine at all... until then, I'm on vacation in Europe, so keep those judgements to yourself at this point...haha.
The next day/night we met up with some other folks from Intel Ireland, Tom and Kiera, Mike, Xavier, and I think there was someone else but the name is not coming to my mind right now. All very cool people who knew different places to check out, so imagine what happened next... We started drinking, crazy huh? haha. We went to about four different pubs, including the smallest pub in Ireland, where we were the only people there for the most part... any more and we may not have fit...haha. The night progressed like the rest in Dublin, drinking beer, telling stories, and just being happy.
The next day Tom and Kiera and their kids met up with us at Hertz where we rented a car so we could check out the west coast of Ireland. That day we picked up the car and I took the wheel of a right hand drive car in a place where everyone drives on the left side of the road. I'd be lying if I said I haven't always wanted to do that though... so we rented the car and I jumped at the chance to drive, it's a 5-speed too. It took a few minutes of getting used to shifting with my left hand and driving on the "wrong" side of the road, but after awhile I seem to have figured it out pretty well. Thankfully, because once we got out of the city, the streets turn into some of the tiniest roads I've ever seen. Luckily, I was following Tom and it was cool to have him as a sort of training wheels for when I had to drive everywhere on my own. I'm convinced I'd have crashed at some point in a roundabout because they actually drive the opposite direction in them than we do in the US... Had I been driving without him in front of me, I easily may have made the mistake to turn right instead of left into the roundabout.
They took us up to the pub called Johnnie Foxes Pub. http://jfp.ie/ It's touted as the highest pub in Ireland, and they had some amazing lamb shank that I ate because the rest of the menu was almost exclusively fish in some form or another. You could feel how old the place is while sitting there. After that we made our way to Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains to check out a cemetary before heading off towards Galway, on the west coast. Big thanks to Tom and Kiera for all the hospitality, I'll have to send you guys some pics of your kids because I got a few good ones of them after they stopped being shy towards us...lol. This was one of the more picturesque cemeteries I've been to, so hopefully some of my pics come out alright from it.
After that, we trekked across all of Ireland in our tiny little car to Galway. Home of the Galway Races. We find out we're in this town on the first night of the biggest week for this little town. The Galway Races is the largest racing event in Ireland. Comparing to what we have in America, it's their Kentucky derby. Though, as their biggest racing event, they see it as our Daytona 500 or Indy 500... so you can imagine the town was PACKED. We went to some random Irish pub that had some great live music playing and tons of people packed in. I really liked the place because I finally found a spot at the bar where I didn't have to go far to get a drink and I had a good view of at least two of the band members and some fun people dancing next to me. Good times indeed.
We woke up this morning and headed a few hours South to where I'm sitting now, in Doolin. A TINY little town next to the Cliffs of Moher. http://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/
It's a quaint little town who's only reason for being a town is probably for the tourists to have somewhere to go when they come to see the cliffs. We didn't make it up there today, well, we didn't stop at least... because it was so foggy out and it costs about 10Euro to park, and we didn't want to waste our money. So now I'm sitting here waiting for 730pm to come along so we can all head down to the pub about 70 feet away. Not sure how this night will end yet, but I know it'll be starting in about an hour...lol. I guess that's about it. I had so much stuff I'd like to have remembered to put in the blog, but I think we'll have to sit around and brainstorm so I can remember some stuff the next time I post.
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