Have you ever had a good Irish stout?

My first steps in Ireland were pretty exciting. I did a lot of skipping as usual. This time it was a little more awkward because I had on a really big backpack, but you get the idea. The 4 of us without the annoying guy got there in the morning, and the other 2 were coming in that night, so we had a day of freedom, and we relished in it. Since it was Sunday and we were so close we took a taxi to Knock and went to mass there, looked around, took up a lot of room with our huge bags, etc. After Knock we took our very first bus ride, among many, to Galway. Out of all the places I have been in Ireland, Galway was my favorite. We had a nice hostel there, one actually in the city, unlike the rest of the week. The people there were also a lot of fun. I think it was mostly due to the fact that there is a rather large college there, but that was the place where I met the most people, and it was just nice there in general. I recommend Galway to any of you who wish to go the Ireland route on your next vacation.

That night we met up with the 2 other people, and from there the rest of the week was a mixture of really bad, and really good. At this point I would like to give the rest of my companions names. There's that one guy, the girl that usually stayed with him, Susie, and the 3 girls who were with me, Peggy, Martha and Rosie. Peggy really wanted to go to the Cliffs of Moher but that one guy had thought it would be a good idea to make a reservation at a hostel in Limerick, which is kind of far away, and the way the bus schedules worked out it didn't look like we were going to make it, but we tried anyway. So we went to the Cliffs, cutting out Ennis from our trip, which was one place that guy wanted to stop at, but we figured it was ok for him to make sacrifices for the greater good. The cliffs were absolutely amazing. The part that I liked the best is that if you follow the path past the sign that says "Do not go any further" the path right on the edge of the cliffs. All you need is a really strong wind and you can say goodbye to solid ground. Its not really that dangerous, just don't be afraid of heights. There was supposed to be a bus that night from the cliffs to a place called Doolin, which is not anywhere close to where we wanted to be, but that was the only bus. We waited about 40 minutes and there was no sign of the bus so we split up into groups of 2 and hitchhiked toward Limerick. Rosie and I were together. We ended up making it to Ennis and just barely catching a bus to Limerick. Martha and Peggy went together, they made it to about 10 miles outside of Ennis. That guy and Susie were the last of the groups to leave, and they ended up catching the bus that came about an hour late. That was ok though because in foresight of such a situation occuring we had made plans to meet in Dingle the following day.

Dingle is a cute little fishing village in the Southwest of Ireland. I tried to provide pictures but the computers here don't do things like that. Dingle is very small, and we were there on a weeknight, so not a lot of people were out. We ended up at a pub with live music, and at one point a man came in and said he was looking for flowers, because someone had bet him that he couldn't find flowers at that time of night in Dingle. He ended up finding flowers, and he said that he didn't remember who he was supposed to get them for, so he gave them to me. Unfortunatly I had to leave them behind, but I did save a couple of the flowers. Dingle had a little stream in it too, and I wanted to see how deep it was, so I tried to measure it with an orange cone, but those things are a lot heavier than I thought they were, so I have no idea how deep it was. There's a dolphin that lives in the bay of Dingle, and they don't know why its there, or how it got there. We went out to the bay the next morning to see if he was around, but apparently he doesn't come that close to shore. There is a bronze statue of him in the bay though; his name is Fungi. Dingle is also the place where a while ago, I'm not sure of the exact amount of time, a Polish tourist got swept into the ocean by a wave and they still haven't found him. Just a little tabloids in case you were interested.

I forgot to mention before but in England some people on the street gave us some free English tabloids. Those turned out to be very handy on the long bus rides, or waits for buses we had to sit through. After Dingle we split with that one guy because he wanted to go a different way, and the 5 of us remaining went to Cork, and to Blarney. Cork was my third favorite place that we went to. At Blarney we went to the castle and we all kissed the stone. I could feel the masses of germs on my lips after I'd kissed the stone, and I brushed my teeth for at least 10 minutes afterwards. The Blarney castle is interesting though because there's a whole estate attached to the castle with gardens, and a pond. I don't know the exact history of any of it but there are certain places like wishing steps that you're supposed to walk down backwards with your eyes closed to get your wish granted, and there's a witches' kitchen, and a druid's circle, and other fun things like that. Cork was the place that had buy one get one free on Coors. They were probably just trying to get rid of it because no one wanted it. It was like drinking soda.

The next morning we went to Kilkenny which turned out to be really boring, so we didn't stay there and went to Dublin. Dublin looks exactly like Boston. I felt like I had gone home, except there seemed to be a lot of Russians there, and I don't remember there being a large amount of Russians in Boston. We went out that night but nothing fun really happened, I think it had something to do with the fact that that one guy was there, and his company is awkward. Its not really something he can help, he is just awkward in pubs. The next day we went to Trinity college and a couple of us went in to see the book of Cells. That was pretty amazing. Upstairs there is a giant library with a lot first print books on display. There are also busts of famous people in 2 rows down the length of the library. I was impressed that I acutally knew who most of them were. They had a bunch of famous philosopher, like Socrates and Aristotle, of course, and some scientists like Bacon. It was nice. We also went to a library where the largest collection of Asian artifacts is. At that place they had a rule where we had to check our bags. I don't think they had ever seen people so excited about that rule. We thanked them. And of course we went to the Guiness Museum. We didn't actually take the tour, but we went inside and looked at the gift shop. After that we sat around for a while, and once we decided that there was no good place to stay in the city we hopped on a bus and went to the airport to sleep for the night.

Did you know at the Dublin airport they wake you up at 4 in the morning because supposedly the airport is about to get busy. This was a little counter productive on their part because we were sleeping in a far little corner of the airport where no one was, or ever came near, and when the lady came around and told us that we had to get up, all we did was move to the seats where people wait for their flight to show up on the screen and fall asleep. So really all they did was make us get up to get out of people's way, so that we could move to get in people's way. I didn't care, the seats ended up being more comfortable than the floor I had been sleeping on.

Our flight took us as far as Salzburg, and we ended up missing the last train that goes all the way to Keinberg, but we really wanted to get back that night. We went for the option to get as close and physically possible by train and hitchhike the rest of the way, just like we had done before. The closest station to Keinberg as far as we knew was Ybbs, so we got our tickets, and when we got to Ybbs we went to get off, but on the trains the doors do not open by themselves, and that ony guy had only been on the trains once before, and he was in front, and would not give up the front of the door to anyone else, and since he did not know to open the door, or listen to the rest of us yelling at him to open the door, we ended up in Pöchlarn. Susie, that one guy, Rosie and I made it back to the Kartauseville that night. Peggy and Martha again had bad luck and ended up spending the night in Pöchlarn, which is apparently very creepy by night.

And that was my trip to Ireland. There was a lot more than happened in between the lines, you'll probably hear about that when I show you my pictures, if that ever happens. If not then just know that I had a very good time, and I want to go back there as well, just not as soon as I want to go back to London.