Adventures Overseas 6/16

These sixteen updates will be the condensed and often more erratic version of my adventures overseas, comprised of the updates that I sent home to my family at the time.

Author's Disclaimer: The following were written when I traveled overseas with my sister. They were the short and sweet version of what was going on in my daily journal. Often, I watered things down so that our parents wouldn't know how scared we really were or how bad a hostel really was. We didn't want to scare them. Also, I wrote these updates on my iPod, and in the interest of authenticity, I haven't edited or changed the formatting much. This may be less to do with authenticity and more to do with all those darn buttons I'd have to press if I edited it all. Anyway, there are plenty of little typos to go around I'm sure. I'm sorry. They bug me, too.

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Update 6: September 30, 2018 – SUNDAY

I guess I’m long overdue for an update, so here’s my excuse on that subject:

Sister and I are bad planners.

You know, it’s not even that we’re bad planners, really. We just don’t plan at all. Oh yeah. That does make us bad planners.

Anyway, I leave lots of pictures on Facebook, and I even wrote a song to update you all on our adventures, so you can’t say I haven’t been going above and beyond.

Oh my goodness last time I updated you, we were on our way to Edinburgh. What a different person I was all those eleven days ago.

So anyway, in Edinburgh we pretty much had one full day to look around at stuff. We got to our hostel late on the evening of the 19th, our shoes still very wet from our jaunt in Aviemore. Despite our repeated carelessness, God continues to watch over us very closely, so we’re basically invincible: we got to our hostel at 7:55 - in time to read the sign on the door that said it closed at 8:00 and to begin frantically rattling the doorknob before we saw the buzzer right in front of our noses. That made it about 8:00 by the time we actually made it inside. That’s right; it took us that long to do the complicated math involved with the 24-hour clock system here.

“20:00 hours? What’s that in English??”

We both used our fingers. It still took our combined efforts a couple of tries.

When we realized our situation, it was I who began scrabbling at the door like an animal and Sister who reached across me to hit the buzzer.

My actions may sound dumb, but someone came to the door just as she hit the buzzer, so it was clearly my clamour that did the trick.

Anyway, the point is, don’t fret for us; clearly someone with a greater capacity for safe travel is watching over us. If we aren’t solid proof of a higher power, I don’t know what is.

On our full day in Edinburgh, we paid a steep entry to get into Edinburgh castle. Pro tip: if you really want to see some old Crown Jewels or some war museum stuff, then go ahead and see Edinburgh castle (but go really early to beat the lines). However, if you are expecting a castle restored to look as it would have in medieval times, this one's not for you.

It wasn’t for us.

It was interesting, but not for us.

After that, we walked the Royal Mile, a stretch of road between said castle and Holyrood Palace, which is where the queen stays when she comes to Edinburgh. There are loads of touristy shops, street performers, and just general tartan things.

Our real goal was to get to Holyrood Park, where mountainous peaks boast an outstanding view of the city. With our disastrously soaked hike fresh in our minds (and our sore limbs), we thought we’d be okay with one of the smaller peaks. But once we got there, we got the familiar craze and felt the need to climb the highest one.

I’m glad we both suffer from a fear of missing out, because it was a really fun climb and a gorgeous view!

We did some more walking around after that, until it was pretty dark. We knew we’d have to leave early-ish in the morning to get the the airport way too early (as we do), so we scouted out a breakfast place between the hostel and the airport shuttle.

I’m going to fast forward now, to when we breakfasted at that place, because it’s my favourite part. Pappi’s it was called.

I had a waffle there.

A maple bacon waffle.

A dish with maple syrup lightly (but not too lightly) drizzled over crunchy-on-the-outside-warm-and-soft-on-the-inside waffles and about ten strips of crispy (but not too crispy) bacon.

It was the best waffle I’ve ever had. I won’t even apologize to all the people who have made me waffles before, because I know that if they’d had this waffle, they’d understand. This was the best one.

The only bad part is that I’ll never be able to fully enjoy another waffle. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still chase the waffle high; I just know I’ll never reach that waffle height.

Anyway, after that we continued with our mundane existence.

We got to the airport a few hours too early (fashionably early is a family trademark), and settled in to watch Netflix until our gate was announced. Pretty much as soon as the gate was announced, we ran to it, then it changed, then Sister thought she had time to run for an iced coffee like the one she jealously saw someone else drinking, then they were already letting people through. It was frightful. I had to consider what I would do without her when I boarded the plane and left her behind.

We both made it though, and landed in Dublin safely!

Customs takes longer than one would ever expect considering some guy in a booth, who looks bored out of his mind, just has to ask you, “How long you here for?” He doesn’t even wait for you to finish trailing off with a longer-than-necessary explanation because authority figures make you feel guilty; he just stamps your passport and looks pointedly in towards the next person.

After that, we bused to Newry, which is no longer in the Republic of Ireland, but is part of the UK: Northern Ireland.

If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is. We spent the next three days trying to work it out.

Sister’s friend from NET, Ellen, lives near Hilltown, Northern Ireland. Her parents run a B&B and were the most gracious hosts!

We stayed there over the next three days, and have discovered that it is REAL nice to just slow the pace and be shown around by a local for a while.

We got there on a Friday night, then Saturday, we went up to Belfast and got a Black Taxi Tour. That was a 10/10 would recommend. It was a 2-hour tour where the guide gave in depth information about the Northern Ireland Conflict (The Troubles), a war which only ended in 1998. Our cab driver took us around Belfast, mainly to some of the murals that were painted on the East and West sides of the wall, then to the wall itself.

At our first stop, the guide turned the cab off, got out, and walked around to our door.

“This is where we die,” whispered Ellen. She was joking.

I think.

He got in the back seat and sat in the backward-facing seat.

The tours are supposed to be two-sided; so that you can’t tell which side of the conflict the driver is on and you can decide for yourself. Not with this guy.

“Now I’m going to open by telling you that this will not be an unbiased tour,” he began. “I served time in prison from 1982 to 1986 for planting a bomb during the conflict. It was not a fake bomb, it was not just meant to scare; it was meant to kill people. It went off, but everyone had evacuated. So, fortunately,” he looked around at all of us. “- or unfortunately, no one was killed.”

I could feel my eyes getting wider and wider, and I tried to rein them in a bit as he passed us a laminated letter he had written to his mother while in prison.

Through the tour, the guide proved to be biased, as promised, but good natured. He was quite insulting towards the “other side,” joking that the two sides could easily be distinguished by observing whether they were good-looking or not. He told us some of the politics surrounding the conflict (though it’s still hard to grasp), and the brief sum of it all is that it was a dirty war that pitted neighbours against each other.

Anyway, it was a really neat tour, and obviously we weren’t killed, so I give it a 10/10 (but do it with friends).

On Sunday, we got the most Irish day possible. We started it out with Mass at the small local church. It took half an hour. There was no music, and the responses and prayers were said so fast, we had trouble keeping up. When it came time to go up for Communion, everyone just piled into the middle! We were terribly confused. Bamboozled, even.

We ended up just merging in there. I think the practice is to make eye contact, but we just went for it. I guess the Irish Catholics haven’t gotten over that fear of being discovered at Mass.

After Mass, we relaxed at the home base for a little while, then went to the town’s big Hurling match, an exciting sport that has nothing to do with what we would normally be referring to when we say ‘hurling’.

I won’t explain here, just look it up if you want to know the finer details. Suffice it to say that it is exciting to watch and it looks really fun.

Ellen’s brother was playing on the team, so we got pretty invested in the match, surrounded as we were by invested bystanders.

After the match, we had a free evening, so Ellen took us in to Newry and we watched a movie.

I though Ellen and I were on the same page when we agreed to watch the scary movie. I thought we were doing it because we would be brave and scare Sister.

What ended up happening was Ellen moved seats so that I was situated in between her and Sister. I had to be the brave one (I know; that’s a twist), while Ellen and Sister squeezed my arm and hand every time something scary happened, which was often.

Sister was right traumatized by the movie and was a bit of a head case when we had to walk anywhere for a while after that.

After we got back from the movie, we went for a night out in the town.

Since the local Hurling team had won the big match, there was quite the raucous party going on in the pub. With Ellen there to guide us, we actually had a lot of fun; half of it was observing the crazies around us, but it was nice to have a friend to go out to the pub with!

On Monday, we made our way back to Dublin, then on to Galway!

Galway held another planning day, which is always intensely stressful and frustrating. To make it a little less stressful in some ways, and a whole lot more stressful in others, we did a fun thing: WE RENTED A CAR!!!

We kind of toodled around Galway for Tuesday and Wednesday, getting sucked in to all the touristy shops and stressing about how to drive.

Then it was Thursday. Game day. Car pickup day.

The car rental guy looked pretty deadpan and strict, but we started talking about farmy stuff and had some nice conversation. I felt bad for the next customer in line, but we chatted for quite a while. As we were trying I walk out, he stopped us again for one final story. Then his friend came in and, as we were going out, he stopped us for another story. We got out after that, so hopefully that other customer got his business done.

The open road.

That is what I was anticipating.

In reality, Galway took a while to finally end, and when there were at last no more traffic circles (there are more traffic circles than intersections here. It’s not my favourite. Sometimes they just throw in a traffic circle to slow traffic down), there was a breathtakingly narrow road. Not breathtaking like beautiful. Breathtaking like a corset. I couldn’t breathe freely.

Despite the narrow roads and native drivers that whizz past like bats out of hell, it has been nice having a car. We can stop wherever we want, hike up any random hill we fancy, and, most importantly, when we have to pee, the world is our oyster (and trust me, it has been).

Driving on the opposite side has been a breeze. Honestly, left and right have never come naturally to me anyway, so making the switch was a no-brainer.

With the freedom of the car, we stopped in Burren National Park and climbed to the top of one of the limestone mountains there. It’s such neat terrain; it looks like a whole different planet. After that hike, we drive on to something called Poulnabrone, which is a little like Stonehenge, but it’s a lot smaller and is apparently older. I’ll let you do the research in that if you want to find out more.

When we researched these places to go, we didn’t realize the kind of roads we’d be dealing with. By “we’d be dealing with” I mean I did all the stressful driving while Sister was constantly telling me to breath as she gave me warnings of “shoulder!” whenever I got too close to her side.

The rules of the road on these narrow things are that you drive FULLY AT SPEED and whoever BACKS DOWN FIRST IS THE ONE TO THANK FOR YOUR SURVIVAL!!!

Well, it’s not quite like that. But it’s about as stressful. There are little pullouts every so often and there’s the understanding that whoever has a pull out closest to their side is the one that has to pull over and let the oncoming guy pass.

One time, I had a close pull out, which I can only assume the oncoming car knew because he was flying towards me, but I wasn’t at it yet, so I had to fly towards him just so that I could jerk into my pull out and screech to a halt in time for him to whizz by. I was reminded of the time that I ran towards a cow that was chasing me because she was blocking the nearest fence on which I could climb to safety.

That was when I was eleven. I haven’t changed much.

Anyway, my GPS (Global Positioning Sister) still can’t recognize when she’s navigating me into the sticks, so I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with the break-neck, risk-your-life roads. Honestly, the tight bends and switchbacks are pretty fun. I’ve never watched the Fast and Furious movies, but with my stick-shift rental, I feel pretty bomb. Like, I could definitely win a race in that thing. For sure. I’m that good at shifting.

I’m going way off topic here, but whatever....

Since my recently-discovered skill at driving a standard in the mountains of Ireland has really inflated my ego, I’m going to tell you something that will take me down a notch again. I’m really good at self-regulating my ego levels. I'm humble like that.

When I first started driving in Galway, I had the whole H-shift pattern thing figured, but sometime between there and a steep hill in Burren, I completely forgot that I’ve been driving a stick since I was quite young.

Since I was trying to climb this hill from a stop, I was obviously in first gear. First gear is painfully slow, though, so I tried shifting to second. It didn’t stall, but as soon as I let the clutch out, it was slowing down in a way that ensured it would stall soon. Back to first gear. Painfully slow. Try again. It refused again.

I ended up climbing the hill in first, rejoicing only in the fact that my GPS had taken me into the sticks again, so there was no line of cars behind me.

It was much later that day that I finally realized what I’d been doing wrong. I had been shifting as though it was a W shift pattern. Classic, am I right? I have no knowledge of a W shift existing, but it somehow felt right to shift up to first, then down, over, and back up to third. The poor car.

I amended my ways and have been shifting in an H pattern ever since.

Now where was I...

Cliffs of Moher. 10/10, would recommend. Just a really beautiful and iconic Irish sight to see. I’m not thrilled with how they soak you for parking, but they have done the thing properly: we drove up and down the farmland near the cliffs and there’s nowhere to park, so you have to drive into the lot and pay €8 PER PERSON IN THE CAR!!!

Highway robbery.

If you’re up for a hike, you could just walk in from the nearby village, but it was getting a bit late and we wanted to make another stop after the cliffs.

Our final stop was St Brigid’s Well. St Brigid is one of the patron saints of Ireland, but she’s a person rather steeped in myth and legend. Nevertheless, I think she’s a great one to ask for prayer intercessions, and she’s been my go-to for a few years now since I discovered she is the patron saint of cattle. Of course, I always assumed that meant the people who work with cattle. Maybe she’s actually rooting for the cows. Maybe that’s why I get chased so much??

I’ll have to deal with this faith crisis later.

Anyway, after that, we were back to the backroads to get to Ennis, where our hostel was. The Rowan Tree hostel was ‘class’, as the Irish say. Clean stuff is not a given at cheap hostels, but this place was clean! They even had free breakfast, and we sneaked a few scones away from it too.

Well worth the price.

In the morning, we started our journey to the Ring of Kerry.

I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t think my GPS took me on the official Ring of Kerry. Here’s another true fact: we are supposed to travel that area counter-clockwise (the main roads make loops into the area) to go with traffic, but we did not, because apparently we both have trouble distinguishing left from right. But that’s okay. We got to see BEAUTIFUL views in Kilarney National Park, and going against traffic meant that I could go slow and not have a line of big tour buses on my tail.

Halfway through the unofficial Ring that we made up, we stopped at a hostel for the night. Another class place, where our hostess gave us the extra homemade lasagna she had. It was the most delicious thing we’d ever tasted, having survived on chips and the three biscuits we spirited away from the hostel that morning until 9pm that night.

The next day, we wound our way out of that part of Kerry and onto the Dingle peninsula!

We stopped at a beach called Inch Beach, which is like a tiny peninsula off the peninsula of Dingle. It is a gorgeous beach, and much longer than its name suggests. There, we collected many shells, but I won’t describe them too much otherwise my family won’t be surprised when they get them for Christmas.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

After that, it was onward to Dingle!!

Our hostel here isn’t class like the other ones, but it’ll do just fine. We met some students from the University of Cork who were here for a weekend trip. There were two Germans and two Americans. No Corkians. We visited with them a bit, and it was nice to see people closer to our age in a hostel.

On Sunday, which was our first full day in Dingle, we went to Mass at St Mary’s church here in town. It’s a big, beautiful church, and the Mass was bilingual. Most of it was English, but a few parts were said in Gaelic. Honestly, it takes a bit to recognize what the people here say as English anyway, so we definitely have moments of trying to catch ourselves up.

After Mass, we drove up the road to a local fair we saw advertised. By advertised, I mean we saw a plywood sign, nailed to a telephone pole, on which was written, “Ballinclare Fair Sept 30”.

We checked it out, and it was about 10 little sheep trailers, out of which the sheep farmers would drag a struggling sheep and line it up with the other farmers and their disgruntled sheep just outside a town pub. The classes took about three minutes for the judge to go around, feel up some sheep, and toss a ribbon onto the sheep’s backs. After this, the farmers would drag their sheep back to the trailers and grab the next one.

It was bizarre, but kind of interesting.

We came home and chatted with our dearest parents and discovered that there is a seven, not eight hour time difference between us and them. This entire time overseas, I have been convinced that it was eight hours.

Anyway, after that, we went out to Eask Tower and hiked up the hill. There were nice views up there, but mostly we were killing time until our dinner reservation.

That’s right. We made a dinner reservation. Aren’t we classy?

It was at Out of the Blue seafood restaurant. From the outside, you would never suspect it to be the sort of place you’d have to make reservations at, but it is quite famous for having the best fresh seafood around.

The prices caused us to grimace, but I’ve always wanted to try fresh seafood, so we bit the bullet and ordered our food.

We shared a starter of Monkfish, then I had something called hake with prawns, and Sister had a fish trio of sea-bass, halibut, and... something else. It was, indeed, delicious. The prawns (shrimp) were the most notably different, being much sweeter and more tender than anything I’ve ever had. It was all gloriously delicious though. Just prime.

There. Now you’re updated!

My GPS is calling me now; I must go.