i didnt keep a log while we traveled, which i should have, but here is a brief summary of the events in ireland. i'll add as i go on.
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woke up fairly early, our plane for LAX left SFO @ noon. we took the airporter down which wasnt too bad. the plane for LA was late by a lot so we had plenty of terminal/gate time to sit around. flew to LA then started to kill what we thought was a lot of time before the connecting flight on Aer Lingus to Dublin, Ireland. That time wasn't as much as we thought it was. had to straight run for the terminal for last call with all the carry on baggage on me. stressful and overheating i got my seat on the aerobus 330. we had little lcd screens in the seat-back ahead of us which had different tv channels, movies and a cool channel that showed all the details of the flight. The stewardesses are pretty sassy, but generally nice. one of them stole a vegetarian meal from first class for ern. the airplane meal was actually pretty good.
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oh right, here are some pictures, i'll finish this day later. i have something like 600~ shots but these are the "best" of the bunch.
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the flight was 8.5hrs. the little monitors in the back of the seats showed us our flight path in several views. i enjoyed flying by greenland. the flight was 8.5hrs because we had a good wind. we landed an hour and a half earlier than we thought we would, but not too early to pick up the car. hoo boy. i had reserved an opel vectra, y'know some screwball european thing, but what i had reserved and what we got were two different balls of screw. a ford focus sedan is what i got. we picked it up in the yard and i got my first taste of left hand drive, right hand wheel, left hand shift, left hand turn indicator. it's a thing. i got used to it. also, i got used to no speed limit, and units of measure that meandered between kilomagic and miles. should i be doing 60 kilomonkers? 60 mph? or just pedal down, nose forward? i chose the latter. it made up for the fucktacular ford fuckus. fuck. we saw an opel vectra when we stayed in dublin and they were slick to look at, like a more better new altima with a little bit of chrysler 300m in it. we drove the 2.5hrs to dublin, and checked into our cottage. did i mention jet lag? we took a little nap, then ern made me wake up. it was horrible. we went into town (kilkenny) and had a pint of guiness with her uncle and dad. guiness is like water here, both in consistency and availability. states = syrup, eire = water. Later that night we went into kilkenny again and had pubgrub + guiness while watching a football (soccer) game. there were some local yahoos populating most of the place making lots of noise. it was like watching a raiders game in downtown oakland, only with albinos.
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On my birthday, the 22nd, ern's cousins ant and jen drove us into dublin. they were going sightseeing too so it was an opportune ride and meant we wouldnt have to worry about the car. before we left the states ern had reserved a room @ a hostel so we walked form our drop off point to the hostel and checked in. after we ate lunch in our room we wandered out into dublin and all through the town. we caught a double decker site seeing bus at the tourist center and cruised around dublin checking out hte sites. we hopped off the bus @ the guiness factory and did the self guided tour which ends up in the gravity bar on the 6th floor overlooking dublin. i took a panorama series all around the spaceneedlesque bar and we enjoyed our complimentary pint of guiness. after the guiness tour it was pretty windy and we hopped on the tour bus to take us near temple bar. we got dropped off at this really old gilded wood hotel. the entire inside was like being in the ornate wood galley of some prissy pirate's boat. very neat. we thought about eating dinner there but wanted to check out temple bar. We ate at this good oriental melange restaurant and had great food. woo birthday dinner. afterwords we stopped through several pubs and had a few shots. we eventually left the last pub we were at when it got too meaty. The walk back was a nice adventure. it is probably one of the few things i'm goign to clearly remember years from now. It was slightly cold and we headed off walking in the direction of our hostel. We walked for a good while then eventually asked someone where a certain street was. The thing with Dublin though, is that the streets and street names only exist for one block. So the person we asked to get bearings kinda sorta gave us a reassuring "oh just right over there" (or somethign like that). we walked for a few more blocks but nothing was looking too familiar so we stopped in a bar. the graffitti in te bathroom was all pro-ira which was sort of neat. It beats the crap tagging over here for substance at least. one of the patrons pointed out that we were at the extreme-north-not-really-on-the-map side of dublin instead of the extreme south where our hostel was, and that it would probably be in our best interest to hire a taxi, both for speed of arrival and safety. the cabman was great, a funny guy and between ern and i we were able to piece together most of what he was saying. he got us back to our hostel pretty quick for 8 Euro and we slogged upstairs and unloaded our crap. i grabbed my new tobaccy pipe/pouch that ern got me for my bday and we took a walk down the street to the shop for some supplies. earlier in the day wee school kids had asked me to go in and buy for them but this night there really wasnt too many others out, or at the shop. we picked up some water and stuff for the morning and eventually walked back to the hostel and passed out exhausted, mostly soonish.
The next day we got up slightly crabby. neither of us had slept too well, the hostel was on a busy street and it was uncomfortably warm all night. we walked back up to grafton ave and got some tourist shopping done. we hopped back on our hop on hop off double decker and toured around for some hours until it was time to catch a train back to kilkenny. in the train station we talked to a welshwoman who was very nice and gave us some of her meaty lumps. if we're ever to visit wales, we hav ea place to stay with her, in amloch in the three story house near the church. that's her address. you can only go there when the tide is in or out or something. a nice lady though. (she's the one with the bag in the center of the frame looking at us.) i had never been on a train befor eireland. nor a cab. nor a double decker bus. in fact the only bus i had been on, i rode from mendocino ave to downtown. not very far at all. we waited an hour or so for our train then rode it back to kilkenny. it was a very pleasant ride and i got some nice shots of the scenery and stations. we hired a cab from the train station to our cottages then unloaded stuff again. i'm pretty sure that night we headed to waterford and did the family get-together thing
The next day was the wadding and we got dressed and up and around and such early. ern was on hair/makeup for the bride and bridesmaid. the wedding was at a small church 5 miles outside of iniostige. the church was older than bathrooms, as the closest one was back in town. plenty of bushes available though. the ceremony went off without a hitch and we all raced back into town for the reception @ the hotel located across from a castle. while racing back to the hotel we actually stopped off @ a pub for some drinks + chips. then the hotel thing.