ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

In case the title of this blog threw you into worry mode that something went horribly wrong – it didn’t, so relax now. The title has to do with a few things, first purely that we are leaving and it seems a little crazy that we are. The other major reason for the title (and origination for in the first place) will come shortly. But first – what we have been up to our last few days.

Like I said before, we went to Theresa’s for a night this weekend in Arklow and it was great. She is spectacular and so freakin adorable, she made us dinner and lunch the next day and everything. We got real beds to sleep on and real towels to use (who knew either of those would be so exciting) – woot woot! But yeah, it was a relaxing day and a half so that was good. We came back to Dublin Sunday afternoon and did some shopping/walking around before I had to return to the hostel and feel like death – yes I officially got sick, no fun at all. That little snippet of time was particularly unpleasant so I basically just stayed in the room for the rest of the night.

Oh! I forgot about the Guinness Storehouse! We went there before we caught the bus to Arklow on Saturday. It was really fun and I’m super glad we went. We ended up saving 5 Euro on the ticket since we are ‘students’ which was good news. It was a self-guided tour but the place is HUGE. There were 6 official levels but I think we went up 1 or 2 before we got to Level 1. It took you through how it originated, how they made it and shipped it and they even had a floor that you could pour your own pint (included in the price). Instead of waiting in the line for that, we went up to the ‘Gravity Bar’ - which was a 360 view of Dublin - and got our drinks there. Yummy.


CHEERS!


I'm exciteddd


Clearly...

On our last day in Ireland/Europe we took a tour to go to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara. Both were pretty awesome. The Hill of Tara had a really good view of the whole surrounding area - so greeeeeeen. It would have been cool to have more time there just to hang out on the hills but we only had half an hour to wander around. Owell. From there we went to Newgrange – SO COOL. I will never cease to be completely amazed by what people accomplished thousands of years ago. So basically, Newgrange is a Neolithic passage tomb (built into the side of a mound with a long passageway) but is also the oldest astronomical archeological structure in the world that’s still intact (3200 BC). It’s epic. Apparently when they excavated it, the only part they had to redo was the front – everything inside was practically perfect. By the way, this thing is 5,000 years old. FIVE THOUSAND. They said it would have taken 50 years to build (which was twice the living age back then) and it’s not like this is the only one. There are passage tombs all around not only Ireland, but Europe. Like really…how is that possible? And let’s not even get into the size of the stones that they used, around the bottom and within the dome inside. Oye.


Hill of Tara


Church


Fairy tree - what we heard is that parents used to bring pieces of their sick childs clothing in hopes that the fairies would come heal them.



So unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures inside of it but I’ll just tell you now it’s spectacularly impressive. The structure itself is remarkable, it forms a domed ceiling with the ginormous rocks, but the concept behind what makes it famous is ridiculous. So there is a window type deal above the opening to the passage (I can’t remember what it’s called now) that is somehow positioned perfectly that on the winter solstice (and ONLY on the winter solstice) the light will shine into the center chamber and illuminate the middle of it for 17 minutes. Literally, only one day of the year will light reach the inside. What you don’t realize when you are walking in or out of it is that the floor slopes upwards, so the window that started above your head is actually at foot level by the time you get to the center chamber. CRAZY. And now I feel lame and stupid. It’s SO cool though.


Newgrange!!!


Big rocks on the exterior


Us at Newgrange!

Now briefly back to the title for this blog. I’ll just jump right to it – a gull pooped on me, literally 20 minutes after I had said that I’d be mad if a bird pooped on me. And not just a little, it was substantial and gross. Most of you are probably thinking that I should be used to it by now from Shoals, but in my defense I only got crapped on ONCE there and it was a TINY bit. So yeah, that was my reaction…but it was pretty hysterical, I won’t lie. The whole series of events was slightly ridiculous, the bird literally swooped down and let it rip as though it was aiming for me – which they can do rather well, but there was no reason for it to aim at me! Ugh. I was going to wear those jeans tomorrow on the plane too – apparently life didn’t think that was the best idea, or that they weren’t dirty enough at that point. Regardless, it provided everyone with quite a bit of humor for the night – what can I say…these things tend to fly my way at the speed of light. All you gotta do is laugh it off.

We went to Leo Burdocks for fish and chips (apparently a TON of famous people have been there and it’s supposed to be the best in Dublin) on our last night and holy crap do they give you a lot of food. They wrapped it in paper and the little package was a hefty little thing. The piece of fish was substantial but the amount of chips was absurd. I couldn’t even come close to finishing it, I think Holly was the only one that did. So much fooooood. It was good though! Just be wary – buy one for two people.

Alright, we are headed off to the airport so this is the final blog! There’s only one airport we can go to, so we shouldn’t have that difficulty this time…hopefully there isn’t anything else that we can royally mess up on the way there. Should be gooooood. But anyway, it’s been an incredible trip and I’m looking forward for adventures to come! Hopefully they will be sooner rather than later. :)

Thanks for reading!!

Fun Fact: In case you suck at dates like me, Newgrange was built 600 years before the Giza Pyramids and 1000 years before Stonehenge.

Cork, Blarney Castle and Howth!

Now successfully in Dublin, we have had a couple pretty eventful days – not in the sense that a lot went on, more so that we actually went places and did stuff. At least quite a bit more than we did in Glasgow. Makin moves.

Thursday we went to Cork and Blarney Castle! YAY! Cork is a cute city, primarily for shopping it seemed like but we walked around for a bit and got some food. The bus to Cork from Dublin took almost 4 hours, which I knew beforehand but I didn’t really think it through – it was a pretty long bus ride. Unfortunately, a good chunk of it was spent studying for the GRE. Yeahhh, remember when I said this trip would be unhindered by school-related things…total fallacy. All sorts of fail on that one. But back to Cork! We took a bus into Blarney from Cork and wandered around some shops and such there. Holly got her wool sweater that she has been patiently waiting to get the whole trip and I got Guinness infused dark chocolate. Mmmm. Little known fact about me: I sneeze when I eat relatively dark dark chocolate. Oh and at the sun. Good times…


Cork

Next we headed over to the castle! Unfortunately we had to pay to get in (8 Euro with student discount – yes, we are still milking the student discounts) but it was totally worth it. It’s so pretty! < the whole area not just the castle. If we had had more time/my body wasn’t dying, there were these nature walks you could do that would be pretty cool. We walked around for a bit then went up into the castle. They had each room labeled for what it was used for which was really awesome to see. Boggles my mind how anyone stayed warm – each room was like a wind tunnel when the wind blew…and it’s ‘summer’. We climbed a spiral staircase, in which rooms jutted out from at random levels, up to the top of the castle where the kissing of the Blarney Stone occurs. In order to do this you have to awkwardly contort yourself backwards down a hole (so that you are basically looking down at the ground 100 feet below) holding onto two posts and kiss one little part of a stone. There’s a guy to guide you to the right area of the stone and probably to make sure you don’t keep sliding down. Holly and Kayla participated in the kissing of the stone but I opted out primarily due to the uncertainty of being able to feasibly get back up without my hip locking…seeing that I had the rest of the day to get through walking around and no pain killers, it seemed like a good choice.


Blarney Castle!!




Some other awesome thing


Fun in the castle!

Back in Cork instead of getting on the bus we were originally going to catch, we spontaneously went to a burger place Kayla had been to before. Delicioussss. Holly and I keep talking about what food we want when we get home (hunk o’ meat and vegetables *cough cough*) and it has always been focused around meat…PROTEIN, since we clearly aren’t getting much of it here. Hence the burgers. I got an Italian inspired one with Parma ham, moz cheese and basil pesto. They come out with a little flag of the country that the burger was inspired from. There was a French one that had brie and dijon mustard, I almost got that instead. Oh and their fries were ridiculously good too.

Just so that I don’t ramble on for too long, I’m going to move on to yesterday at Howth. We ended up meeting up with a kid we met at our hostel in Edinburgh who just happens to be here in Dublin the same time we are! He’s from Minnesota and is super chill. Based on the weather yesterday, it definitely goes to say that you should never trust weather forecasts here in Ireland – they lie and never know what in the heck is going to happen. Case and point: it was supposed to be cold and thunder storming today, so what happens? It was gorgeous. I dressed in a ridiculous amount of layers because I was freezing in Cork (will finally get my 2 jackets back tomorrow that I left here 4 weeks ago!!) that I clearly didn’t end up needing. Maybe one of these days I will actually dress appropriately….maybe.

So Howth is basically a fishing town that is way cooler than most fishing towns because it has mini Cliffs of Moher-esque cliffs – automatically making it 50 times more beautiful that it would be anyway for being on the coast. We traipsed down some trails and rather steep areas to get to the water area then climbed around some more on the rocks and hung out for a bit. Afterwards we followed the walking trail that went back to the town to get fish and chips!! They were a whole lotta greasy goodness.


Howth!




Sooo pretty



We are going to the Guinness Storehouse today before heading to Kayla’s friends mom’s house for the day/night – both of which will be fun. I’m apparently trying to fight off a cold or something because my throat has started hurting, cross your fingers for it getting better soon! OH! Holly, Kayla and I bought midnight showing tickets for Harry Potter 7 Part II for next Thursday night! YAY! SO excited but super bummed that this is the legitimate end to it all. It will be epic though.

Fun Fact: Kissing the Blarney stone means you will have the "gift of gab" - basically that you will speak eloquently from then on.

FAIL

We went to the wrong airport.

Go ahead and laugh, because we sure did. Can we say continuing the trail of stuggles? Wow. You might ask how this happened, especially in Glasgow – which I have informed you doesn’t have much in/at it…at all. Who would have thought there were 2 airports? Clearly not us. However, I am also going to take this time to say that it isn’t entirely our fault, yes we should have realized or checked to make sure, but still…not totally our fault.

The problem originated when I asked a woman at the reception desk at our hostel about getting to the airport. She asked if we were going to Prestwick and I said yes, remembering that that’s what it said on the confirmation email. She said we should take bus 500 to the airport and it takes roughly 15-20 minutes – not bad right? That’s what we thought, all the way up to being at said airport and being told we were at the wrong one. So we leave the hostel around 6pm get to the stop and get a bus shortly after – they come every 10 minutes and literally take you straight to the airport…super convenient, if you were supposed to go to that one. Once we get inside we look for our flight on the monitor and it’s not there, but we see a sign to another ‘terminal’…no one was there. We asked some guy at a counter and this is how the conversation unfolded:

Me: “Hi, we were wondering where we go for this flight – it wasn’t listed on the monitor in the other terminal.”
Random guy: “Um, RyanAir flight? Those leave from Prestwick Airport”
Me: Pause. “And where exactly are we?”
Random guy: “Glasgow International…”

Blank stare.

Yup that’s right, there are two airports in Glasgow. Oh but wait, Prestwick isn’t actually IN Glasgow – it’s 45 minutes away by car. Really…REALLY?! At this point we were basically like, well we have extra time…we’ll be fine, let’s go figure something out. I asked a bus driver if there was a bus that goes to Prestwick from Glasgow Airport and she said no, but being the awesome person she apparently is – she told us we have 2 options: 1) take an airport taxi over there, which would run us about £70 OR 2) she would call a friend who works for a different taxi company that would take us for £40. I voted the latter. Continuing with our bad luck, she couldn’t get a hold of him but continuing with her generosity, she called a different taxi company that she uses all the time who also said would do it for under £40. SCORE.

We were super excited (before this point) that we planned out perfectly the amount of money we would need to get to the airport on the bus and not have any random change or bills left over. Clearly we were going to fail with that too. Holly ran to an ATM while I figured out where we had to meet the taxi and we made it to our meeting point…and waited. 15 – 20 minutes later our dude came and we hopped right in and went on our way – he got quite the kick out of us. Not only were we laughing hysterically about the whole deal but Holly kept making ridiculous comments that sent us all into fits of laughter.

Also, they weren’t kidding when they told me it was 45 minutes away. ITS IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! Who in the heck would have thought to go to an airport there? Not only that but it’s this ridiculously little dinky thing. If that doesn’t convince you our timetable should by the fact that we had an hour and a half to wait in the airport for an ‘international’ flight, when we arrived an hour to spare before the gate was supposed to close.

6:00 – leave hostel
6:20 – board bus
6:40 – arrive at WRONG airport
6:45 – realize our mistake
7:10 – get in taxi
8:00 – arrive at other airport
8:15 – wait in lounge (Elvis bar) for plane to board (not even at the gate)
9:15 – gates were supposed to close, we were still waiting
9:45 – supposed to be in the air, just boarding

All in all, we somehow still made it with plenty of time to spare, the taxi driver gave us a discount after we got the ride for £30 cheaper, we spent our left over change on chocolate in the airport and we made it to Dublin in one piece with all our luggage.

And this my friends, is why I like getting to airports with some time to spare. Let this be a lesson learned for all.

Cheers

We’ve made it to Glasgow and it is quite a bit different than Edinburgh. The bus ride here only took an hour and a half, so that wasn’t bad at all. However, we got semi-lost getting to the hostel…again – I’m pretty sure we have only made it to a handful of our hostels without any difficulty. There shouldn’t have been a problem getting to this one if the streets were labeled where you could see it from both directions and if the same street wasn’t two different names on either side. Anyway, several nice people helped us and we made it. Upon our arrival we found out that we had been upgraded! YAY! I’ve never been upgraded for anything before, who knew my first time would be in a hostel of all things. We were supposed to be in a room with like 8 or 10 beds but got a 4 bed private! So we have an extra bed, our own bathroom/shower and no need to lock anything up. We do have a faulty light fixture but all in all I think we can deal with it, haha.

We get free breakfast here again! Super fantastic. We basically just stuff ourselves and coast through the majority of the day. In our last hostel we made Nutella sandwiches for later in the day but we don’t particularly have a need for that here. 1) We are a bit sick of Nutella-like spreads, 2) We are nauseated by the thought of more bread…even though we still choke down toast in the morning (FREE) and 3) Holly and I have SO much food for our short time here. We went to Tesco the first night to get some food for dinner, all of us on a super low budget because we didn’t want to get more money out. I found a ‘family meal deal’ which turned out to be the best thing ever. For £5 we got a main dish, side dish and dessert for a family of 4, so naturally, we get two of them for 2 of us. Therefore, instead of having dinner for a family of 4 for two nights we have lunch/dinner for 2 of us for a day and a half… That’s a whole lotta food for cheap. Our main dishes consist of two different types of pasta that weigh 1.2kg each, the side dishes (one pasta and cous cous, the other garlic cheesy bread) were like 500-600g and the dessert (raspberry cheesecake) was 400g each. Again, let me specify…2 people.

Apart from our food adventures, Holly and I had a hair washing experience for the record books. Somehow she convinced (more like guilted) me to wash her hair in the sink with a bar of soap, I’m still not entirely sure why. But somehow we managed to make it like a hair salon – minus some class and added disfunctionality. What’s important is that it got done and she has clean hair…



We quickly discovered that there is not much to do in Glasgow, so we primarily walked around and tried to take pictures that would be worth an album on facebook. If you were worried that you will go hungry in Glasgow by lack of grocery and/or restaurants if you came here, don’t be – there is literally a grocery store every 5 minutes (walking) and a plethora of restaurants and cafes. If we didn’t already have the amount of food we did, I’m sure mass purchases of food would have occurred. All of us (not just me!) were struggling to stay awake, so we ended up going back to the hostel for a nap – after Holly and I consumed some cheesecake. 3-4 hours later we got up and went to make dinner. Tough life man.


Glasgow




Taking our picture in a reflective building...only after taking 5 did we realize that there might be people on the other side laughing hysterically.

We are headed to Dublin today! However, we have all day to bum around because our flight isn’t until 9pm. The bus to the airport shouldn’t take too long, so all should go well! This is our last Ryan Air flight and as Kayla pointed out last night…we will be checking into our last hostel. We will be checking into said hostel twice though – we are going to go stay with one of Kayla’s friend’s mom for a night. Woot!


Kayla officially proposing to Holly. Awwww.


Holly's excited!


The happy couple, haha. We thought it'd be fun to play with my camera settings.

Fun Fact: Glasgow is the industrial capital of Scotland, that's about all I know about Glasgow.

Hamish & Co.

SCOTLAND! Woooo. Our adventures in Scotland begin in Edinburgh and end in Glasgow, to which we are headed tomorrow. Kayla and I arrived in Edinburgh earlier on Wednesday so we walked around the city for a bit before Holly and Kelly were to come in later that night. We didn’t do much besides explore, but the city is pretty awesome – there’s a castle in the middle of it, enough said.

The next couple days were more walking around and exploring the city. We found an awesome free day tour of the city – it was like 3 hours long and the only payment was to tip the guy at the end. We had a really good tour guide (an Aussie) and the whole thing was really entertaining (lasted like 3 hours), totally worth it. We went to a pub afterwards with a few people from the group and got some food, Holly and I got a really good avocado burger, Kayla got gourmet mac and cheese and Kelly got haggis. There were some awesome people in the group and it’s always cool to hear what people are doing or where they are going – good to know that there are still some solid people out there. Kayla, Kelly and I went on a ghost tour that night with the same company (unfortunately not free though) – it was fun to hear the stories but it wasn’t scary or anything. I guess it would kind of be hard to make it scary when it doesn’t start getting dark until 10 - 10:30 and the tour starts at 9:30. There is definitely quite the dark history with Edinburgh though – I wouldn’t have wanted to live here back then. Oye.


Castle!


Old town.


Edinburgh Castle on Castle Rock...original names all over the place.



We went to a free museum, which by the way looks like it has a ton of awesome stuff, to go see Dolly the sheep – the first cloned mammal. I knew they did it here but I didn’t know they kept her…kind of odd but cool. She’s stuffed and inside a rotating glass case thing. We also went back to a cemetery that our day tour guide took us too. It was the place that J. K. Rowling got a few of the names for characters in Harry Potter. She got Moody, McGonagall and Tom Riddle from different headstones/plaques. Apparently the guy she got McGonagall was some terrible poet who wrote to (nor for) Queen Victoria – she hated him. But at least now he lives on in a better light as Professor McGonagall.


The gravestone J. K. Rowling got the name for Mad-Eye Moody.


Cafe that she started writing the books in.

Saturday we went on a day tour of the highlands. Our tour guide was kind of something else, he started off ok then got progressively more annoying as the tour went on. I’m pretty sure he repeated everything he said at least 3 times, everyone was just like really…? Are we 5? I was able to tune that out relatively well but then he decided to play a plethora of bagpipe music. I STRONGLY dislike bagpipes. I appreciate them, their importance to Scotland and everyone who can play them, I’m sure it’s not an easy instrument, but I can’t stand the sound they make. It’s not quite as bad when there is a band involved…but generally (while we’ve been here) there’s no band. I was doing well with the random guys on the street playing and walking into every shop with bagpipe music playing, but that bus ride… yeah not so much. The epitome of cruel and unusual punishment came into play when he put on 1) My heart will go on (I was proved incorrect that that song could get any worse) and 2) Amazing grace – traditional bagpipe version AND bohemian remix version…what?! I needed pain killers after that one…literally.

Our first stop for the tour was to see Hamish the highlands cow. Now, I had been seeing pictures and mugs and calendars of Hamish all around the city beforehand and I was already in love with the thing…BUT what I didn’t know what that there was a whole little family. SO ADORABLE. I think I wrote of my love for brown cows earlier in the trip…it just got brought to a whole new level. I legitimately want a highland cow when I get older. We found out on the bus that we could feed them, so I immediately was rifling through my purse for change to buy the food. I’m pretty sure this was the highlight of the day for me – the highlands were beautiful…but those cows are spectacular. Hamish didn’t even get up despite our attempts to lure him over, but his wife (Heather) made up on that front. They also had a little calf, Honey. So freakin cute. Ok, I’ll stop about the cows now…just know they are awesome.


Hamish and Honey - ahhh so cute!


Most adorable face award.


NOM NOM

Next we went into the highlands, SO pretty. Unfortunately we didn’t get to stop very much and take pictures but there was one or two stops before Loch Ness. I opted out of doing the boat tour on Loch Ness to try and save some money (so I could buy food later) so I wandered around the little town we stopped in waiting for everyone to get back from the tour. We had all been looking forward to this mac and cheese Kayla had been talking about all week on the tour, but we didn’t stop in Perth on the way back so we ended up not getting it. Sadness. Also, one of the reasons we picked this tour was that it went up to Inverness – we literally just drove right though it…so that was kind of a fail. The latter half of the trip back down we didn’t stop at all, just drove back to Edinburgh. The tours in Ireland definitely have a leg up on this tour in Scotland.




Scotish highlands? Yes please.




Epic.


Loch Ness. No Nessie sightings. :(

We had one last day in Edinburgh, well Kayla, Holly and I…Kelly left to go back to Dublin today and is flying back home in a couple days. Off to Glasgow tomorrow then to Dublin on Wednesday (I think) – end of this trip is coming to a close quickly! Ahh.

One other thing – for my parents – you clearly had your bearings wrong…I should have been born in Aberdeen, SCOTLAND…not South Dakota. Big difference… 1) It’s infinitely more cooler just by being in Scotland and 2) It’s on the coast – you weren’t setting me up for success with marine biology in a land locked state. ;-)


ABERDEEN! The right one...

Fun Fact: Edinburgh used to have a ‘lake of poo’ (where all the sewage ran into) where they would test whether someone was a witch. Tying their hands and feet together, if they floated they were guilty and would be fished out and further punished, if they sank they were innocent and would go to heaven. Also, 3 tell tail signs that you were a witch were 1) red hair, 2) had a birthmark and 3) had a third nipple. I have a birthmark - again, I would not have wanted to live here.