ireland

08.09.06 : i smell smoke

just checked in here in galway. apparently smoking indoors has been banned for a while now. yet the room, halway and building still smell like someone lit up yesteday.

we spent the day bumming around the north west of ireland. checking out a couple castles and some miscelanious other fancy ruins. castle A consisted of a tower... that's pretty much it. apparently some lady slept with a dude so she could own it. his name was "iron dick." no i am not shitting you. the tower has four floors and probably has 2000 sq ft TOPS. castle B on the other hand was a fucking castle. they even had a falconry there for all those jobs that require the use of falcons.

we probably nearly died on the way here. some flash rains caused the roads to be completely covered in water. couple that with their narrow through-way and it's quite an adventure.

i'm shipping out tomorrow. gots me a 430 wakeup call. oh the excitement.

08.08.05 : believe it or not i'm walking on air

so oddly enough i'm starting to think the irish love the theme song to 'greatest american hero'. just about everywhere we go they have that song playing. one was a cover too.

this morning i had some black pudding, egg, bacon and sausage for breakfast. wasn't too bad. then we took a scenic route to easkey - the supposed land of my family. i'm pretty sure the total population of the town was around 50 tops. though they did have two pubs. at least the important parts were covered. in one of the pubs there was, what appeared to be, an older gentleman who never leaves his seat and was fairly drunk around noon. upon the entrance of some other local, he proclaimed him to be the 'king of easkey' and requested that everyone bow. just prior to us leaving that pub, they put on gunsmoke... i didn't even know that show still existed.

this is the last evening in the temple house. i think their dogs are going to miss us since we're the only people who seem to throw their ball around. we had a fancy dinner - i had to bust out the slacks (green slacks with an orange button up... not on purpose did i dress like their flag). then hung out with a southern irish couple, a northern ireland lady and two from new york. conversation was pretty damn interesting.

08.08.04 : drive on the LEFT

we left dublin after checking out the kilmainham prison/museum. when the tour guide lady brought up the fireing squad executions, an irish gentleman decided to point out that "they couldn't miss" from ten paces away... i'm willing to bet that was the point. but the tour was cool - informative and interesting.

we snagged our rental car and headed to sligo. we're staying just outside the city of sligo (but still in sligo county, that's not confusing at all). we're at one of the most beautiful places i've ever stayed. it's some castle thing with tons of green surroundings. some dogs and sheep are chillin'. one dog tried to use us for stick fetching - to which he succeeded. tomorrow i shall attempt to get my picture taken with a sheep.

also looks like tomorrows trip to easkey (or around those parts) will be a bit more crowded. apparently that is one of the top five surfing places in the world and we've seen quite a few vehicles with boards on them. who knew?

another note, some of these places look like benjamin franklin himself wired up the electricity.

08.08.03 : pod six

turns out bicyclists are the same here as in seattle. constantly running red lights and cutting people off. go figure?

we basically bummed around checking out some miscelanious local sites and downed a few pints. i enjoyed a little hole full of sacks. i think our three combined ages allowed us entrance as the youngest person there besides us was at least over fifty.

in the evening, it turns out there is a dance club at the bottom of our hotel. so we decided to check that out for a bit. it was sketchy to say the least. basically the "tiki bobs" of seattle, but in ireland. regardless, my brother and i chilled for a bit and talked having a great time. he came up with a sweet plan to propose (megan better not be looking at this!) amongst one of our many drinks (yes, i realize some of you may be cringing after the mention of drinks and "ideas" but it definitely is a good plan). we ended up shutting the place down while enjoying the people watching. we nearly thought there would have to be some intervention between a couple of dudes preventing something horrible, but it did not pass. so that's a bonus.

bam! pictures uploaded (the full album will be done later). tim out. enjoy your day!

08.08.02 : completely forgot

so i completely forgot to mention that when arriving, the very first site of irish soil i saw was punctuated by a rainbow! unfortunately i didn't have my camera - i'm trusting in my brother to handle that. but, the point is that ireland is FULL of leprechaun gold. why else would there be such a rainbow for the first viewing?

also, seems a lot of palces stop serving food around 930. we nearly missed out on dinner. the backup plan was to partake in a fair amount of stouts. what could go wrong?

... i'm heading to bed now. holy shit does my brother snore. luckily next city i get my own room.

08.08.02 : plane ride

so i'm in ireland now. which was cool because that means the plane did not explode in a firey mess. we arrived at 8am local time. oh wait. lemme back up a second. on the flight i spilt water on myself (because i am apparently that skilled). i asked the stewardess for some napkins or paper towels to dry myself. i wasn't overly worried since the airplane air has no moisture in it allowing the water to evaporate fairly quickly. but she just took one look at me and said, "god bless you" no less than five times to anything i said... i'm fairly certain at this point she thinks i wet myself and had some special needs since i wasn't worried. ah well.

anyway, since we couldn't check into the hotel until two, there was some time to kill. it seems the only thing open early was the guinness tour (930am). we ended up going on that and having some sweet guinness for breakfast. exchanged words with a pleasant old british couple and carried on. two parts of the tour were the coolest. the first one was mentioned to me by a very attractive lady who said to check out the cooper (barrel making) video. that was actually fucking awesome. quite impressive what people can make given (essentially) just an axe. another entertaining aspect was the commercials - not nearly as 'high class' as the barrel, but still fun. they had some amazingly bad ones from the 70s. pretty classy.

prior to checking in at the hotel, we ended up eating at a place called gruel. apparently my brother said it was highly recommended from 'lonely planet'. which you could tell they did as half the people eating there had the book. kinda amusing. but the food was actually quite good. i'm looking forward to leaving dublin soon and moving on to some more country side experiences. but for now, i must nap.