The next day in Dublin brought the exploration of the Guinness Factory (a must see) and more walking around the city. I can't say I've ever been more educated about beer than at the Guinness Factory tour! (What do you want to know about? Hops? Water? Barley? I can remember it all). To top it all off they gave us a pint of Guinness at the 'Gravity Bar' which has a 360 degree view of the city. After drinking half of our glasses the 'proper' way, I challenged Rosie to a 'chug it' contest. And hell yeah, I won. Sometimes I impress myself with how dainty I am.
That night we ended up going out with the two Spanish guys in our hostel (you know, the ones who brushed their teeth really loud) who were studying in France and were switching between English, Spanish, and French all night. Luckily I don't know any Spanish (besides "tapas") or French ( besides "Omelette du Fromage") so it didn't get confusing. The guys (ironically named "Esteban" and "Nacho"...yes, "Nacho", I didn't believe him at first either) met some of their french friends at the bar we went to. The French guy (ironically named "stuck up jerk"...go figure) wanted to pick a fight with me about American Politics so I definitely gave him a piece of my mind. He was so snooty it was almost unbelievable! His little brother was nice, but that's probably because he was only 17 and was just happy he could sneak into a bar. Oh yeah- what's up with the legal drinking age being 18? Rosie and I got carded everywhere we went, but it was definitely satisfying to prove to people that we WERE over 18, even if we don't apparently look like it.
After a few beers with the guys I got a call from one of the people from our program in Florence. There was a group who was flying to Egypt but were in Dublin for a few days; Rosie then made the decision that we were leaving our newly acquired friends to go meet the CSU kids at another bar. How exciting. Who wouldn't want to hang out with people we see everyday over some losers with stories about France and Spain??
But ANYWAY we met them at a bar and we did have fun. I talked with Augie the entire time while Rosie tried to flirt with Irish men. After the bar, (and after a stop for some bomb ass chili cheese fries) Augie walked us home so we could get a few hours of sleep- and then it was off to Cork!
The bus station we left out of was right down the street from our hostel; so we only had to brave the wind and the rain for a few minutes before we got to sit on a warm bus. The rain stopped pretty soon after we left and it was nothing but beautiful views of the countryside for 4 hours! Once we got to Cork we hiked up a damn mountain to get to our hostel (okay, not really a mountain but I could definitely feel my butt when we got to the top of the hill) and dropped off our stuff because we couldn't check in still for another couple hours. Then it was off to the Blarney Stone!!! A mere 10 euro later and I was hanging upside down with some random guy holding my legs (so I wouldn't plummet 13 stories to the ground). What a rush! Definitely one of the highlights of my trip, although I'm not really sure the gift of gab has kicked in yet. Maybe I already had it and that's why I'm not noticing any change! Hey, Emily's parents did call me "very charming." (ha).
After the Blarney stone we took a bus back to Cork and checked into our hostel. After fumbling with our door for a bit we stepped into our room, only to find.....KEVIN! (Another kid from our program). Although he was going to Egypt with the rest of them, he decided to stay in Galway for a day and then head to Cork. Same town, same hostel, same room! It's definitely a small world. So, the newly formed Three Musketeers braved the torrential downpour and the cold to walk around in Cork. We covered a lot of ground, saw a lot of things, until it started to rain a bit too much for our taste and we took refuge in an old Gothic Cathedral. When we stepped up to the front doors to go inside, two irish guys kindly informed us that the church was closed to visitors as the afternoon Easter Mass was just starting. All three of us took one look at the rain and I asked if it would be okay if we sat through the mass (not wanting to get any wetter than we already were) to which he replied, in an extremely Irish accent, "Far be it from the Church of Ireland to prevent the lady from goin' to 'er mass." Thanks, Irish guy. I like you too.
An adorable little round nun who reminded me of Fionnula Flanagan (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001217) but way fatter and way cuter gave us our bibles and song books and we were stuck in the Church for an hour and a half. It wasn't so bad- all three of us were raised Catholic so we knew the deal with the whole standing/sitting/kneeling thing. We didn't get free crackers and wine though, which is what we were looking forward to. What a jip! After the service it had stopped raining, so we went back to the hostel to get cleaned up and then went out for a real dinner (no bag o' soup that night!) at a real restaurant. Then Kevin went to bed (he had a 6 am flight to Amsterdam the next day) while Rosie and I hit up the bars. The first few we went to were jam packed with old people but we eventually found one with live music and cheap pints. We talked to some Irish guys for a few hours who were absolutely HILARIOUS- not to mention one of them loved the American version of "The Office" so we had LOTS to talk about. They also taught us how to drink Guinness the "real" way- none of this "sipping stuff" he told us. "You've got to chug it! Like a man!" Thanks for the tip! All in all it turned out to pretty much be my favorite Easter yet, even if we didn't get to hunt for easter eggs. You know you're an adult when you get beer instead of candy!
We listened to the bar music for a while (and sang loudly along to The Kooks song the guy played), and afterwards left to go to bed. We had an early bus to Galway in the morning that we wanted to be sure we caught- I think Galway was the part in the trip that both Rosie and I were really waiting for.
So, we did just that- made sure our stuff was packed before we went to bed, tried to sleep through the incredible amount of extremely drunk people coming in and out of our room, and attempted to ignore the guy singing the Titanic song down the hall at the top of his lungs. (Out of all the songs he had to choose from? Really?) And the next morning we were off bright and early!
At the bus station we ran into a bit of a dilemma- Rosie only had a 50 euro bill and since it was a bank holiday on Monday there was no one at the ticket desk. Before we left our hostel we asked the guy at the front desk if we could buy tickets on the bus, to which he replied with a reassuring "Of course you can!" But, when we got to the bus station, the bus driver rudely informed us that we were "wrong" and had to buy tickets inside. The only place people could buy tickets was from the machine inside of the station.....which had a big sign above that said it did not accept 50's. Since I was running low on cash myself, I didn't have enough for my own ticket and to spot Rosie for hers, so we went back to the bus driver to ask if he had change for a 50. He asked us if he looked like he worked at a bank, because he didn't, he was a bus driver. I decided to let his comment bounce off because I really didn't feel like fighting with a bus driver, when an old Irish couple came to our rescue. The old lady marched right up to the bus driver and told him that was a "smart" comment he just made to "these young ladies." The bus driver said something else that was pretty rude, and she went off on him (in a composed, matter of fact way....there wasn't a WWF smackdown or anything, which, actually might have been awesome) and told him that we were tourists in their country, and it was important to show to us that the Irish are nice people and that the country is a nice country. She then told him that it definitely wasn't our fault that the bus station didn't take 50's ("This is a bus station! You should of course have a change machine!") and then I think the bus driver must have pushed an alarm button or something on the bus because his supervisor came rushing out of the building. The guy didn't exactly apologize but he took Rosie's 50 as well as another woman's 50 and told them that he'd get change...he came back with the one woman's ticket and her money but he told Rosie that he didn't have enough change for her. "Sorry." He then turned away from us like he was going to go back into his office, and I got his attention with an "Excuse me, then what do you propose we do?" He shrugged his shoulders and gave us a blank stare, until the nice lady who had gotten change pulled her and her mother's wallets out so they could give Rosie 20's and a 10 for her 50. Sheesh! We both unanimously agreed afterwards that we both hate 50 euro bills.
(Is anyone still reading this far down?)
But after that little excursion we got to Galway without a hitch, checked into our hostel, and walked around the city. To make a long story short, Kevin had warned us the previous night not to get room number 5 as there was a sketchy bag lady who lived there. We requested not to get room number 5, so the guy moved us to room number 4, which wasn't much better. Instead of a sketchy bag lady we had a sketchy old man, who was apparently very fond of walking around in his tighty-whities and rubbing cream all over his legs. Yeah, it definitely was even more gross than it sounds. There was also a really weird chinese girl who wouldn't talk to anyone but me, and chose to do so when I was trying to read my book (which was getting really good, by the way) in our hostel room. She reminded me of the asian girl from "knocked up"- super awkward, said really weird things, and asked me extremely random questions (like, "am I silly?" and "do you find that people don't understand you?" and, "do you want to go get an apple with me?") WTF.
We also met some nice people too, and the hostel was clean and had a really nice common area. We talked to some Irish guys and two Canadians. Eric and ...that other guy. They asked us to go out with them our first night there, but I was super tired and Rosie didn't want to go out by herself so we just called it a night. After an extremely noisy night in the hostel (apparently our room was directly over a night club, and the old man had a super bad cough which made me think he wasn't going to wake up in the morning) we asked to switch to a different room. They ended up accidentally overbooking the room they switched us to, so we got upgraded to a four person room. We walked in and- surprise!- there were the Canadian guys who had gotten switched too. That day we ended up going to the Cliffs of Moher- it was an absolutely beautiful day and the bus ride was amazing (the hills were SO GREEN!) and our bus driver even sang us an Irish jig on the way home over the loud speaker. We stopped at castles and other ruins on our way to the Cliffs so we got to see a lot of stuff for the small 7.50 we paid for the tour (which included the bus ride, by the way. Who says I can't penny pinch??) After the tour we went out to dinner in Galway where we sat next to a couple having the most awkward first date EVER. It was an American girl and an Irish guy...she was going on about how she didn't believe in living with someone before she's married, and how it's so sad to see her little sister drinking at 16 because "she doesn't waste her time with smoking and drinking and all that other shit." wowzaaa talk about a stick up you know where. I think it wasn't the fact that she didn't drink or smoke that made things awkward, it was the fact that she was so super intense about everything. After she said that the Irish guy took a big swig of his beer and just sighed. Lighten up, lady!
We went back to our hostel room, and ended up teaching the Canadians how to play Kings Cup (Rosie and I didn't really remember all the rules, because we're so used to just following other people's lead). But we made them up as we went along, and all in all it was an extremely successful game (especially since we didn't have to pay for any of the beer involved). They took us out to a bar afterwards where the one guy actually agreed to karaoke with me (to a Queen song even!). Last call at the bar was at 2, so we went to a club afterwards where we sat on the upstairs balcony and watched people (try) to dance downstairs. After a while we all got tired and turned into bed. The next day we made it back to Dublin Airport to catch our flight home to Pisa. After getting in at midnight to Pisa we had to wait a few hours for a bus to show up and take us back to Santa Maria Novella and then we walked the rest of the way home!
It was certainly a whirlwind adventure; some parts were what I was expecting and other parts weren't. We met a lot of people, had some interesting encounters in our hostel but I definitely am glad that we went when we did- the weather was beautiful and we pretty much got to do/see most of the things we wanted to. As for now, we're both back in Florence taking it easy until school starts tomorrow. It feels good to be home though.
Ciao for now.
