Day 30 and 31: Ireland
I got up at 9:40 and showered. I then fell back into bed until a little after noon when Molly got back from her field program. She sadly had to get up early to go see some jail that was apparently very interesting. When she got back it forced me to get up and get ready for the day. I threw on something comfy and we went and ate lunch, which also involved at lot of hydrating.
We then met up with her roommate and headed off the ship. The plan was to go to Galway. It was a city directly across the country on the other coast. Now, Ireland is only about the size of the state of Indiana so going to Galway is only about a 2 and a half hour bus or train ride. It's where the cliffs are and its supposed to be absolutely stunning. The train schedule was where we went to first, the schedule was really hard to understand and when we asked the guy told us to take a bus and gave us directions to two different bus stations. We couldn't find either one of them. We walked in both directions for a while. Eventually we gave up on the bus and went back on the train station. We gave up on Galway since there didn't see a train to it that matched up with our timing. We ended up buying a one day train ticket for zones 1 and 2, which meant that we could get off on any stop within that zone.
We ended up in Dun Laoghaire, only because Molly recognized it as a town mentioned in the movie P.S I Love You. We don't even know if that is accurate, she could have made it up. But it was only a 20ish minute ride and it was very beautiful. It was a seaside town, the harbor was completely packed full of sailboats. The view out over the water was stunning. The first thing we did was find a wifi café and hunkered down to do a little catch up on life.
Not only do we have a wifi addiction but Ireland is a port that blocks the internet that our ship uses. This meant that even our precious email was completely useless. We were very disconnected and it felt horrible.
When we left the café we basically just walked around and stumbled upon a street fair that they have every Sunday. There were food vendors and craft vendors. It was almost 5 o'clock so we looked around fast. Molly and I decided to split the food we ate so that we could get more than one thing. We got pork dumplings and noodles from a tent labeled China House Dumpling. They were making them right there and they were so good. But they werent as good as the burger we split. We got the last ones from the Irish Barbecue tent. It was a charcoal burger with shredded cheddar cheese, Ketchup, and a mayo that looked like it was homemade.
We then went to the fruit and veggie stand. We are seriously deprived of fruit on the ship and so run towards it at every moment when we are in port. We told the guy at the fruit stand about SAS and he completely freaked out. At first he did not believe us and once we proved it by showing him our IDs he was rolling around on the ground because he thought it was so cool. He called over his friends and told them about it, he just wouldn’t let it go. His friends were not as impressed but he ended up giving us free fruit because it was the end of the day and they were closing. We got four boxes of blueberries and a bunch of bananas.
We then went into a tent where a woman was selling clothes and magnets and jewelry and tons of other things. All of her clothes were only 10 euros and she had these awesome baggy pants in crazy patterns that reminded me of Aladdin pants. They are my Aladdin pants. I bought a pair and a shirt to go with them. They are my current favorite outfit, they are so comfortable, I can not get enough. I can't wait for both Morocco and Ghana where they will have tons of clothes like them.
We strolled along the boardwalk shoveling blueberries into our mouth. The board walk stretched out and ended with a lighthouse. We walked the whole thing in about a half an hour. There was a guy just casually playing the oboe and another quietly strumming a banjo.
Right before I left I read a post on Tumblr that was just a list of basic life rules. You know, there are thousands of them out there. But one of them has sat with me. It said, if a street performer makes you stop you owe him a buck. Every time we stop to listen to people putting their heart and soul into their craft on to the street I think about that piece of advice. I have only given some money once, and it was here in Dublin. There was family performing on the street and they were just incredibly impressive because they never looked at each other but just played their own interments and did their own thing but it was very cool and perfect. I threw a few coins in their case, but that was the only time.
On the first day when we were walking around with our Travel Writing class we walked by a huge group of guys performing on the street, they were absolutely phenomenal. The next day when Molly and I were walking by the same area they were setting up and we yelled out to them how awesome they were and they yelled their thanks back. I wish we could have just stood there and watched them perform both time. It is incredible to think about how many talented people are out there and their only way to share their music is to play out in public.
We headed back to Dublin around 7:30. Molly and I went to the ThunderRoad café for dinner because going to and from the ship was really time consuming. I just had ice cream from dinner, I was still really full from all the food we ate at the fair. Molly had bangers and mash. It was weird, we didn't get served for a really long time. The lady who was taking care of the two tables around us eventually talked to another guy and kept looking back at us as she spoke to him. Then it was him that took our order and helped us out. But he was really nice and didn't treat us weird, we don't really know what we did.
After we ate we just went back to the ship, we weren't really up for much else, and I had to go kayaking the next day.
Yeah, I went Kayaking. On the River Liffy.
But before that we tried to get piercing again. We decided to just screw the advice that the guy gave us and do it anyway. We looked up one of the places that Adam from Hard Rock told us about and it said that it opened at 9. So, we met for breakfast at 8:15 and were in the city by 9:00. But when we found the place it was clearly not open.
We were so upset. We were just having the worst luck ever. Retail therapy it was then. We found a cheesy souvenir shop where we could get our post cards and other stereotypical gifts from Ireland. I was able to get pins there. I have actually been doing a great job collecting pins. I don't know how well that is going to do once we get to the third world but it has been surprisingly easy in the european countries.
We also found a Disney store. Of course. They had Mickey Mouse plush dressed up like Leprechauns. I wanted one so badly but they were 30 euros. That's pretty steep. So I settled for a pin and a Gus Gus plush! If you can tell me what movie Gus Gus is from then 10 points to you. He is one of my favorite minor characters. When I was little I used to have a little figurine of him that disappeared at some point. He's really obscure so when I saw him in this store I had to go for it.
We headed back to the ship soon after that so I could go kayaking. The only reason I did the kayaking trip was because my friend Chris, the one I went to the Ballet with, told me he was going. Well, he ended up being a failure and not signing up. He knows we are in a fight. Molly didn't want to return my favor from two days before and join me in kayaking so I was all alone. At least she let me borrow her underwater camera so that I wouldn’t chance ruining mine. That turned out to be a really good thing.
The river flows right through town and while we were kayaking down it I thought about how it was completely enclosed in brick walls, and how rivers aren't naturally like that. But at some point someone came along and decided to just build giant brick walls on either side of the river. There is a really large difference in the tides in this part of the world so I am sure that the purpose was to protect the city from the changing tide. It would be cool to see pictures of the river when it wasn't surrounded by city, I wonder how long it has been that way.
By the end of the kayaking adventure I was soaking wet. This is because I ended up in the river. This is because I was in a double kayak and my partner kinda freaked out because she couldn't keep the kayak steady and so we went over. I literally had no control of the situation. The way back we were going against both the current and the wind so it was a lot more difficult to get any where quickly. We were heading under a bridge when we started to rock a lot more and got really close to the wall. I tried to calm her down and tell her to not freak out but that did not help at all. The river was freezing cold. So cold that it was hard to breathe.
I was able to flip the kayak back over but I didn't try to get back into it, and I knew that she would not have been able to get into. The guides that were with us on the river were both in speed boats. They made it to us really quickly and the guy dragged me into the speed boat after I handed him my paddle.
He tied the kayak to his speed boat and we watched while the other girl got into the other boat via the stairs that were built into the wall. The final bridge that we had to pass before getting back to where we started was under construction and since the the tide had gone up by the time we got back the huge speed boat I was in would not fit under it. He had to transfer both me and the kayak into the other speed boat. Me was easy, the kayak was a little more difficult but that was only because the woman had sliced her hand open on some glass by the stairs and was gushing blood all down her hand and arm. So I held the two speed boats together while he bandaged her up and transferred over the kayak. The girl that had been in the kayak with me was sobbing crying. She had lost her camera.
Oh. No. She was saying that she had to go back and find it and that she couldn't go back to the ship without it. Nathan, who was our trip liaison and is also my RD, sat in his kayak next to the speed boat and tried to convince her that going back would not be possible. She would never find it, it was probably on the bottom of the river. She did not believe him. Apparently it was a thousand dollar waterproof/shockproof camera. I don't know how many pictures she had on it. He finally convinced her that the best thing to do would be to get back to shore and then figure out what to do.
When we were back on dry land I helped the woman tie off the boat and drag the kayak up onto the dock. I had brought a sweatshirt with me so I stripped off my soaking wet shirt and just put my sweatshirt on. I was wearing compression pants so I wasn't that uncomfortable, and I had gone barefoot so my sneakers were nice and dry.
The girl had decided to sign out of the program to try and go find a camera. When I got back onto the bus and we were about to go the bus driver and tour guide, who had noticed the girl crying, tried to convince one of us to stay behind with her. Nathan, being a little concerned that maybe she wouldn’t come back to the ship (There was only an hour and a half until ship time) decided that he would go try to convince her to come back to the ship.
Apparently she had gotten pretty far because we all of a sudden saw him sprinting down the street. We followed slowly in the bus. Then, as soon as Nathan crossed the street and went into a building, another girl on the bus noticed that she was on our side of the street a lot farther down. Both of us went sprinting off the bus, her in the direction of the girl and me in the direction of Nathan. I caught up to him and told him where she was and we both ran to catch up with her.
We successfully convinced her that it would be better to get back on the ship and research cameras so that when we get to Portugal she will already know what she is looking for instead of wandering around the city trying to find something.
I had never been so happy to get back on the ship. Well, except maybe at 3 in the morning after Disney.
After I changed clothes I went to go mail a post card and ran into Nathan. "Hey, can you do me a favor, because you haven't done me enough favors already." And then he handed me an evaluation. So I got to give feed back on a program where I fell unintentionally into a river and had to do more running then I planned.
It was actually a lot of fun. I like kayaking and I got to see more of the city then I had when I was just walking around. And now I have a great story.
I called that a really early night. At 7:30 I was already ready for bed but I forced myself to stay up until 10 so that I wasn't up too early in the morning.
Ireland went a lot differently then I had planned. To be honest, I didn't have much planned going into it, so I guess it turned out well. I would definitely go back there and explore the west coast. It is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous out there and I wish I could have seen more of the countryside. A lot of people I talked to went out to little towns, stayed at Bed and Breakfasts and went hiking all over the countryside. How beautiful would it be to go hiking in Ireland. And not go kayaking. I think it will be a while before I go kayaking again.
