Journal after5's Journal: Always pack a towel 5
We're back from Ireland, time to give a proper update.
The focus of the weekend was definitely the road trip. Dublin is an okay city, but it just didn't have our full attention. The open road though, that's where we wanted to go...
No no, since Ryan was not born 5 years sooner, making him the requisite 28 years old, we were not allowed to drive a mid-size car that would have seated 6 rather comfortably. Instead we were given a hatchback 4-door opel corsa (look it up sometime), it's about the size of a honda civic or our mazda. Yes, we fit six.
Saturday morning we drove from dublin->limerick->dingle. Essentially from one side of the country to the other. We saw two bodies of water that day. Dingle is gorgeous. A nice little fishing town that has been relegated to massive amounts of Bed and Breakfasts and such. All of which were full, and the hostels too, and hotels. Keep that in mind.
We drove out to the westernmost point and watched the sun set, it was beautiful. This is also were Mandy was running to get a picture, looked down, saw dog excrement, yelled "poop!", then promptly fell to the earth in the way that can only be described as "funny."
She ended up scraping both hands pretty well and using some handiwipes from my bag and band-aids from my wallet we were able to patch her up nicely.
(We did this in the shadow of a giant Jesus, and with her hand wounds in made for quite a sacriligious view)
So that was scenario number 2 that we had to improvise for, the first being the seating arrangements.
By this time it was around 10.30 or so. We drove from city to town to city looking for any place to stay. The hostels and hotels were all booked up, B&Bs were too, we found places that charged anywhere from 35-70 dollars per night per person. Which we found completely unacceptable. We had gone with our backup plan...sleeping in the car. We drove up to a nice hillside, parked along the road (next to a nice smelly something that attracted many gnats the next morning), and roughed it. Ryan managed to sleep around the steering wheel, John had the best arrangment in the passenger seat. Rachel, Mandy, Aneet, and I had to figure out the backseat. Since it was a hatch back, there wasn't any real trunk to use as extra space (and we had our 6 rucksakcs to deal with as well) Aneet pulled a jason and finally left the car to go sit on a mound of gravel around 4am to watch the sun rise.
we woke up and went on our way about 7am. I got about 3 hours of sleep, mostly in 20 minute chunks. At the time it wasn't funny, but I knew then that in a couple hours it would be absolutely hilarious, which it is. So it was definitely a high point of the trip.
We made the next trek up to the Cliffs of Moher (driving through Limerick, again). The Cliffs are these massive, imposing black cliffs that just plummet directly into the water below. Now, my camera battery had died the night before so I couldn't get any pictures (IT SAID 120 MINUTES LEFT! WHY SONY WHY!?). I was most displeased but Aneet took some pictures for me and that was okay.
We left there about noon and made the journey back across the width of the country to Dublin. Let me just say that Ireland is absolutely gorgeous, or as we said on the trip, "ugly!" It transgressed beyond beautiful and circled back around until it was ugly or "just tolerable." Green, everywhere. I did get plenty of pictures before my camera died, and I hope to post quite a few of them soon (especially of the car, that lime green wonder-mobile that was our home for 48 hours)
Ryan did an excellent job driving on the left side of the road, shifting with his left hand, and managing countless roundabouts.
Although he also managed to slam my hand in the door when we turned the car in. My right hand has a couple of nice bruises forming across the middle phalanges.
The plane ride back was uneventful, it was nice to have my own seat again. The bus ride back was longer than the plane ride (90 min vs 45min), and filled with noisy americans (fellow students that were debating some BS, I didn't like them, or their politics--their reasoning was bunk), fortunately, I was allowed to use my headphones and the sounds music soothed me. I would like to thank Marvelous 3, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, John Mayer, and Less than Jake for making my bus rides on this trip absolutely enjoyable. (or is that tolerable?)
We got back into oxford around 1am earlier this morning and I essentially took my long hoped for shower and went promptly to bed.
The scouts (our cleaning ladies) had a new bed spread cover for me so now i have this pastel baby blue thing, i wasn't amused. I missed the plaid thingy. And they only gave me one pillow case, meaning i'll have to go "find" another one.
Of course, these were probably the older scouts, the younger ones know the score. I'm special.
If you would excuse me, I must attend to the satiation of the hunger gods. I had the best weekend yet and hope everyone has a great day.
Two more weeks to go...and I can't wait for August 5th.
A couple of suggestions (Score:1)
Re:A couple of suggestions (Score:1)
And there was no way to fold down the backseat, it was a hatchback.
And the car was not wide enough to fit four people side by side like that. You had six engineers, we do think of almost everything.
Others on the trip had cameras, so I will scan their pictures later, that's no big issue.
And no, didn't buy you anything, sorry sister. But isn't the knowledge that I had fun and enjoyed a foreign country enough for you?
Love you sister!
Re:A couple of suggestions (Score:1)
Re:A couple of suggestions (Score:1)
Space is also an issue. And everything here is just the exact same as it is in the states, just 1.6x the price. Case in point, a CD costs 28 dollars. yeah, it's just nuts.
So i'm sorry, I'll see if I find anything that just screams "dena" to me.
good deal (Score:1)