Drunken Debauchery in Cork and Miraculous Arrival in Killarney

okay i am SO BEHIND, I will try to type in as much as possible here, but oh man it is just getting harder and harder....

so this day I went hunting for jewelery display things for my earrings, to no avail. The computer rooms were also closed, but I ran into a couple people from the night before which was cool!

I walked about, and while walking was texted an invite to a garden party for the African Festival weekend celebrations! This sounded appealing, so I grabbed my hula hoops and headed out, thinking it was an actual garden...

of course this is Ireland, so it was a beer garden... however it was PACKED and I could barely get outside with my hoops! I managed to squeeze in and met Aidan. Now, Benny was coming back that evening, and had told me also via text that there was going to be 3 Croatian girls staying over as well tonight, so I wasn't all confused when people came over. Guess who were sitting in the beer garden!

This ended up working out perfectly, because they managed to grab the key from me and put their stuff in the house :) Meanwhile there was live music and live African dance performance going on, so that was cool to watch. There were also lots of African children running around the bar, something that you would not see back home...

They found the hula hoops

They almost broke them they went so crazy! There were a few that were much nicer to them, but some had no concept that it could break, and I had to supervise constantly to make sure they stayed intact.






They noticed my tattoo as well and one girl pulled the back of my halter down to look, but pulled so far she was grabbing my skirt and stockings too! The kids thought this was funny, and kept yanking... then one of them put her finger at the very top of my bum and said "I can see your bum!!!" It was entertaining but again at one point my shirt had made a slight ripping noise and I had to check that nothing had actually ripped...

After a while I had to take them away... and that was interesting. One kid actually held on for dear life, and I could not get him to let go before having to raise it up higher than him! It was intense!

The music went away, and most of the people did with it. We had a decent amount of people shown up at this point (minus the girls and Benny) so we stuck around and had a couple more pints!





I ended up hula hooping in the beer garden by demand... and then another girl brought poi which was wicked! We have a couple pics and vids of this:










I was not going toO crazy as you can see, since I'd had a few.





Next we were off to meet with Benny and stuff...I think. I remember going to one of the bars I'd ended up in the last time I was out with Ben, but I can't remember the name of it or if there was another one in between.

I do remember that I ended up attempting hula hooping in this bar as well; I am surprised that I didn't knock anything over in my state! There was a BBQ outside and I was eating a burger when my hula hoop came out of the bar in a broken state.

Aidan had been trying to hula hoop and the thing broke. Ahhhhh. The kids had warmed it up, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back! He felt so bad that he gave me 25 euro to buy a new one (which I LOST THAT NIGHT OH I WAS SO MAD AT MYSELF THE NEXT DAY!). I remember eating two burgers on two separate occasions so I was definitely feeling it. Don't remember taking this but Ben recognized the wall somehow when I showed him the next day hahahaha.


Ben and Anita and friends and I all walked home together, and I guess the burger saved me because I woke up okay! I was also impressed that I remembered my antibiotics, which kind of explained why I ended up so bloody drunk.

I was feeling like I had done Cork properly by now, and was looking at going to either west cork or Killarney next. I looked some stuff up online, and went to do a couple things while I thought about it. The jewelery place was not open when it should have been. It was a fair walk away, so by the time I got back Ben was on the computers again so I joined him and ended up booking two nights in a hostel in Killarney, and a bus ticket for the next day. There were very few couchsurfers in the places I was interested in, since they were rather remote and not very populated....

This was going to be the first hostel since that one night in New Orleans! Crazy! I went back to the house I think, and packed up my stuff. I remember laundry being a last minute thing, but it worked out. I tried to watch a German movie I had put on my computer in Montreal, but I fell asleep before it was over.

Benny gave me knodles (its the wrong spelling, its in German and I don't know where the accents are on this keyboard) for the hostel. It was very sweet. I had all my stuff, so I walked to the bus stop and off I went!

The bus ride was nice, not too long. I had booked at a hostel that was apparently RIGHT beside the bus and train station, aptly named railway hostel, so I only had to really walk across the street and there I was!

The hostel was clean, and it had a maaaaassive kitchen. At the time when I checked in, I was the only person in my ten bed mixed dorm! They also sold discount tours for the Ring of Kerry, which is what I was there to see (along with the national park).

I tried these knodles. They were weird, but yummy.

Decided I still had time so I took a walk around the city. I was only there for two nights, and tomorrow was going to be the Ring of Kerry, so when I got to the park I decided to wander that too. This was my one evening to do it.

I got a few pictures in, but unfortunately (for you) my camera died along the walk.







here I tried to steal a photo... see if that helps...


It was the most beautiful park I had ever been in - and that's saying a lot! I had a moment where I started breathing different because I was so affected by what I was seeing. I was walking towards Ross Castle and this guy turned around and told me that the other route was longer but much nicer, and wow was he ever right. I coudn't believe how pretty it was; it was feeling the closest to awe I'd ever felt and I have to admit it was quite a moment for me.

I was higher than happy. I had also bought a 3 euro plain grey t shirt and a pair of sunglasses from Penny's (I had lost my sunglasses as well as the 25 euro that night) and the colour of the shades were kind of like my old aviators. The old aviators used to make everything kind of look like sunset, or a duster movie, and these were doing something too... it took out a lot of the blue in stuff. Taking off the glasses for a second it didn't quite look as nice, but it was still unbelievable. I was so happy I went.

I walked for aaaaages until my feet were starting to complain and the light was starting to go. I walked by a Tesco and bought food for the tour tomorrow. I went online after that, made dinner, stayed online... talked to some people in the lobby thing and ended up being given this crazy veggie curry dish from these two guys from the States! It was pretty cool. I was invited out by these two girls, but I was tired and I had to get up early for this tour, so I ended up staying in and just going to bed early.

Tomorrow was the Ring of Kerry!