BLAGGINGZ
Right. So... more travelblag. Been doing the hostel thing, which has meant that intarweb access has been patchy (though, srsly, hotels and b&bs are pretty damn bad with the intarweb thing, too), so if any of you are actually interested, apologies for the lack of posting. Bah.
THURSDAY 9TH OCTOBER -- GALWAY
So the weather was no better, like, at all, and I wandered around Limerick for an hour or so in the morning but as it seems to be pretty much a stock standard big city, I didn't find anything interesting, other than FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE WANTING ME TO DONATE MONEY WHEN I DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY ON ME (ya rly). So, feeling ridiculously selfish and uncharitable (damn guilt!) I went and bought myself a new one of those ipod-radio-tuner things because the old one doesn't actually work on my model of ipod (should totally have checked that, uh, yeah) and headed off, listening mainly to Depeche Mode and audiofic, which made the journey far more entertaining and less miserable than it might otherwise have been.
Stopped in at Bunratty Castle on the way, which was cool, but where I got a ridiculous number of odd looks both for (I think) being there on my own, being under age 60, and not having a waterproof jacket (or, indeed, not wearing a coat of any kind. Bah. They were already packed and I so couldn't be bothered. It's actually not that cold here, even in the rain, surprisingly. Did I mention it was totally raining, like EVERY OTHER DAY ZOMG.) But yeah, it was quite a cool recreation of an old-fashioned village thing, and it had a castle, which was also mildly cool, with a big square tower and those things on top that I can't remember what they're called. Battlements? *is lame*
Made it to Galway, where I promptly got ridiculously lost, and by the time I'd found where I needed to be, it was absolutely pouring with rain. So, naturally, some part of my brain had decided that it was important that I go and check in to the hostel before I took my backpack out, so I actually ended up making like 3 trips back to the car from the hostel, by which time I was kind of soggy.
Once I'd checked in, it was kind of too late to do or see much, so I went out for a quick wander, just to see what was in the general area, and to find somewhere for dinner. Managed to get slightly lost again, even with the map they gave me, because it was raining so ridiculously that the map kind of turned into paper mache. Which was such a help! And I'd managed to leave my umbrella in the car.
Eventually found a pub to have dinner in, which was nice (not least because it was, like, dry), and at one point this man came up to me and mentioned that he thought it was good that I'd managed to dry off, because he'd seen me earlier and I was really rather soaked. Really. :)
Ahh. But the hostel was good. Clean, warm, relatively safe. Internet-ed. All the important things. Did I mention clean? Even the bathrooms. Ahh. i didn't even mind sleeping on the top bunk in a mixed dorm of 8 people. *is RLY too old to be amused by top bunks*
FRIDAY 10TH OCTOBER -- DERRY
Wandered around Galway for a couple of hours in the morning. Still raining, so I just wandered around the main... square... thing, then across the river and stuff. Apparently there would have been millions of salmons in the river at, like, any other time of year, but, y'know. Meh.
Headed off for Derry around lunchtime and promptly got quite lost, which was great, as it was quite a long way and I'd hoped to, like, actually see some of it tonight. *sigh* Finally made it in around 6, found a carpark and trudged up the most enormousest hill evar in this utterly deserted kind of dodgy area, carrying my really rather heavy backpack, DID I MENTION IT WAS RAINING, so I imagine I looked quite a sight when I knocked on the door. The hostel was this hippy hostel, with all Indian décor and cushions on the floor (but, like, no seats. Awesome.) and everyone there was Australian. Seriously. I don't think I met a single Australian in Wales, but every single person you meet in a hostel here seems to be Australian. I think Ireland has party-country reputation. (And did I mention how much I totally don't like Aussie backpackers? I don't care if I'm technically counted among them. Bah) So I wandered down to the Tesco and made myself some dinner, because I can't believe how hard it is to eat healthily here, zomg, and went to bed. Awesome. *snore*
SATURDAY 11TH OCTOBER -- BELFAST
Got up early (seriously not an easy thing to do in a hostel when EVERYONE SLEEPS IN UNTIL LIKE 10AM EVERY DAY) and headed down to the Bogside area, where I saw the Free Derry wall and the murals and the Bloody Sunday monument, and then went on a walking tour with a guy who hinted strongly that he'd been in the IRA, and who was actually at the Bloody Sunday thing, and who'd been in one of those English internment prisons for a few years. He was pretty upfront that his version of the history was going to be very biased, but it was still pretty amazing. It's kind of hard to believe how recent everything was. I find it a bit odd being a tourist in these sorts of places, because there are still heaps of people who live there now who went through all that stuff, and it's a bit... not disrespectful, but, yeah. Not sure exactly what I mean, but it feels a bit too recent to be a proper touristy thing. Hmph.
Wandered back up the hill into town, then did a quick circuit around the city walls, which were quite cool, but which looked more like a really wide road than anything else. *shrug* Kind of... over.. the whole castles-and-churches-and-city-walls thing by this point. There's a limit to how many you can actually find interesting.
Headed off around 1 o'clock around the North Antrim coastal road thing, which is kind of ridiculously spectacular, and which meant that I probably broke all sorts of laws taking random photos through the windscreen as I drove, and ended up at the Giant's Causeway. Which is exactly where you want to be at 3pm on a Saturday, especially when it's the first non-raining day in a week. MILLIONS of people. But still mighty cool. Yay, hexagons. Or something.
Made it into Belfast at a vaguely respectable hour, and had a night in at the hostel, as the sleazy people-who-do-some-cleaning-for-free-accommodation hostel people all seemed intent on dragging everyone out drinking. And they really were kind of icky, and I didn't like them, so I didn't want to go.
SUNDAY 12TH OCTOBER -- DUBLIN
Wandered down from the hostel through a slightly dodgy area to look for some of the Protestant murals that I'd heard were around there (having seen a whole heap of Catholic ones in Derry), and randomly ran into some fellow who was extremely eager to show me a whole lot of them and explain the history, which was actually quite cool. They're way more... militaristic... than the catholic ones, and I'm sure it's got to do with
Because there just wasn't enough time left and I really wanted to see lots of stuff as well as make it to Dublin at a decent hour, I jumped on one of those open-top tour buses and did the entire circuit, which let me cram in the Titanic shipyard and the other murals and the peace wall (srsly, they totally still have a big wall down the middle of the city, like, to stop people fighting and stuff). But apparently things have really improved here in the last few years. It's really hard to believe that the “troubles” only really ended five or so years ago.
Managed to, like, not arrive in Dublin at a particularly decent hour, so I parked in some carpark that was totally about to close and eventually found the hostel, which was quite central, but which was in a pretty seedy area of lots of dodgy hostels, including another branch of the horrible one I'd stayed in last night in Belfast. Ugh. But my one was good, because it was totally attached to a proper hotel, so it had all those facilities and proper breakfasts and stuff, and was clean (omg, awesome).
MONDAY 13TH OCTOBER -- DUBLIN
Got up bright and early to drop off the car, which was awesome fun, as every single road that I'd planned to drive down on my several carefully planned contingency routes was not allowed (gah, one way systems FTL), then made it back to the hostel to collect all the stuff I needed to post home (and which I didn't feel like lugging onto the ferry tomorrow), but managed to thwart that plan by misjudging the number of stairs (in my defence, it was dark, there was a black door right next to them, and the carpet was a really dark green and it totally looked like there shouldn't have been any more steps. Bah.) and totally twisting my ankle, kind of badly. Which sucked, though it could have been worse. So I managed to hobble to the bed and sit there for a while reading the new (uncharacteristically awesome) Torchwood novels (omg, SO MUCH Janto FTW... and I totally can't believe I just used a portmanteau ship name... *wipes everyone's memory*).
Eventually made it back out-and-about, and hobbled down to the post office, which totally counts as a legitimate tourist destination, because it's, like, old and stuff, and things happened there with rebels and stuff. Had planned to do a ridiculous amount of shopping and sightseeing today, but instead I just opted for another open-topped tourist bus tour. Which, incidentally, is NOT a good idea when you've forgotten to bring a jacket. I was seriously frozen by the end of it. Also, all my photos are either blurred, only catch half of the thing I'm photographing, or have the back of a middle-aged American tourist's head in them. Which will make for an excellent album, I'm sure. Do people even do photoalbums anymore? [/tangent]
Anyway, by the time that was over, I thought I should actually, like, wander over to Temple Bar (a little maze of cobbled lanes and shops and pubs and stuff, which is both really cool and really, really full of tourists), so I explored that for a while, and when the shops started closing, I ducked down to Forbidden Planet, and may have indulged in a few geeky purchases, possibly including a Captain Jack doll (heheh, maybe I'll get Barrowman to sign it!) and a Doctor Who plastic fobwatch toy. Bah. Don't judge me! Oh, and maaaaybe a book with the scripts from series 1, for, like, legitimate research purposes... *cough*
On the way back to the hostel, finally got around to having dinner in a “traditional” (if a little touristy) Irish pub. Quite tasty, or at least better than it looks in the photo :P
Mmm. Beerbeerbeerbedbedbed!
But yes. Quite sad to be leaving Ireland, actually (though, back to Wales, yay). Everyone is so unbelievably friendly, even in the big cities. It's just awesome. I'm so coming back here and, like, spending a decent amount of time in each place.
Travel Blag : Twitter : Flickr : Google Map
THURSDAY 9TH OCTOBER -- GALWAY
So the weather was no better, like, at all, and I wandered around Limerick for an hour or so in the morning but as it seems to be pretty much a stock standard big city, I didn't find anything interesting, other than FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE WANTING ME TO DONATE MONEY WHEN I DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY ON ME (ya rly). So, feeling ridiculously selfish and uncharitable (damn guilt!) I went and bought myself a new one of those ipod-radio-tuner things because the old one doesn't actually work on my model of ipod (should totally have checked that, uh, yeah) and headed off, listening mainly to Depeche Mode and audiofic, which made the journey far more entertaining and less miserable than it might otherwise have been.
Stopped in at Bunratty Castle on the way, which was cool, but where I got a ridiculous number of odd looks both for (I think) being there on my own, being under age 60, and not having a waterproof jacket (or, indeed, not wearing a coat of any kind. Bah. They were already packed and I so couldn't be bothered. It's actually not that cold here, even in the rain, surprisingly. Did I mention it was totally raining, like EVERY OTHER DAY ZOMG.) But yeah, it was quite a cool recreation of an old-fashioned village thing, and it had a castle, which was also mildly cool, with a big square tower and those things on top that I can't remember what they're called. Battlements? *is lame*
Made it to Galway, where I promptly got ridiculously lost, and by the time I'd found where I needed to be, it was absolutely pouring with rain. So, naturally, some part of my brain had decided that it was important that I go and check in to the hostel before I took my backpack out, so I actually ended up making like 3 trips back to the car from the hostel, by which time I was kind of soggy.
Once I'd checked in, it was kind of too late to do or see much, so I went out for a quick wander, just to see what was in the general area, and to find somewhere for dinner. Managed to get slightly lost again, even with the map they gave me, because it was raining so ridiculously that the map kind of turned into paper mache. Which was such a help! And I'd managed to leave my umbrella in the car.
Eventually found a pub to have dinner in, which was nice (not least because it was, like, dry), and at one point this man came up to me and mentioned that he thought it was good that I'd managed to dry off, because he'd seen me earlier and I was really rather soaked. Really. :)
Ahh. But the hostel was good. Clean, warm, relatively safe. Internet-ed. All the important things. Did I mention clean? Even the bathrooms. Ahh. i didn't even mind sleeping on the top bunk in a mixed dorm of 8 people. *is RLY too old to be amused by top bunks*
FRIDAY 10TH OCTOBER -- DERRY
Wandered around Galway for a couple of hours in the morning. Still raining, so I just wandered around the main... square... thing, then across the river and stuff. Apparently there would have been millions of salmons in the river at, like, any other time of year, but, y'know. Meh.
Headed off for Derry around lunchtime and promptly got quite lost, which was great, as it was quite a long way and I'd hoped to, like, actually see some of it tonight. *sigh* Finally made it in around 6, found a carpark and trudged up the most enormousest hill evar in this utterly deserted kind of dodgy area, carrying my really rather heavy backpack, DID I MENTION IT WAS RAINING, so I imagine I looked quite a sight when I knocked on the door. The hostel was this hippy hostel, with all Indian décor and cushions on the floor (but, like, no seats. Awesome.) and everyone there was Australian. Seriously. I don't think I met a single Australian in Wales, but every single person you meet in a hostel here seems to be Australian. I think Ireland has party-country reputation. (And did I mention how much I totally don't like Aussie backpackers? I don't care if I'm technically counted among them. Bah) So I wandered down to the Tesco and made myself some dinner, because I can't believe how hard it is to eat healthily here, zomg, and went to bed. Awesome. *snore*
SATURDAY 11TH OCTOBER -- BELFAST
Got up early (seriously not an easy thing to do in a hostel when EVERYONE SLEEPS IN UNTIL LIKE 10AM EVERY DAY) and headed down to the Bogside area, where I saw the Free Derry wall and the murals and the Bloody Sunday monument, and then went on a walking tour with a guy who hinted strongly that he'd been in the IRA, and who was actually at the Bloody Sunday thing, and who'd been in one of those English internment prisons for a few years. He was pretty upfront that his version of the history was going to be very biased, but it was still pretty amazing. It's kind of hard to believe how recent everything was. I find it a bit odd being a tourist in these sorts of places, because there are still heaps of people who live there now who went through all that stuff, and it's a bit... not disrespectful, but, yeah. Not sure exactly what I mean, but it feels a bit too recent to be a proper touristy thing. Hmph.
Wandered back up the hill into town, then did a quick circuit around the city walls, which were quite cool, but which looked more like a really wide road than anything else. *shrug* Kind of... over.. the whole castles-and-churches-and-city-walls thing by this point. There's a limit to how many you can actually find interesting.
Headed off around 1 o'clock around the North Antrim coastal road thing, which is kind of ridiculously spectacular, and which meant that I probably broke all sorts of laws taking random photos through the windscreen as I drove, and ended up at the Giant's Causeway. Which is exactly where you want to be at 3pm on a Saturday, especially when it's the first non-raining day in a week. MILLIONS of people. But still mighty cool. Yay, hexagons. Or something.
Made it into Belfast at a vaguely respectable hour, and had a night in at the hostel, as the sleazy people-who-do-some-cleaning-for-free-accommodation hostel people all seemed intent on dragging everyone out drinking. And they really were kind of icky, and I didn't like them, so I didn't want to go.
SUNDAY 12TH OCTOBER -- DUBLIN
Wandered down from the hostel through a slightly dodgy area to look for some of the Protestant murals that I'd heard were around there (having seen a whole heap of Catholic ones in Derry), and randomly ran into some fellow who was extremely eager to show me a whole lot of them and explain the history, which was actually quite cool. They're way more... militaristic... than the catholic ones, and I'm sure it's got to do with
Because there just wasn't enough time left and I really wanted to see lots of stuff as well as make it to Dublin at a decent hour, I jumped on one of those open-top tour buses and did the entire circuit, which let me cram in the Titanic shipyard and the other murals and the peace wall (srsly, they totally still have a big wall down the middle of the city, like, to stop people fighting and stuff). But apparently things have really improved here in the last few years. It's really hard to believe that the “troubles” only really ended five or so years ago.
Managed to, like, not arrive in Dublin at a particularly decent hour, so I parked in some carpark that was totally about to close and eventually found the hostel, which was quite central, but which was in a pretty seedy area of lots of dodgy hostels, including another branch of the horrible one I'd stayed in last night in Belfast. Ugh. But my one was good, because it was totally attached to a proper hotel, so it had all those facilities and proper breakfasts and stuff, and was clean (omg, awesome).
MONDAY 13TH OCTOBER -- DUBLIN
Got up bright and early to drop off the car, which was awesome fun, as every single road that I'd planned to drive down on my several carefully planned contingency routes was not allowed (gah, one way systems FTL), then made it back to the hostel to collect all the stuff I needed to post home (and which I didn't feel like lugging onto the ferry tomorrow), but managed to thwart that plan by misjudging the number of stairs (in my defence, it was dark, there was a black door right next to them, and the carpet was a really dark green and it totally looked like there shouldn't have been any more steps. Bah.) and totally twisting my ankle, kind of badly. Which sucked, though it could have been worse. So I managed to hobble to the bed and sit there for a while reading the new (uncharacteristically awesome) Torchwood novels (omg, SO MUCH Janto FTW... and I totally can't believe I just used a portmanteau ship name... *wipes everyone's memory*).
Eventually made it back out-and-about, and hobbled down to the post office, which totally counts as a legitimate tourist destination, because it's, like, old and stuff, and things happened there with rebels and stuff. Had planned to do a ridiculous amount of shopping and sightseeing today, but instead I just opted for another open-topped tourist bus tour. Which, incidentally, is NOT a good idea when you've forgotten to bring a jacket. I was seriously frozen by the end of it. Also, all my photos are either blurred, only catch half of the thing I'm photographing, or have the back of a middle-aged American tourist's head in them. Which will make for an excellent album, I'm sure. Do people even do photoalbums anymore? [/tangent]
Anyway, by the time that was over, I thought I should actually, like, wander over to Temple Bar (a little maze of cobbled lanes and shops and pubs and stuff, which is both really cool and really, really full of tourists), so I explored that for a while, and when the shops started closing, I ducked down to Forbidden Planet, and may have indulged in a few geeky purchases, possibly including a Captain Jack doll (heheh, maybe I'll get Barrowman to sign it!) and a Doctor Who plastic fobwatch toy. Bah. Don't judge me! Oh, and maaaaybe a book with the scripts from series 1, for, like, legitimate research purposes... *cough*
On the way back to the hostel, finally got around to having dinner in a “traditional” (if a little touristy) Irish pub. Quite tasty, or at least better than it looks in the photo :P
Mmm. Beerbeerbeerbedbedbed!
But yes. Quite sad to be leaving Ireland, actually (though, back to Wales, yay). Everyone is so unbelievably friendly, even in the big cities. It's just awesome. I'm so coming back here and, like, spending a decent amount of time in each place.
Travel Blag : Twitter : Flickr : Google Map