I have been adventuring around though - hopefully I will remember it.
I had made little point form notes for these days, so I should be able to recount early to mid may though yay!
Ok, so the 8th was the Mary Gibbons tour. It went around through a few places, and was definitely worth the money. At that point it was possibly the coolest thing I had done :)
The bus came and picked me up at 9:35am, so you can imagine that I was a little disoriented. It was sunny out though, so it woke me up. I also wasn't carrying my backpack, which usually is the case when I am up early (most of the time it's to catch buses etc).
The bus picked some more people up at hotels and drove through Dublin City on the way up to the Hill of Tara. Now one thing I liked about this right away was that Mary had started the tour in Dublin so while we drove I learned history and such that I would had to pay for on a Dublin tour! Score!
So up the bus goes into the countryside. It was beautiful! Rolling hills of patchwork greens. So nice. The actual Hill of Tara was quite interesting too - it was originally the "Royal site of the Irish High Kings, where 142 Kings were crowned."
It was a mound thing, looks cool from the air, but it also has a crazy view of "23 of Ireland's 32 counties." I read that from the brochure haha. On a sunny day you probably can. We got there in the sun, but it suddenly started to raaaiiiinnnnn like crazy so everyone ran for the bus.
I had satisfactorily absorbed the view before the crazy rain, so the weather was more amusing than anything, but I still ran for it.
The bus continued on a drive passing through Slane Villiage (saw Slane Castle where big concerts are put on every year! This year is Oasis),
Navan, River Boyne area,
and finally we ended at Newgrange. I really liked looking at all the small towns on the way, plus the river and valley.
Newgrange was a big tourist thing - you could tell by the visitor centre - complete with gift shop and overpriced cafe.
Since the tour was starting so early, I didn't have time to eat. I was starving at this point, so I ate at the cafe. There is a little shuttle bus that goes out to the burial site, but they are apparently Nazi's about punctuality so I went there early. Again it started to rain (it had stopped) but I was in the bus so whatever.
The site itself had a nice view as well! It was crazy to think I was looking at something 5000 years old - older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge! The rock wall bit had been rebuilt, and you could tell. But the rest was not rebuilt - and it was intense. The entrance stone had a trispiral on it, and there was another inside.
I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside, but for some reason I obeyed this. The Japanese girls in front of me didn't obey but they got caught haha. I wanted to though. The tomb itself had a narrow small passage to get through before getting into the chamber, and it's very easy to hit one's head. There's a hole above the door on the way in, but no it was not to crawl into an upper floor... it was for light to shine through. Yes, like the Mayan ruins I visited in Mexico, these people were marking Solstices with the Sun as well. This one is for Winter Solstice!
Trippy that two ancient civilizations both had the ability to make light shine through a hole once a year exactly on the longest/shortest days - without rulers, measuring equipment... all the stuff we would need basically.
It was rad! The roof was original - still held up after 5000 years with no mortar, nothin but technique and the earth mound on top of it! Apparently it has not even leaked in 5000 years. In Ireland. Impressive!
There was a little light show in the chamber to imitate what it would look like during solstice - so at one point we were all completely in pitch blackness in this little stone chamber. Oh yes something I thought was horrible/funny was the old school grafitti. You read it right. Before the tomb was taken by the heritage people, it was owned by one man, who found it on his land and let people check it out. They didn't know how old it was, so some of them had carved their names on the rock inside.
When I first heard this I was mortified. How could they be so stupid?! But then I saw it and there was stuff like "Andrew something-or-other 1902 or something really old. Then it was still horrible, but a little funny. Trying to picture old school hooligans tagging rocks (possibly in those poofy old British pants or the like) made me laugh a little, so it made it okay. It didn't really take away from the impressiveness of the passage tomb.
The drive back I experienced Narcolepsy. I wanted to hear her talk, and the bits I heard while drifting through consciousness were interesting, but I physically could not stay awake. I got off the bus sleepy and slightly confused. I managed to make it to the Indian Embassy on my way back before it closed, but that did not help my confusion.
I am going to take care of that when I am in the UK. Ugh.
That night was Antonio's going away party. It was at Shebeen chich, which was good cause I was curious if the bartender that forced salsa upon me was working. He was, and apologized. Everyone else that worked at the bar seemed to remember this event more than me, which was nice but at the same time made me wonder if I was making a bigger ass of myself than I thought? Oh well, nobody seemed mad. They wanted me to dance again lol.
The night was fun, I talked to people, drank beer, listened to music... you know, the usual. It was fun! People were leaving for a house party, but I was not feeling like leaving quite yet. It gave me a chance to sit at the bar and talk to the bartenders which is what I did, plus some regular. I suppose since I was talking to this regular, I was allowed to stay after close. Everyone ended up meeting downstairs. The cute bartender left early which was disappointing, but the night was still tons of fun, and once I started getting sleepy myself I walked back quite happy!
The next day was also a tourist day. Carolina, Anibal, Dan, Ola and I all went to the Guinness Storehouse! It was a lot more fun being in a group... and we discovered a few things that I probably would not have noticed on my own...
a) if it's busy and you look determined, you can have way more than just one little sample taster. We all had at least three and no one stopped us haha.
b) you probably don't even have to pay to get in. We did, but after getting in realized how easy it would me. You see, when you walk in you can just say you want to just look at the giant gift shop, and then once you're in just attach yourself to the mass amount of people starting the tour from right beside the gift store. Nobody looks at your ticket except to get your free guinness at the end, so if you just buy one you can save a few euros.
In our case we got extra benefits! Not only did we take advantage of numerous tasters, Carolina and I also got extra free beer! Turns out I had messaged a couple people on couchsurfing that worked there when I was looking for a new place, and I recognized one at the gravity bar! He recognized me when I approached him, and gave me another free beer! Yay! Turns out Carolina had met someone that worked there as well, and when she asked him about this guy turns out they were related (can't remember how though)! Small world!
Through some sort of mild miscommunication, the subject of stealing the glasses had come up. I had not considered this, but at this point I was tipsy (hadn't eaten much) and it sounded grand. It was too easy - just went into the washroom, finished it off, washed it out, and into the purse it went. Carolina also got a couple!
I think we got our money's worth hahahaha!
Food was next on the list. I was starving again - something that subway fixed. We then went to meet Dan and friends at Temple Bar Pub. Since we were passing into Temple Bar though, I ran into Pepe and the band! I smoked with them, which turned out to be a bad idea because I was not able to be very social at the bar. Oh well, at least I was happy haha. Lots of stuff to look at there. The place was packed, and I saw people dressed as Romans with some dude in red sparkly spandex. Oh I was entertained!
After a couple hours I started feeling normal again... the beer helped haha. People were moving on to another bar, so off we all went (we absorbed more people from Temple Bar haha)! This place was not as much my scene since there were too many miniskrts and heavily made up faces, but we were mostly outside on the patio thing anyways so it was easily avoided. I was burning out though, so I got tired early.
and that was that!
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