Old stuff and daffodils

Going from Iceland to Ireland is like going from Winter to Spring.  From bleak but beautiful landscapes of muted colours , alien-like lava fields and icy glaciers to green hills, cultivated fields and small windy roads enclosed by hedges and rocky fences.

 

I like Ireland.  It has a real ‘homey’ feel to it.  I’m not saying that it feels like home, but more a comfortable feeling, like hot soup on a cold day or a warm fire when a heavy rain is battering at your window.

On my first night I checked into a hostel, but it was pretty quiet and I found a brochure for a Musical Pub Crawl so decided to head along.  It was really good.  It was run by two guys, one had a guitar and sang the other had a set of Irish pipes.  They would play and sing and then stop to chat, giving us a bit of a history on the instruments and the musical culture in Ireland and then we’d go to another pub and do a bit more of the same. 

At the end of the night a few people were keen to kick on so the guys suggested McNeills.  A pub that had a session going on including someone who is great on the flute.  The people who I went with were an American couple who were lovely and four American women who were annoying as shit.  On the way there the girl from the couple was saying how she was looking forward to seeing the flutist.  And this other woman corrected her ‘It’s a flautist’ and the first woman was like whatever and continued to say ‘flutist’ and every time she did the other woman would correct her but was getting shitty because the other one wouldn’t say it right.  So I was like, ‘I just call them flute dudes.’  The ‘flautist’ woman was not amused.  Turns out I was wrong anyway - it wasn’t a dude.

So the session was really good.  There was the woman on the flute, a couple of old fellas, a couple of younger guys and the music was great.  There was another young guy who sat at the bar for about an hour sucking on his beer before he just suddenly burst out with a number – gee he was good too. 

I was perched at the bar when the barman comes up and says ‘Your friends left without you’ and sure enough the American women had left; got huffy about something and just walked out without so much as a goodbye.  I said to the barman ‘They’re not my friends.’ and he said ‘Thank fuck for that.  I didn’t think so.’ and then the whole bar was like ‘Thank god they’re gone!’ Then the bar man went and locked the door.  So for my first night in Dublin I ended up having lock-in with the bar man, a few locals including one old fella who was singing up a storm and a Puerto Rican web developer called Ricardo.  Good times.

On Paddy’s day I headed into Dublin to check out the parade.  So the parade started at 12.  I rock up about 11.30 and was like ‘bugger didn’t think that one through’.  The crowds were seven people deep everywhere.  People were perched on bins, statues and climbing street lights to get a view.  There were men setting up ladders for their kids and every second person in the seven people deep crowd was wearing a foot long green hat.

So needless to say, I didn’t get the best view.  I could see the floats which were pretty cool even if I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were about and some of the brass bands were quite amazing.  One did the tequila song and Gangnam style which had everyone laughing.

After the parade I went and met up with Greg, a guy I used to work with who was in Dublin for work, for a beer.  We had a beer or two, a pizza and ended up at McNeills again.  FYI - First and last time I drink Guinness. 

A big surprise waking up after Paddy’s day was the fact that I wasn't too hungover which was great because I got up and jumped on a bus to Ennis to meet Aoife.

Ennis is in county Clare and is about a 3 hour bus ride.  Aoife and I stayed with her parents who were lovely and Aoife took me to the Cliffs of Moher and as she put it 'to look at old stuff'.  Getting out into the country is so much nicer than in Dublin, it's all rolling green hills and daffodils.  And the old stuff; it's everywhere.  You're just driving along and there in the paddock with the sheep is half an old castle or some random wall just sitting on a hill.

The cliffs were pretty cool.  A bleak and imposing view.  And the wind, god almighty, it was strong.  At one stage we were coming down some stairs on a trail and my legs were literally blown out from under me and I landed on my arse.  Then a bit further down the track it flattened out and ran along side the drain.  Poor Aoife got blown over and almost ended up in the drain!

After Clare I caught another bus down to Cork to meet Mags (Down is that the right direction Mags? My geography of where I went is pretty shocking, I really should look at a map occasionally.)

 

I stayed a couple of nights with Mags in her home town of Cork.  With Mera as well we checked out the Cork nightlife, ate a lot of late night pizza and visited some little beach towns.  The weather was a bit crazy and unpredictable, but we did see some sunshine and blue skies when we got to the beach which was nice.

 

We also stopped off for a lunch in a lovely pub and I had a really tasty scallop risotto.  So yummy.  Aoife took me too a good lunch pub too.  The food has been tasty here but I think we all know the best Irish food is found in Melbourne anyway ;)

 

Big giant thanks to Aoife and Mags for having me and showing me around.  I had a great time and had fun catching up with you guys as well as with Mera and with Annette and Barry in Dublin.