Today started off with a blast…or should I say a lot of cursing...We were supposed to meet the motor coach down in front of Trinity College at 6:30am and leave at 7am, Dr. Robin was pounding on my door at 7:23 because my roommate Adam and I had both slept through our alarms (which I find funny since the two of us are typically the only ones who are always on time for everything). We were both scurrying to get out of the door and I’m glad to say I think I beat my old record since I was out of my room with all of my bags by 7:30am.
We got on the motor coach (haha, fancy words for buses are fun) and went to the train station, which aside from Disney world, this would be my first ride on a train. The experience was made even more surreal since the entire trip I rode backwards on the train. This was also our first real chance to see the Irish countryside, which for lack of a good word is simply breathtaking. We arrived at our destination and met our bus driver, an old Irish professor named Mike Connelly (I am fairly certain I have the last name wrong, so I shall correct that later). He has already taught us so many interesting things, for instance, the phrase “We have no cows to milk” which roughly translates to those of us not raised on Irish farms “We aren’t in any hurry.”
Mike drove us to Cork, the second biggest city in Ireland, with many malls and department stores to prove it. Dr. Wilber gave us an hour to eat so we wandered until we randomly stumbles into a bar named Thomond, which was a quaint little Irish bar what looked authentic. We ordered food, and I went on a whim with Adam and ordered a cottage pie, which is similar to a Shepards pie, but with different….well, something. Long story short, holy sheep, that was the best thing I have eaten since I have been in Ireland. From this experience I learned something: authentic Irish food IS bar food, do not forget that when over here. After we ate we went back to the bus and started our trek to Blarney Castle.
Blarney Castle
I haven’t been too much into a lot of some of the sites we have gone to (such as the church and the Yeats exhibition) but this was spectacular. Maybe because it was a fortified castle with narrow slits for archers to creep out of all over the place, or maybe it was because the view at the top on this side and that side were as breathtaking as the countryside we saw earlier on the train, or maybe it was simply because I was straining too hard as I was being quickly rushed over a ledge by an old Irish dude trying to rush through the line to stick my lips on a medieval rock, which I happily did.
I also did some mild spelunking with my classmate Amy through the old water storage cavern at the bottom of the castle, which involved us crawling about 200 feet in a narrow cavern no taller than 3 ½ feet tall, only to find at the end it was covered in graffiti and probably full of dead spirits (hence my smiling) on top of being a dead end, so we had to crawl back out the way we came in, only to find another cave right next to it we could actually walk through with a very obscure name.
Afterwards we all went back to the motor coach and headed to Killarney, which is where my favorite Christmas song comes from, as showcased thanks to Youtube and Dennis Day:
This bus ride took forever, but we had the pleasure of enjoying more Irish countryside, as well as seeing many of my classmates passing out here and there for the duration of the bus ride. We arrived at Killarney to our Bed & Breakfast that we’re staying in, and after hauling up my bags to my room (along with at least 5 of the girls bags due to lack of men and muscles) I rushed to the city to see if I could find any sign of metal, karaoke, or a gay bar (because gay people party harder than straight people and that mixed with Irish stereotypes has got to make one HELL of a bar). All I did end up doing was pissing off the only biker I could find by engaging in a conversation with him and me saying his musical taste sucked because he didn’t like Motorhead (which c’mon, I am right in this). He started to get angry and I decided it to be a good idea to leave and come back to the B&B where I can search the internet and not get lynched by angry Irish bikers.
In conclusion, that was my very long, drawn out day, and tomorrow I tour Killarney, which should be more interesting when everything isn’t closed.
DEATH!!!
\m/
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