Ireland Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I came thisclose to never leaving Ireland. I can't explain it, I felt at home there. Perhaps it was the pint after pint of beer befuddling my brain or the general misty haze that comes with vacation but it's the truth, I love Ireland. WE ARE IN LOVE.

And really, my hair looked fucking fantastic the entire time I was there. That alone is reason enough for me to move there.

Tom, Sara and I had wandered around Kinsale all morning and by early afternoon they were ready for a nap. Me, I wanted to wander some more so I did. First I went up the hill towards a nunnery and then I turned left. Somehow I ended up sort of out in the countryside next to an old Irish guy walking his dog, he turned to me and said something. What he said is entirely a mystery because it's possible was speaking Gaelic, because even after I ask him to repeat himself I still couldn't understand him. So I said "Yeah, that was quite a steep hill" and then booked it because he very well may have been saying something about the weather and wondering why this strange American girl is babbling about a hill.
Eventually I headed back into town, partially because I was pissed that some stupid McMansion sort of development had put up giant 12 foot fences and it was blocking my view of the Irish countryside. WTF?

One night after dinner Tom and I headed into a pub (seriously, the drinking that went on was ridiculous). Sara was too tired to come with so she went back to the B&B while Tom and I went to listen to some Irish music. It was the fantastically little cozy place with locals and tourists alike, we grabbed a couple of pints and sat down to listen. The guy singing and playing guitar was fantastic, he sang a couple of songs and then invited us to all sing along to Mary Mack. We were only a quarter of the way into our pints and the guy was singing a pretty (but slightly cheesy) love song when Tom leaned over to me and said "I think I need to leave now." Confused I asked why and he said "Things are rumbling in a way that isn't good". Both of us grabbed our pints and tried to down as much of them as we could- because the damn things were 4+ Euros a piece.

As we were hightailing it across the town square Tom's gut let out this unearthly growl. It was so loud and sort of echoed off the buildings around us, which only caused me to bust into laughter. Poor Tom ended up spending a good portion of the night in the bathroom.

The following morning he seemed quite recovered and we all headed off to the ancient fort outside of town, taking the low road. Completely forgetting that poor Sara had foot surgery in July and thus by the time we got to the fort her poor feet were tuckered out. Tom and I ran around the inside of the fort, which was massive, and then we boarded the little road train thing to take us back into town. Once in town we drank some more (shocking), ate some lunch and then DRANK SOME MORE. In our defense it was Arthur's Day- the 250th founding of Guinness so drinking in Ireland was an absolute.

I took a seriously insane amount of photos- a few are here, the rest can be found on my flickr page- since I don't want to endlessly bore you with 30 different shots of Kinsale harbor.

Celtic Cross in a super old church: