It's been a week since my last post so this one is going to be huuuuuuuuge. I spent the first three days of last week at the pharmacy in Dundrum again. Tuesday night I finally got all of my ingredients for pumpkin cake and made it (while converting from cups and ounces to grams and mls in my head) and discovered that the oven here wasn't really working, so it ended up getting put in the fridge overnight. Teresa put it in the oven the next morning and then it started to work so I was able to take it to work on Wednesday. Everyone loved it! I think they were all very surprised by the taste since no one really knew what to expect from pumpkin cake. All in all it was a nice way to enjoy a piece of Thanksgiving and share with new Irish friends.


So. Thursday morning I got up at 5 to get ready for my 3 day tour of the "Ring of Kerry". The Ring of Kerry is a tourist trail that follows a circular road in County Kerry and hits a lot of attractions. My tour wasn't officially following the road the whole time but hit all of the highlights as well as a few others nearby. I arrived in the City Centre around 6:30 am and got on the bus at about half seven (7:30 for Americans). The first part of the tour was pretty boring and slow because it was just driving out west, and the bus driver had to go back at one point because he forgot to pick up a few people. Around 10ish we stopped at a gas station to get breakfast and I found out that I was moving to another bus with two other people (James and Alex, who I met later). We got on to the other bus that was pretty full and everyone seemed to know each other, so I wasn't sure if I was the only one traveling alone. I sat next to Ciaran, a nice guy from Australia, and learned that everyone on the bus (except for me, James and Alex, plus a few others doing a 4-day tour) had been doing a 6-day tour of all of Ireland and we just kinda showed up in the middle. The nice thing was that even though everyone else kind of knew each other, there were still about 5-6 of us who were traveling alone and the entire bus was very friendly and welcoming. Our first photo stop was at Corcomroe Abbey and I met Holly, Lana, and Harry there. We went next to the "mini" Cliffs of Moher. Very cool to see but cold, wet, and windy so just a sign of things to come at the real Cliffs.


Lunch was in Doolin, a cute little town, and they were serving a Thanksgiving dinner that was pretty good, plus a free cup of mulled wine that helped me warm up. We piled back into the bus and headed for the Cliffs of Moher (or Cliffs of Insanity, as you might know from the Princess Bride). John, our hilarious and great driver/tour guide, warned us on the way that he heard it was ESPECIALLY windy today at the Cliffs and very rainy. As we pulled up to the visitors center (hidden half underground in the sides of the hills around the Cliffs), we could see a ton of people walking back to buses and cars away from the Cliffs and John told us they had to close them due to the extreme weather conditions. This being my first main experience with John's sense of humor, I turned to Ciaran and said "Well, that sucks" - and then looked like an idiot when John said just kidding and pulled into another parking lot.  In a way, I could have totally understood why the Cliffs would have been closed - because the weather was INSANE. The rain felt like hail, I couldn't even move at times because the wind was so strong, and I couldn't see out of my right eye because my contact had blown into the very corner and then the wind dried up all my tears so I couldn't move it back until I got inside and dried off. Yikes. The pictures and view was still pretty spectacular but it would have been amazing on a clear, sunny day. Oh well, I'm in Ireland, not Bermuda. 


After the Cliffs we headed to Bunratty Castle - although we didn't go in, we just grabbed some food, did a little touristy shopping, and moved on. I did get to sample the Bunratty Meade though and mmmmmmmmm so delicious. It was like honey turned into alcohol. There is a legend about meade (like everything here) and it basically says that meade was popular at weddings and the bride and groom were often given special goblets to toast each other with as well as enough meade to last a full lunar cycle or about one month- which is where the word "honeymoon" comes from. The Irish also say it has special virility and fertility powers and any baby born 9 months after a wedding was attributed to the meade. Either way, yummy and I'm going to try and bring some home for sure. I've been reading up on it and apparently some mead is directly made from fermented honey ("authentic") and other meade/mead is just wine flavored with honey, so I may have to do some more investigating. We drove past the town of Limerick and John asked everyone on the bus to make up a limerick: there were some pretty clever ones (an Australian themed one about riding on the paddywagon, hearing a Sheila gaggin, saw some people shaggin haha) - mine was: 


There once was a good man named Paddy
Drank Guinness since he was a laddy
He puked in a pail
His liver did fail
And that was the end of poor Paddy.


John liked it but the girl who was reading them pronounced "puked" as "pucked" (I dunno what she was thinking) so it didn't come out quite right. Oh well.




Thursday night we got to our hostel, connected to a pub named The Randy Leprechaun, and settled into our rooms. I was lucky to be in a 6 bed room with Holly, Lana, Harry, Sophie, and Jillian. At this point I had met most of them and found out that Holly, Lana, and Jillian are from Australia - Jillian is traveling on her own and has been for about 2 months. Holly and Lana are sisters (I think, they looked so much alike) and Lana is getting married in Canada in December. Harry is from Pakistan and is a doctor in Castle Bar in County Mayo. Sophie is from Melbourne, Australia and is doing her pharmacy degree there! So we were pretty much buddies for most of the next three days since we had a lot to talk about. She is originally from Hong Kong so I had another slightly unusual accent combination of Asian+Australian but we made it work. Sophie and Harry had an odd love-hate relationship the whole trip - both of them have significant others but they kind of bonded and then would fight and argue about dumb things like an old married couple so everyone always referred to them as such. At dinner I talked with Erin and Sue (Sue was Erin's mom), Australian as well but Erin is living in the UK right now. Sophie and I split a three course meal at the pub that was pretty good and I got some Guinness and Bulmer's, a delicious hard cider that most of the girls were drinking. 


We had karaoke that night and it was pretty awesome. I found out that Thin Lizzy (aka "Tin" Lizzy in Irish) did the first rock version of the old Irish ballad Whiskey in the Jar before Metallica did. Two Americans from Minnesota (Dani and Missy I think) sang Sweet Caroline so naturally I screamed LET'S GO PITT at the appropriate spots. Sweet Child o' Mine, Say My Name, Ring of Fire, Timewarp, 500 Miles, and New York, New York were some of the best songs of the evening. Oh and Galway Girl, another Irish song that everyone on the bus learned thanks to John. I sang Dancing Queen with Sophie, Erin and Harry and then got up by myself to sing Don't Stop Me Now by Queen because no one else wanted to sing it. Sophie and Erin came up to join me after I said that and I think we did a decent job. Everyone went to sleep pretty early that night, around midnight, and geared up for a busy Friday.


We left the hostel at 9am and headed out for the edge of the Dingle Peninsula and the little town of Dingle. We drove out on the Slea Head road - a small road that winds around the edges of the mountains/cliffs so the bus barely made it through a few of the turns but the weather was FANTASTIC and made the whole area just absolutely beautiful. After the Cliffs the day before and the crappy weather, it was really stunning. The peninsula is the most western part of Europe so I felt a little closer to home for sure. On the way back to Dingle after seeing the beach I saw my first Irish rainbow but it was on the other side of the bus so I didn't get a picture - I have a feeling there might be another one I'll catch before I leave. We ate lunch in Dingle and then stopped at an ancient oratory on the way to Killarney for the evening. John got all excited because he saw a place called "Kate's Cross" and announced over the speakers in the bus that we would stop just so I could take a photo, which was odd since I had no idea it even existed, but there was a line of traffic when we got there so we couldn't stop and John kept apologizing. Some of the people went horseback riding once we got to Killarney but most of us opted to take the horse and cart ride instead through Killarney National Park. It was pretty cold but we got to see Ross Castle and that was awesome. Also, the driver told us that girls often get Guinness with a splash of blackcurrant syrup (they freaking love that flavor!) and it takes away the bitterness so I tried it at dinner and it was delicious! It doesn't make it taste sweet but honestly just gets rid of the hoppy aftertaste so even though I like Guinness I got it with blackcurrant for a few drinks that night. 


We had a huge dinner in Killarney (very cute town) and John announced that since Lana was getting married soon, we would be having her hen party tonight (bachelorette party). Her friends had bought her a veil and sash plus a skirt and knee high socks to wear and she got to serve us some drinks from behind the bar when we got to the pub/night club we went to that evening. There was traditional Irish music for the first hour or so in the main pub area (night club was in the back and a few of us decided it was lame and stayed in the pub). Live music by a cover band called The Seducers was great for the next 2 hours or so. They took requests and did a really good job and even got Lana up on stage to sing as well. The weird part was that their lead guitarist looked a lot like a Beatle....I noticed it and then a few minutes later Eileen (American from Syracuse/Baltimore) leaned over to me and said "Is it just me or does he look like a Beatle?" so I said "Paul McCartney for sure" -- then about twenty minutes later we found out his name was actually Paul, which was really odd and we didn't quite believe it. They replayed Don't Stop Me Now so naturally I got very excited but even after the band was done the DJ did a decent job. Most of us didn't leave the pub until 3am when it closed - had to be back at the hostel by 4am - and then got up at about 8:30 the next morning. I fell asleep around 5am so was a little tired for Saturday. 


Okay so Saturday, last day! Thanks to anyone still reading this crap. A few of the travellers were very hungover and/or still drunk for breakfast but thankfully I only had 2-3 beers and my only problem was lack of sleep. We drove through a very cute town called Macroom and I grabbed food at Lynch's Bakery! Yum. Then onward to Blarney Castle - very cool to see and obviously loved kissing the Blarney Stone. Only the Irish would come up with a way to literally get tourists to bend over backwards for some dumb rock, but naturally I had to do it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The old man who held you as you leaned over the open space was pretty cool too. We didn't have a whole lot of time for sightseeing because the drive back to Dublin was about 3 hours long and we had to push it to make it in time before the Guinness Storehouse closed. It was definitely a cool place to see and the design of the whole thing to be enclosed in glass in the middle in the shape of a giant pint glass was awesome, but I stuck with Eileen and Sarah and we basically booked it to the top level, the Gravity Bar, to enjoy our free pint without being rushed. Plus I think I might go again when Carolyn visits so I might take my time then. The Gravity Bar area is really cool because it's all glass windows and gives you a 360 degree view of the city (made easier by the fact that buildings have height restrictions in Dublin). It will probably be better to see in the daylight but the lights everywhere were very cool.


Then, back to Suffolk St to the Tourist Office by Trinity College, to Grafton Street by the shops, to St. Stephen's Green and the Luas, to Dundrum and then 15 minute walk home to Churchtown. An amazing, exhausting, unbelievable 3 days and I can't wait to do another Paddy Wagon tour.