Put a Cork in It

Ugh, I knew I should've written the Friday part on Friday, before we left for the weekend, because I was going to forget. Oh well.

On Friday, we didn't have class, so I went for a nice long run along the River Corribe and for the most part it was beautiful and scenic. At other times, it was smelly.
Then I did some shopping for the first time since I've been here, pretty much. I bought some things for other people and rewarded myself by buying some things for myself :) I got caught in the rain for a random five minutes, but then it got sunny again.

Friday night my three roommates and I went out for some authentic Irish food and some traditional music. Little did we know what a bumble f that was going to be! In Ireland, most pubs don't serve food. And they get away with it. But finally we found Quay's Restaurant and had some awful service by a girl who looked like she was on the verge of tears all the time and who had a blackened tooth. Afterwards we went to a wine bar where one of our professors had a reading. She ended up being the last poet, and it was super crowded, but I am glad we stayed because I met some interesting people and listened to some fun poets. We deduced that everyone in the room besides us was smarter if not more drunk than we were and were therefore more intellectual. (LOTS OF LOW PONY TAILS AND SCARVES) It was cold Friday night... about 55 degrees.

Saturday morning we headed off to Cork and as Katie and I headed to the train station at Eyre Square, it began spit raining. The rain would follow us all the way to Cork, by-passing Stab City also known as Limerick... a cute name for a murder capital, huh? I cannot describe how miserable the rain was yesterday. It was like in Forrest Gump, as Dianna pointed out, rain coming from all directions. And it was so windy that your umbrellas were no match for it. We kept saying stuff like, "Cork, you bitch!" and then a big gust of wind would come and invert our umbrellas and we'd say, "OOOH, Cork. You like it when I call you names." And our poor jeans were soaked up to our knees. We got into Cork at a weird time... around four. So we did some shopping and tried to hold off on dinner for as long as possible. But first we stopped at our hostel.

I've never seen or stayed at a hostel before. This place came well recommended and looked cute in the picture. It was even in my awesome guidebook that Kelly Perry bought me and that we have dubbed "THE BIBLE." Here's a link to the hostel:
http://www.kinlayhousecork.ie/gpage.html2.html

and here is what our room looked like (up a dark, winding staircase):
no, I didn't cut a part of the room out of the picture, except maybe the sink... and it was a good thing we had a sink.


So after dropping off our bags, we AGAIN wandered around looking for beer, food, and music all in the same place. WTF? We wandered for about an hour and were now really hungry. Thanks to a tip for a local we finally found a cute italian place, but with no music or beer. Just irish coffee, which sufficed. We were so wet and cold we wanted to cry.

After dinner, we went to a pub called The Old Oak, which by the way gets voted "Ireland's Most Traditional Pub" every year. It was a really great place, with ornate woodwork and stained glass, but we were all miserable and pretending not to be. We nursed our ciders and laughed at eachother's lame jokes. Then, I decided to do this to boost morale:
I found the tanning glasses in my purse. So we rallied. Well, at least Katie and I did. Dianna went back to the hostel only to be woken up by our lame asses hours later.

Katie and I ended up at a pub called: An Spailpin Fanac. This translates to: It's still pouring rain outside, so get your ass inside. It was dark and dreary and damp and was everything you'd hope for in an Irish pub. After a couple pints there was finally live music! HOOORAY! And we even got a free drink from a man named Conner. Life doesn't get any better than that!

Katie and I decided to leave around 11:30 pm since we had an early rise and started off down the street. About a block away, we heard some guy calling us. We turned and it was the bartender at the bar. I thought maybe I'd forgotten my wallet or umbrella or something. But he'd only ran the block to ask for my phone number. When I told him we were leaving the next day, he hung his head and cried. Nah, not really. Here's the weird thing: It had stopped raining and it was lighter out than it had been all day since the sun doesn't set here until midnight. Cork was a totally different town and everyone was going out to clubs and out and about like it was totally a new day. I've decided that women/girls in Cork are nicer to American girls than Galway women are. I think it's because they're more fascinated with us, as it's less of a metrapolitan town. In Galway, the women see us more as threats. So the girls we met in Cork were nice and helped us with directions. It ended up being one of those fun, random nights you don't plan. On the way back, walking to the hostel we stopped at Supermacs and had some awful fries that Katie made me get and that Katie would be puking up in our hostel sink mere hours later.

The best part about the hostel wasn't the paper thin walls, but it was the bells on the famous Saint Anne's church bingbonging every quarter hour all night. WTF? Seriously. It was like camping, but being in doors. I have a new hobby and it's called having to get up at 4 am to use the bathroom. And it's not just out of habit, I wake up having to REALLY go. So I had to do that by myself in this dark scary hostel with alot of foreign language presentations coming out from every room. I almost went in the sink in our room. The girls in the rom next to us were so loud that if Katie hadn't started puking at 2 am, I would've gone over and told them I was going to send them back to Siberia.

The next morning we got up early, went down to the "continental breakfast" that just happened to be instant coffee and toast. Some eurotrash people we eating lunch meat with their fingers and were putting cole slaw on toast. Call me a snob, call me closeminded, but I need a Hampton Inn. I'd settle for Wyndam. Cork was very pretty and the weather was nice. In the morning we killed time walking around all the stores that were closed b.c. it was Sunday.

The bus trip to Blarney was short and sweet. The line to kiss the stone was not... about an hour... and sometimes stuck in narrow staircases ready to crumble in on you. It was well worth the wait, and I did kiss the stone. The guy working there said that I had a "cute kiss" because I made a smooching noise when I did it. (lucky, lucky stone) Blarney stone wanted to get to second base, but I told Stone it had to take me out to dinner and drinks first.


After kissing the stone, we did some tourist shopping and caught a bus back to Cork. We raced to the station only to realize we weren't late and that the bus clock was just fast. STUPID AMERICANS! Our bus ride back was pretty awful. The first leg wasn't bad, but when we got to Limerick, we took a 15 minute break. Then we had to switch buses... for I think so we could go directly to Galway without any stops, and without going to Shannon Airport, which is a pain in the arse. Our second bus smelled bad and was disgusting, which was a new thing. The buses in and around Ireland are so nice and clean and fantastic, so this was a disapointment.

Right now we're watching the world cup and I can't keep my eyes open. I'll download my pics tomorrow. GO ITALY?