curling? no HURLING

Part of the reason I took the early bus home to Cork from Dublin that Saturday was to go to a hurling match later that night. Hurling is a very Irish game that's kind of a combination of baseball, lacrosse, and field hockey. Here's a video for those who don't know what it is:

Honestly though, I still didn't know what was going on most of the time during the game. It really is an incredibly fast-paced game. I also can't believe they didn't used to be required to wear helmets. Because that's intelligent. Running around a field swinging heavy wooden sticks with no helmets....says the girl who plays rugby.

The game was Cork vs Tipperary and I think it was the county teams. I always get confused because there's Cork city teams and then Cork county teams. The crowd was extremely lively and had quite the plethora of, ah, "colorful" language at their disposal. According to Deborah (she brought us since it was an API event) that's usual and the crowd at this game was on it's good behavior. Cork did win in the end, but I shudder to think what the crowd would've been like if they hadn't. I kept having clips of the movie Green Street Hooligans going through my head for anyone who's seen the movie.

Speaking of games I also have a rugby game later this week (hopefully)! Our last one was cancelled because we didn't have enough players to travel but I'll keep yinz updated on how it goes!

How NOT to handle problems in hostels

So a few weeks ago, some friends back home at Pitt went off to a concert for a band called Walk the Moon:

and I LOVE that band, so I was more than a bit jealous. In trying to remind myself that I was in Ireland so I couldn't really complain about missing a concert in Pitt, I decided to see if the band had any international shows as often times artists do. Lo and behold, they were playing in Dublin on the 22nd. I nearly peed myself I was so excited. I seriously wanted to go so I determined that even if I couldn't find anyone else to go with me, I'd make the trek and go alone.

I soon realized that was ridiculous because lots of my friends here either knew of them and wanted to go as well, or just wanted to go for the sake fo going to a concert and Dublin. So I planned most everything from the tickets to the hostel and come Friday, we were on our merry way. There were 8 of us total, but we took different buses to Dublin since some people actually had class, since you know, that can unfortunately happen on Fridays.

Maggie and I headed up at the crack of dawn on the 8 o'clock bus and since it takes about 4 hours, we got there just in time to hunt down a place for lunch. I had 7 euro to my name so it was lucky we found a place with a lunch special for 7 euro.

So with full stomachs, and empty wallets in my case, we roamed about Dublin. Since I had been there already, we basically did whatever Maggie wanted to do and I added my two cents every now and then. I was actually surprised by how much I remembered from the walking tour we had when I was there with API.

Eventually we wore ourselves down, and made our way to check into the hostel before we had to meet the other part of our group. Now, I knew when booking online, that the hostel had separate dorms for males and females, which is very common in hostels and I knew it wouldn't be a problem for the two guys in our groups. When I was checking in, the guy at reception saw that we were a group of 8, so he offered for us to have an 8 person room all to ourselves and then wouldn't need to split. Thanking him, I accepted and Maggie and I went up to the room with the linens for 8 people. Our hostel provided linens, but you had to make your own bed. When we got to the room, it was actually for 10 people which we didn't think anything of. Maybe the guy at reception had a slip of mind.

We also blew off the fact that 4 of the beds had linens on them already. We didn't really know what to think of it so we did just that, didn't think about it. There was nothing else to indicate that someone else had been there or was going to stay there that night, especially considering we were told we had the room to ourselves.

Forgetting all about that, Maggie and I went on our merry way to meet up with the other who had arrived. We walked around for a bit and decided to get an early dinner at a famous fish and chips place:

The tour guide on my trip with API had recommended it, but none of us had a chance to go. The place is literally a hole in the wall and it's take-out only. You can only fit about 7 people inside before you run the risk of squishing your fish and chips. Maggie and I had passed a pub earlier that had an interesting "BYOF" rule. It encouraged students to "bring your own food" and you can just buy drinks there. Considering it was along the way back to the hostel, we decided to bring our fishies there. And boy was the food good. They gave you about an entire half of a fish in addition to probably 3 potatoes worth of fries. As much of a human garbage disposal as I can be sometimes, this was too much food for even me. It was so delicious, but we definitely could've split one order between two people.

At this point we needed to head back to the hostel so that the people who had just arrived could drop off their stuff and so that we could get ready for the concert. As seen in the picture before, it's a "thing" to have tribal-ish face paint at this concert, so being the prepared fans that we were, we arrived as the only ones with our faces painted. Eventually, some guy was walking around painting other people's faces, but he was very impressed that we came so prepared.

The concert itself was AWESOME and I will definitely go to more concerts if they're in the area when I get back to the states. It was also a really small venue and since they weren't as well known, it wasn't super crowded either.

And Walk the Moon themselves:

We even got pictures with them afterwards as we were leaving!

Maggie and I decided to head back to the hostel as we were pooped from walking so much and waking up early that morning while everyone else went to a pub in Temple Bar, which has a bunch of pubs and is probably pretty swinging at night.

I apologize in advance for how long this post will be, but here's where our hostel experience gets, hmmm, "interesting". I didn't hear anyone in our group come home since I was so tired and I expect they were trying to be courteous. What did wake me up were the 4 french girls who burst into the room talking loudly at about 5:30 in the morning. They stomped about the room, turned on the light, spoke/argued loudly in french for a minute or two, and then left. They woke most of us up, so now we just kind of stared confusedly at each other while still half-asleep and wondering what on earth had just happened. Eventually, we turned out the light that they had so courteously, left on for us, and tried to go back to sleep.

Not 5 minutes later, they were back, and they were louder, and they were angrier. They go up to the 4 beds they said they had reserved (only 3 had people in them) and started screaming at whoever was in it. Like, borderline pop-a-vein-in-your-forehead screaming. Now, at this point we're all still half-asleep, but you tend to wake up reeeeal fast when someone is standing ominously over your bed yelling at you to get out. They keep going on and on even though the bottom bunks are now vacated by a surprised Maggie and Ally. "Get out of my bed!" "I made this bed! It's mine!" "I didn't see YOU put the linens on the bed! OUT!" "I need to sleep! You're in MY bed! Up!"

I have never been more thankful for my experiences at summer camp. Specifically, the experience of being rudely woken up in the middle of the night to deal with other peoples' problems. I immediately spring into camp counselor mode and make sure no one is going to hit someone else because it could've easily escalated into something of that sort. I also stop anyone from undoing a bed and we all try to get the French girls to lower their voice to a more reasonable volume than banshee.

I see that they had brought someone from reception with them to prove that "these people STOLE our beds!" Completely disregarding the fact that all 8 people happen to have keys to the room and that there weren't physically enough beds in the room for everyone.

I feel bad for the guy though since he wasn't the one to check me in and obviously hadn't checked the french girls in either. He also didn't speak the best English, but he didn't need any language to tell that they were angry and we were confused.

Eventually both groups produced the slip of paper indicating what beds we were assigned and lo and behold, both said the same room, for the same night, and our bed numbers overlapped. What I thought was weird was that they were only overlapping by 2 beds so there should've been two spots open instead of just one. It was at that point in the night that the poor guy left to reception to try and sort things out. Realizing long ago that this was not the "8-person room we could have to ourselves", my slow-to-wake-up brain realized there were indeed 9 people sleeping in beds even though we were only a group of 8.

Yes, there was another random person in our room that we all had been too asleep to notice before now. I don't even remember if she was Irish, Australian, American, or something else, but she did thankfully speak English and she explained her story to us. She had checked in after Maggie and I had fallen asleep, came up to the room, and found someone's (Ally's) stuff all over the bed she was assigned. Realizing there must have been a mistake, she went to reception to tell them, but they just reassured her that it was her bed, so she came back, moved Ally's stuff to the floor, and went to bed.

Then it comes out that when the others in our group came back they had actually realized there was a stranger in Ally's bed. Being too tired to really care, Ally took one of the other open beds, thus why she was in one of the French girls' beds. Speaking of which, they all just sat there on Maggie's bed the whole time brooding and talking to each other in French not really bothering to join in on the conversation.

I decide to talk to them directly and they tell me "we really just want to go to bed since we have a flight to catch at 10 in the morning". I let that one slide and didn't ask why they were clearly out partying until 5:30 in the morning if they had a flight to catch at 10 and why they had even bother with a hostel if they were only going to get 1, maybe 2 hours of sleep. They also were grumbling about boys being allowed in the room when their friends who were boys hadn't been. That I was able to blow off completely on reception and I think it finally started to sink in to them that we were just as clueless as they were (only much less angry). One of them also finally apologized for waking us and said she finally realized it wasn't our fault after all.

Thankfully, I was able to hold back my colorful response to that last bit until the guy from reception came back. I mainly wanted to know if we were the ones that had to move, or if the french girls would be moving because honestly, all everyone wanted was to just go to sleep. He hands me 5 sets of linens (not 4) and is like "4 people have to move" to which I reply, "yes, but which 4? who is going?" and he just repeats "4 of you." Realizing I wasn't going to get anywhere with him, I turn to talk to the French girls. One walks right up to me, snatches the linens out of my arms and says "We will take the new room. We asked for one when we first went back down to reception anyway." Then they all leave acting as if they are doing us a favor for taking the new room because it's such a burden.

The guy from reception seeing that there has not been a fist fight of any sorts and that everyone now has a bed, scuttled away. Don't blame him. I wouldn't have wanted to deal with our situation either. We all just stand around looking at each other again repeatedly asking "What the HELL just happened?" Eventually we were able to calm down and go back to sleep.

Honestly, it was one of the the most ridiculous experiences I've ever had. Looking back on it, it's SO incredibly ridiculous I can't help but find the whole situation extremely hilarious. Thank god life skills learned at summer camp never go out of fashion.

I woke up earlier than everyone else as I was catching the 10 o'clock bus back to Cork while everyone else had planned on staying in Dublin for the day since they didn't have much time the day before. Turns out I got company from Maggie and Ally as they too wished to return to Cork earlier. After literally running to catch the bus on time, we finally were on our way back to Cork after a fun and truly bizarre two days in Dublin.

I'm on a boat aaand, it's (not) going fast aaand...

We didn't have much planned for our last day, Sunday, except for a tour of HMY Britannia. In lay people terms, that's the Queen's yacht that she took whenever going by sea. It was retired from use in '97 and now it's just docked for tours and the occasional get together for the royal fam. For it's only main purpose being to transport the Queen places, it's a pretty ridiculously huge ship. The Queen certainly has a royal posse like no other.

I think there were 5 floors that we were allowed to tour but I don't know if that was all the floors. Regardless, it a big ship.

The tour was actually a self-guided audio tour with the audio things looking like they were straight out of the 90's. Which, they probably were. I was probably the only one that actually listened to the audio thing most of the time considering I often found myself behind everyone scrambling to catch up and find people.

The yacht is actually ridiculous in the sheer amount of opulence that's on it and associated with it. They said they used to set up a swimming pool on the royal poop deck if the Queen or anyone wanted to go for a swim:

It's probably not actually called the royal poop deck but I'm just going to ignore that.

We saw this and were wondering for the longest time what the R was in the Queen's seal since it was one everything. Being the nerd I am, I looked it up as soon as I got back to Cork and it actually stands for "Regina" which means queen in Latin. Because you really couldn't have just put Queen Elizabeth.

And really, her name or "The Queen" is really plastered all over everything on the yacht.

Which I guess makes sense considering it's technically her boat.

I also was kind of expecting a lot of the rooms to be a lot smaller considering space is prime on boats in general. Some of them were positively Titanic in how big they were.

Their sitting room which is probably the size of the entire first floor of my house. They also have a nicer piano than I do at my house...jealous. At least we don't need to bolt our to the floor so it doesn't slide around our living room.

Another gigantic room was the dining room:

See now THIS is the size table we need for Baumann family functions. Then certain someones wouldn't need to be pushed to the "kids" table....again.

I also like how they folded their napkins in the shape of pope's hats:

All around the walls they had gifts and possessions displayed, and I got unacceptably excited when seeing this:

The item in question is at the very right. IT WAS A NARWHAL HORN.

My honest to god first thought upon seeing it was "oh my god...it's a unicorn horn! they ARE real!" But I guess a narwhal is kind of like the unicorn of the sea so it totally does count as a unicorn horn in my book.

Turns out later on that the space the royal family has is made up for in the space the crew does not have:

It's like summer camp all over again! Maybe it's because when the Queen was traveling she could sometimes take up to 5 tons of luggage. I don't think I own 5 tons of anything let alone luggage.

I mean, whenever travelling it's always important to bring the royal beer bong along:

I wish. This was actually in the crew's lounge room so the Queen probably wasn't shooting any beers back with this.

They did have some hands on stuff to keep the kids entertained and for once it wasn't me running to touch everything:

And as much as I poke fun at it, the whole thing was pretty cool. Once we were done we ate lunch in the huge mall that we had to walk through in order to get to the yacht in the first place. Then we were off to the airport back to Cork.

We got there around 2:30 as our flight was scheduled for 4:50. Just our luck though (or lack thereof), our flight was delayed 4 hours because of bad weather in Ireland. So now instead of wasting away for 2 hours in the airport, we got to waste away for 6. It brought back some not so good memories of when I once spent an entire day at the airport on the wait list trying to get a flightl. Thankfully, Aer Lingus was a bit more compassionate about our situation and gave us a meal voucher to use in the terminal.

This actually worked out perfectly because during our entire time in Scotland, we had yet to try haggis. Go ahead and make your disgusted faces, but I was truly curious even if it did have less savory sheep parts in it. Christine and I in particular were excited that we had one last chance to hunt it down. Eventually we found a restaurant in the terminal that served it. It was on the menu as "haggis, neeps, and tatties"which we finally figured out meant turnips and potatoes as side dishes. I got the whole she-bang despite not really caring for turnips all that much but I figured there was going to be weirder thing on the plate.

And of course someone had to snap a picture of my first bite:

It actually was pretty tasty and I would get it again. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised because the Scots wouldn't keep eating something if it was gross. Haggis actually has a lot of grains and spices mixed in with it so that's probably what made it stomach-able. Hardy har har I made a funny. But as you can probably see, our haggis wasn't encased in anything so it just kind of looked like the insides of a sausage. I even at the turnips which weren't as bad as I had anticipated either. It was a dish full of surprises.

After that we finally, finally, finally were able to leave for Cork. The flight back was the slightest bit better concerning my ears and being sick, but I'd still rather to never fly sick ever again. It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend a trip to Edinburgh for anyone who might be in the area in the future! And haggis. Try the haggis.

She sounds like she's in the movie Brave!

The next morning after our delicious breakfast (and muffin stealing), we headed off to the Scottish National Gallery. We were supposed to go to the portrait gallery, but it turns out that this was way closer and had better reviews from people that had gone.

It was pretty cool and what you'd expect from an art gallery. Some of the paintings were so big you could seriously have slumber parties on them. We spent most of the morning here since it was pretty big:

We then had a tour scheduled for the Mary King's Close. The close being the tight alley-like streets, however, as Edinburgh was expanding and new buildings were being put up way long ago, many of the closes were build over and the buildings used as foundation for the newer ones. That then left many underground chambers and tunnels of sorts all throughout the city. This one, the Mary King's Close, being a more well preserved/well-known one had tours.

Our tour guide was cool and "in character" as Mary's daughter, since Mary King was a real person. I noticed that that style of tour-giving was quite popular in Edinburgh as a lot of tour guides at the castle had kilts on. Also, their accents are magnificent! I only really ran into one of two people I couldn't understand but I think the Scottish accent is very entertaining to listen to.

Anyway back to the tour, it was really cool since a lot of the houses and the street were still open and just as they were when they were covered. They had some pretty creepy mannequins to complete the picture, but we weren't allowed to take photos. Honestly, it's probably for the better you're not seeing pictures of some them. Especially the ones that were supposed to have the plague.

After that tour we were turned loose on the city. There are lots of street performers about, one of which was a bagpiper complete with kilt!

It really completed the vision of Scotland to be walking down the street as "Scotland the Brave" was blaring. Probably the one song the piper hates the most.

We were allowed to wander about as we wanted, but none of us had really looked up stuff to do in advance. Deborah said that she was headed to the Optical Illusion Museum so we decided to tag along. She said one of her friends recommended it and turns out it was a total blast.

The museum is definitely geared towards kids which is PERFECT because I basically act like a three year old all the time anyway. It was 5 glorious floors of hands on optical illusion stuff. The first up was a hall of mirrors and I was totally doing well to start. Then I decided to go ahead of the group and on my way back to find them, I walked smack right into the wall. Go figure it would be me to walk into the wall. It seems to run in my family (grandma and the screen door, dad and the sliding door) and I'm just continuing the family tradition.

And look at how cool I'm playing it off! This was taken literally seconds after. And you have to admit, they're pretty clear mirrors so it'd be easy to think they're the right path...

After that we walked through one of those vortex things that makes you think you're sideways when you're actually not, and I fared much better on that one than the hall of mirrors. Christine not so much, as she was almost horizontally leaning on the railing.

The rest of the floors were fun things like hologram pictures, electricity tube/sphere things,

magic tricks,

 and other science-y related things with optics.

One of my favorite being the headless platter:

The top floor is actually the rooftop where you can go outside. They have super powerful telescopes and binoculars there so you can hardcore creep on people below. The actual building is near the castle so it's up high on the same hill and has a great view anyway. It was actually a bit weird at how powerful the telescopes were. I could read store signs that were probably a mile away and get reeeeal close to people walking below.

They also have something call a camera obscura which is like a big telescope. This one was fairly old but you view it in a dark room on a curved table and it actually looks like a movie playing on it the picture is so clear. It was kind of cloudy when we were in it but you could still see things really clearly. It has 360 view so the girl operating it gave a sort of "tour" of the big sites you could see in it.

Also, I just need to share with the world at how awesome their toilets were:

I actually want my toilet to be painted like this one day. They also had an apple one and I can't remember the what the third one was, but it was definitely painted another animal. The gift shop was cool and thank god I was pretty much out of cash at this point or else I would've spent a lot of my money there. I did almost cave and buy this book:

The whole store was a nerd's delight but this was pretty much the perfect example of the type of stuff they had. I feel like Tom and Maeve would appreciate this greatly. =)

We had seen signs the day before for a ghost tour of Edinburgh and bought tickets, so after the optical illusion museum, we didn't really know what to do in between then and the tour. We eventually met up with other people in our group and had tea time like true Brits would. How exciting.

We then just walked around a bit and looked for a place to eat. Along the way, we ran into more API people who were waiting for a tour themselves. API has programs all over Ireland in Cork, Galway, Limerick, and Dublin. Total we were probably 50 or 60 people so even though we didn't do much tour stuff together, it was bound to happen that we would run into each other. I was extremely jealous as they said they were going on a Harry Potter tour. My not-so-inner nerd got extremely excited and I even contemplated skipping dinner to go on the tour before the ghost tour we had later. Probably wisely, I decided to stick with dinner (I would've been cranky if I hadn't eaten) and we eventually found a pub with cheap enough food to not kill our wallets.

Afterwards, we had just enough time to walk the people who weren't taking the ghost tour that night back to the hotel...scaredy cats. The tour started kind of late at 9:45 since it was the "adult" version of the tour. I don't really see what was so different, but the tour was fantastic. Our tour guide was INCREDIBLE and got waaaay into the stories. She was a great story teller which, ya know, might come in handy on a tour where you are mostly just telling ghost stories. She also had the perfect balance of Scottish accent in that I could still understand what she said, but everything she said sounded extremely Scottish-y. She was honestly more excited about the tour than most people that had actually paid for it and dragged someone into playing parts in her stories every once in a while:

I think she was slicing Tommy's head off at this point in the story.

It was half above ground and half under ground in vaults of a covered up close:

If you weren't on edge before going down into the vaults, you definitely were by the time she was done and you were leaving.

When it finally ended we decided to go to a pub to hang out, but it turns out most of us couldn't get through more than one drink before nearly falling asleep at the table so we decided to finally head back to the hotel for the night.

There's sunshine in Scotland!

So since I'm terrible at keeping this thing up to date, this is about my trip to Edinburgh that was two weekends ago. Whoops.

Starting the weekend of the trip to the Ring of Kerry, I had developed a slight cough which turned into a full force cold the week before Scotland. Now for those who know me, I rarely ever get sick. It usually has to be something pretty drastic to make me feel miserable for days on end, so that being said, I was truly miserable with the cold straight from hell. I had hoped to be better by the weekend for Edinburgh, but because I tend to not have the best of luck, I was still sick come Friday. I obviously didn't let that stop me though because I had technically pain for the trip already. It was an API excursion that was included in the price I paid to API.

The point is, I strongly advise against flying whilst being so incredibly congested. I'm usually pretty good with my ears and the pressure changes, but that's when they're not blocked by all the loveliness that comes along with colds. Needless to say, it was not a happy flight for me. The silver-lining is that it was a propeller plane:

so I can check that off my bucket list!

Once we got there though, Edinburgh totally was worth the uncomfortable flight. Our hotel was pretty nice, my favorite parts being the shower I actually fit in (the ones in Cork are basically closets) and the HUGE buffet breakfast with delicious mini choco-chip muffins that I may or may not have stolen on several occasions for snacks.

We first visited the castle:

 which, ya know, is kinda hard to miss considering it's on top of a gigantic hill overlooking the whole city.

I was in favor of this being the next rock climbing experience rather than just the rock wall at the gym in Cork, but noooooo we need to be safe!

It actually turns out the the castle is the start of the main road in Edinburgh appropriately named the "Royal Mile". There's lots of touristy shops and over priced food places but it's a cool atmosphere with lots of good people watching:

 Especially when there's characters like this hanging about:

But let's face it, THIS is the real William Wallace anyway:

In all seriousness, William Wallace was actually a real person. Not so sure he was 7 feet tall or looked like Mel Gibson, but still real. I don't really know what he's famous for, but I can probably guarantee that Hollywood got it wrong.

But there's this big open area where people can take lots of pretty pictures so that's what we did:

As you can see, we had gorgeous weather. Unfortunately, we had basically spent a month and a half without seeing the sun all that much so it was a bit blinding for us:

 Well, at least for me it was.

We decided to find some place to eat first since we hadn't eaten since about 7 that morning before our flight. We also were introduced to Irn Bru which is the Scottish equivalent of Coke for the U.S.:

It wasn't anything like Coke, it was really sweet and although tasty, I'm not sure I could stomach more than one or two in a short amount of time.

After that we explored the very many different buildings of the castle and exhibits in them. They had things like, the Scottish crown jewels, a war memorial, one was an armory, another was a jail, and so on and so forth. We spent a lot of time just walking around too since it was a neat place:

Semi-group photo thanks to Tommy!

This was hands down the largest fireplace I have ever seen in my life. Of course my first thought when I saw it was "Now THIS is a fireplace you could floo in and out of!" for all you Harry Potter nerds who get the reference.

And of course cramming in as many silly pictures as possible since that's what we do:

And of course continuing the tradition of cheesy jumping pictures:

One gift shop totally took advantage of the whole William Wallace thing too which I found pretty hilarious:

Another popular gift shop item is anything having to do with highland cattle which are adorably hairy cows:

they have everything from children's books:

to hats!

Eventually, the castle was closing so we had to jet out of there lest we be trapped inside. The sun was setting at this point which made for some awesome pictures:

 We waited for about half an hour in the area to meet up with a tour guide who was giving us a historical tour of the Royal Mile. One of the first things she pointed out was this building:

which is thought to be the building that inspired Hogwarts in Harry Potter. I also realized what a bad HP fan I was at that point for not realizing that J.K. Rowling lived in Edinburgh for a while writing some of the series in a number of pubs in the city. 

Anyways, the tour was cool, but got a bit dull at the end. It also could be attributed to the fact that we were pooped from getting up so early that day and being super hungry since API apparently forgot to schedule in eating time. The one cool thing about it was all of the side streets that are in Edinburgh. They're technically called a "close" but they can range from a big 2-way street to a creepy alley that's barely big enough for my shoulders to fit. I kept saying how our tour guide could have lead us anywhere and we'd mindlessly follow because some of the alleyways she took us down I probably would've avoided at all cost on my own, but in the big group you just follow the person in front of you.

Our tour ended quite abruptly and our tour guide did not plan the tour to be a loop so all of a sudden she was like "Well that's the end! Bye!" and walked off home leaving us spinning in circles trying to find out where we were and where to go next. Thankfully, it was basically a straight line back to the castle so we didn't end up lost, but we were super hungry so we eventually hunted down a reasonable pub near our hotel for dinner. We technically had a free night and could go out if we wanted, but most of us just went back to the hotel and collapsed in bed for the next day.