Flamenco, Crafting, and Penthouses

My feet are wet... my backpack is wet.... I am covered in layers of grime... my hair is dreding like crazy to the point I'm tempted to cut it off... and here I am at a coffee/tapas bar in Kilkenny drinking really good coffee waiting on bruschetta! Hah! I'm still happy though - I am becoming one with the dirt. Or at least trying. I will take a shower the moment I can haha.

Just so you are not worrying about what happened to me, I was camping.

But I am once again behind on this, so I will recap starting on the third!

That morning I woke up and hung out with Ari, Lourdes and her man for a bit before going out to try and sell earrings at a "market" suggested by Sarah! It was called "Black Market", held at a community space. I was armed with a pillowcase and pillow to display my wares, so it looked a little odd walking down the street carrying a pillow.

I stopped into a bead store to pick up the last thing I was missing: chain nose pliers. Marco had every tool known to man in Montreal so I didn't need to buy any there, but if I had time at this place I was going to try making more :)

I found the place fairly easily (thank you Google Maps!). It was super cute! I really liked the space - very chill, very funky, lots of vintage clothes in old suitcases being sold for 2 euro. Someone found this perfect Saved by the Bell shirt I would have bought if I had seen it first. I sold three in a row pretty steadily, which made me pretty happy too. People were fixing bikes in the back in a sunny courtyard. All of a sudden there was food, so I made a donation and had a two course dinner! I was now stuffed, and extra happy.

It started getting cold though from this wind. The place I was in was only half protected so after sitting down for a couple hours I was starting to get chilly! They were going to put on a movie at 5 anyways so I left ten to.

It was a fair walk back. I was comtemplating doing something, but it was so tempting to not spend money after having made some. I also wanted to make more earrings since I had made one pair while there and was in design mode.

I made it a craft night. I sat there and made four or five new ones. Everyone ended up back at the house fairly early, and ended up chatting in a full living room for quite a while! Finn was due back that night, but no one was sure when he was due back. I had been able to stay in his room (which I was not expecting and was really nice of him) while he was gone.... which left where I was to Ari's friends (it was perfect timing actually), but now we had to find a new space just for the one night.

There was a little cozy area beside the living room that ended up being my little sleeping area.

I watched some deadwood and called it a night :)

I woke up and the wonderful Spanish people were gone! They had to catch a flight super early. If you haven't noticed already, I do not get up early.

I came out of my little cave and decided it was time to get some food from the store. I went out, came back, and started looking up stuff on the computer. I was starting to feel the desire to move on. I was looking at couchsurfing, hostels, and places to check out next! Pepe was going to play in Temple Bar, so I asked him to text me if Norah was there selling things... I was on the computer until I received a text saying yes she was there...

I grabbed my stuff to sell and went down. Norah was actually just about to leave in a couple minutes... She let me use her board to put my earrings on as well, so that was really nice! Solved the dilemma of figuring out how to attach my pillowcase to the iron gate. Yay! It was crappy that she had to leave, but the band was still playing so at least I wasn't bored.

For the first hour and a half almost no one even bothered to look over at the board. I was getting cold... it was almost time to pack it up and just go, but then a Brazilian girl bought two! That was nice; I got to leave feeling like I accomplished something. By then it was evening, and I had brought my computer with me as well in hopes of kicking back at an internet cafe. I had to deliver things back to Norah, but the phone was not connecting for some reason. I tried texting, calling, everything with no success.

I decided it would be best to stay in the city then until she had service or called me for her stuff. I started walking up the street to look for a cafe, when I ran into a Brazilian girl I had seen around at Shebeen Chic and Temple Bar :) She was about to go into Shebeen to talk about getting more shows there, so I joined her for that. She told me that the Globe has internet and coffee even though it's a bar. It's next door so that ended up being perfect - she walked me next door and hung out for a few minutes before taking off to go join the band drinking.

I ended up on the computer for hours there. I had so many pictures to edit - there were still a bunch from Montreal! It took forever, so Norah had lots of time to get back to me. She had said she'd be done around 8, but when 10-11 rolled around I began to wonder what I was going to do with her stuff!

She did call though, and came to pick up her stuff. I ended up staying there for at least another hour editing and researching places to stay on couchsurfing. Decisions decisions!

Eventually I was sick of editing photos and writing, so I took off and went home. I got in and I was told that the house was going to be crazy soon with two people moving in, and the living rooms were going to change! The kitchen had been taken on that day, and it looked like spring cleaning was commencing big time. It was going to be a little too nuts to house couchsurfers, so I started on a more serious couchsurfing endeavor that night!

I found a different place in Dublin by that morning, so when I woke up I started my own cleaning! It was a nice day out again, so I got to hang laundry up outside :)

Laundry took a while, so I had to wait before being able to pack things up. I went and continued to research places in Irleand to go to... there were so many, and I was ready to take on some countryside.

Eventually it was time to go! I got my backpack on, and headed out for this new house.

Unfortunately Google had shown me the wrong address. I had typed in the name of the building, but there was a street by that name so I went heading for that instead of where the house was. Turns out where I was supposed to go was very close to where I was, but this street I was walking towards was in the opposite direction haha. I had no map of the area I was going to (the lonely planet book only shows down to St Stephens Green nothing more southern!) so eventually I realized that it was taking wayyy too long to get there... so I called and eventually we got things sorted.

I ended up walking around with all my gear for close to an hour though, so I was sweaty and gross upon arrival. The place was amazing though! Huge new modern style penthouse with a wraparound balcony about the size of the ground floor of the last house! The inside was huge and smartly designed - when you walk in there is a hall area with doors leading everywhere, so if you are loud in the living room it has to go through two doors and the hall so the bedrooms are quiet. I was sharing a room with a guy from New York - he was very nice and let me have the bed and slept on the floor (he had been doing that already with a person that had just left too)! Everyone was just chilling in the living room area watching TV or on their computers. I was able to have a shower and relax :)

They showed me the British version of COPS: Road Wars. The accent made the show - you just can't sound intimidating when you pronounce bud like bood. I was entertained haha!

I was too tired to go out, plus it was Tuesday, so everyone just took it easy in the house that night. It was super pleasant to sleep on a bed :D