My Holiday

Friday night, after the group, Kate and I got dressed up and headed out to Dublin. We were definitely ready for some good times and a little bit of separation from the house and Malahide. We planned to sing 80s karaoke, but the place was completely dead when we got there, so we ventured out to the Temple Bar area, which was bound to be active. We were not disappointed! Every bar was packed with people, and the streets were alive and buzzing with people. We wandered around for a bit and just enjoyed the atmosphere. There was a band performing on the street and people in the crowd were eager to dance to the jazzy Spanish music. We made it into a few pubs and had a lot of fun just the two of us. We ended up in a bar that was crazy packed! Within two minutes we had several drink offers and a couple of weird guys trying to dance around Kate. I think his goal was to impress, but because of the alcohol intake (I hope it was that and not just his dancing skills) the result was far from impressive. We met a lot of different people, including an Elvis impersonator who tried to convince us that he was the real Elvis! Amazing... :) We left shortly after that, feeling the positive effects of Operation De-Stress.

Early Saturday morning, Gabriele, May, Kate, Erin, and I headed out on our five day holiday. (I'm in Ireland now, so I have "holidays" not "vacations". :) ) Were were all excited to get on the bus and head out to the west coast to Donegal, our first destination. There was music and excitement coming from the diamond in the center of Donegal Town as the bus pulled up to the station. We instantly smiled as we heard the Macarena playing while 5 dancers dressed as animals showed off their moves. There was a festival going on during the two days we were there, which was amazing. There were a lot of events and concerts to participate in and it was all free of charge. After we wandered around a bit, we made the 1 km walk to our hostel. We quickly settled in and went right back out again to join in on the festivities. Kate had been talking about fish and chips before we even left that morning, so we were all craving it desperately by the time we made it to Mama's Kitchen. After the delicious meal, we walked around the diamond inspecting all of the pubs that enveloped it, occasionally stopping inside the diamond to listen to a band. The Olde Castle Pub was my favorite, not only because of it's charm and warm atmosphere, but because that was where we met Leo. About two minutes after we sat down, a very drunk man in his early thirties stumbled up to the table, put a little booklet on the table, and asked, "Do any of you read English?" Amused, we all answered him, "Yes." He asked May to read one of the poems aloud. It didn't take us long to figure out the dirty content of the little booklet of poems, and we all began to laugh and joke with our new friend Leo. He asked us if we wanted drinks and I wasn't to shy to give him my order of Guinness and Kate's order of whiskey and club soda. His brother came up to the table and said, "What are you doing? Am I gonna have to pay for all of their drinks??" They had a somewhat private, drunken argument about it and then came back with drinks for us all! Before Leo left, he tried to kiss us all on the cheek, even Gabriele! Leo wasn't taking the rejection from Gabriele very well, and Lele had to tell Leo that he had a boyfriend back home. It was probably one of my Top 3 favorite moments from the entire trip! Nothing else too memorable happened that night. We made it back to the hostel by 2am and woke up early the next morning for more adventures.

Erin left us that morning to head over to Sligo a day early. The rest of us wanted a second day in Donegal, so we split up. I went to Mass and met up with the others in the Abbey Hotel lobby. We hid from the rain and read our books until the sun decided to show it's face again. There was a few fun performances in the diamond, including a band that played the drums while on stilts! It was amazing!!! The Donegal Castle was on all of our to-do lists for that day. It was the first time I've ever been inside a castle! I was not disappointed as we walked inside. The tour was short because it was a very small castle. After the tour, we walked over to the water and waited for our waterbus ride! Before we got on the boat, we saw the ruins of an old abbey not too far off, and we spent our extra time there exploring it. I can't really describe the beauty, but I posted pictures of it on Facebook. I feel like even the pictures only capture a fraction of the real view that I get from being here. But it's the best I can do! The waterbus tour was very fun, and the captain had interesting information for us about several spots along the riverbank. Unfortunately for you, I can't remember any of it! By the time we got done with the boat ride, we were all starving! After much debate on what to eat, we settled on trying out an Indian restaurant. I was slightly apprehensive but pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. The rest of the night was quiet because we were all so tired! After a few more concerts in the diamond we all headed back to get sleep before our departure early the next morning.

We arrived in Sligo in the late morning. Erin met up with us at the bus station and we walked less than a block to The Railroad Hostel. Sligo Town was not very exciting, but it had a quiet charm that agreed with me. Our next plan was to go out to the tombs in Carrowmore. It is the largest megalithic cemetery and one of the four large ones in Ireland. There is much I could say about it, but I'll leave it up to Wikipedia to anyone who might be interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrowmore The coolest thing about it was that there were tombs there dated back 6,000 years! It is really hard to comprehend just how old that really is. After we spent some time there, Kate wanted to walk up to the tomb of Queen Maeve. I wasn't really that interested in it, but everyone else was so I decided to go along. We walked an hour to the foot of the mountain. I am not really used to hiking, not to mention I hate it, so I wasn't thrilled about going up a mountain. There was a rocky "path" that lead the way, and I was really not enjoying myself. After about a half hour of walking up the steep rocky trail, I decided it was enough for me. I am not in the shape that the others are and I didn't even really care about seeing Queen Maeve's tomb anyways. So I stopped and enjoyed the spectacular view that I was too annoyed to even notice previously. I even called my mom from that spot! It's amazing that I have one bar of reception in my home in Malahide, but on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere I had full bars! It turns out that there wasn't much more to go because the others came back to where I was only about 20 minutes later. I felt much better after my rest, and then soon realized it was a good thing I did! After we got down the mountain, we had to walk another 3 miles to the nearest town to get a taxi back to Sligo Town!! By the time we got there I was so happy that I didn't have to walk anymore! We were all starving, but we had bought food at the grocery store earlier so we were able to be lazy in the hostel for a while. The friendly hostel owner Sean informed us that there was live traditional music playing at a nearby pub, and we all were excited at the thought of drinking a pint and listening to local music. The band was really good and they even took May's request for Galway Girl. (One of my new favorites now!)

The next morning, we walked around Sligo Town. The highlights included The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and the old Sligo Abbey ruins. (No matter how many abbey ruins I see, I never get sick of them!) May, Lele, and Erin headed back to Malahide that afternoon, but Kate and I stayed behind. I'm so glad we did! We had dinner and relaxed while reading our books. I started Gone With the Wind on the day we left for Donegal and I hadn't had much of a chance to read until that afternoon with Kate. It was nice to get deeper into it. I love it so far! Anyways, Kate and I left the hostel around half nine to go to a bar that advertised Tuesday night Karaoke. It didn't take long for us to figure out that the party hadn't started yet. There was no one to be found except for the tired and bored looking bartender. He let us know that it wouldn't start until half ten. So we went to find a different pub to hang out in and waste some time. I wasn't too sure about the place we decided on as we walked in and saw 10 faces starting up at us. Everyone there was at least 60 years old! The bartender however, was in his late 20s and very cute! So we sat down and ordered our drinks. An older gentleman came up and told us that the young bartender was his son and asked us what we thought of him. Glenn, the bartender, sheepishly looked up and informed us that this older man was not his father. It was so funny! Kate and I spent some time talking to Glenn and told him that he should come over to the other bar when he was done and sing karaoke with us. On the way out we were stopped by the older gentleman we met earlier. He and his girlfriend were very sweet and very funny people. He tried to quiz us on American history! Then his girlfriend shouted, "Shut up! These girls don't want to hear you talk about that!" It was great! The other bar was packed by the time we got there. We were instantly greeted by the people inside and offered drinks. It was quite the welcome! Kate and I have previously shared a deep love of Neil Diamond, so it was very appropriate that we should sing my favorite of his, "Forever in Blue Jeans." It is needless to say that we were both tipsy and it is impossible that we sang in tune, but that didn't stop everyone from cheering us on and giving us a huge applause at the end! It was my number one favorite moment from the trip. Hands down. The bar closed a little after our song and the guys asked us to go to a club with them. But Kate had the good sense to say no, and we made our escape back to the hostel. It was late and we were scheduled to leave the hostel at half ten the next morning. I later thanked her for stopping us from being out later than 2am! We left the Sligo at half eleven the next day, feeling very satisfied with our trip and sad to go back to "reality". It's only fair to put quotes on that because I feel like even my reality is still a fun adventure.

Today was filled with chores and meetings. We have a large group that begins tomorrow. It is the same format as a regular group, but we have volunteers and members coming up from Cork and staying here in Malahide. We will have this house and the house in Swords filled with people, as well as a local bed and breakfast. I will be in the bed and breakfast with people from Cork. I won't know anyone there, so I am excited to meet other volunteers and members from another area.

I'm not sure if any of you actually made it through this massive update, but if you did, I love and miss you! More to come after the group!

Love,
Claire