Scotland: The search for the Glasgow Pirate

Country number two: Scotland

Well on Friday night I stuck to my plan and actually stayed in for the night. I spent most of my time packing and reading (I finally finished Will in the World- my Shakespeare book). I also got to meet my roommates for the night, two boys from Germany who were also planning on going to Cork the next day! Quelle coincidence! So being the very nice German boys that they are (whose names I unfortunately forget), they offered me a ride to Cork.
So on Saturday I got up, had breakie, hauled my (heavy) bags into their car, then we did some mailings before heading off to Cork. Once in Cork we got pretty lost wandering dowtown trying to find hte tourism office (the boys are actually- gasp- worse at directions than I am! Ha). Once we got maps and directions we headed back to the car to drive to the neighbouring town of Blarney to see, you guessed it, the Blarney stone!
Blarney castle is this neat old castle with tons of gothic little stoen rooms and huge, huge grounds. We walked around the area for at least an hour, then went up to the castle to see the view and kiss the stone. Tart that I am, I kissed it twice! Now I definitely have the gift of gab (as if I didn't already!). Afer that I checked in at my hostel, said farwell to the German boys, and walked aroun Cork for a bit. Cork's a lovely city, really similar to Dublin. I had an early flight the next day so I tried to get to bed early, but in an 8 person room sleeping is quite hard.
Then on Sunday I got up bright and early, took the airport shuttle bus to the Cork airport and took a surprisingly quick plane from Ireland to Scotland. I arrived at the Prestwick ariport, just outside of Glasgow. Symon met me at the airport and we bussed it into the city. On the way in we passed farms and lots of sheep! Yay! Glasgow is a BEAUTIFUL city with tons of old buildings, some neat modern ones, and lots of sculptures and art galleries and such. We walked around the downtown core for a little bit, then went to Symon's place to drop off my stuff and meet his live-in girlfriend Susan, who I absolutely love and has the same freaking colour of hair as me!!! (Fushia). Also, when I was talking to Symon about the sights to be seen he told me about this cool pirate ship in Glasgow, and apparently there's a lad who dresses up in full pirate regalia and walks around the city! I MUST find this pirate man! Find him, and then become him. Yar!!
After that we took a train to the west-end of the city to meet up with one of Symon's friends. We walked around a bit of the west-end, hung out in his friend James' apartment, and had dinner at this amazing restaurant called "Loft" that's built in an old theatre, so cool! I also tried Scotland's own homemade and ridiculously over-sweet national soft drink: IRN BRU (aagghh!). Symon also made me get an IRN BRU and whiskey just to be really Scottish and also because he's a masocist!!! The absolute best part of the night though was after we came back from James' place very late after drinking, we went to this amazing old gothic cemetary called the "Necropolis" (like the book from Evil Dead) near Symon's place and walked around. It was so spooky and beautiful and amazing. I need to go there in the daylight though and scope out the tall, elaborate graves again.
Today's been spent mostly unpacking, grocery shopping, and drinking tea. But I hope to go buy a cell phone now because I really need to get one.

Is it legal to marry a forest?

If so, I'm totally getting married to the deep-woods forest in the Killarney National Park. Beautiful!
Well, on Thursday I got up bright and (disgustingly) early, strapped my belongings to my person, and headed to the bus in Dublin. I took the bus for 4 hours to Limerick, and then took another bus 2 hours to Killarney. It was a long, long day filled with way too much bussing, but I still got here early enough to have a proper evening in the town. I first checked in at the Neptune Hostel, dropped off all of my (very, very heavy) stuff and wandered about the town for some exploring. Killarney is a super adorable touristy town (not unlike Gravenhurst, but cuter and more Irish) and I enjoyed taking in the local sights. Then I came back to the Hostel for dinner and met my roommates for the night. There were two cool Irish kids (Patsy and Mike) and a girl from Halifax (Nicki) who have been doing a little cross-Ireland tour together for the past week.
I decided that they were worthy of my presence, so I spent the night hanging with them. We went and got food (garlic mushrooms, so freaking good and my new vice), then went to a delightful Irish pub where they had a band playing traditional Irish music! It was grand. The band was brilliant and I even did some very clumsy Irish dancing with one of the locals.
After the band finished we moved to a bar that was recommended to us by one of the waitresses from dinner. They had a band playing a bunch of classic rock (Bon jovi, ACDC, Van Halen, etc.). They were really great, and we completely rocked out to the tunes! The band finished at about midnight and we decided that we had drank enough to do a lot more dancing, so we moved to the other room of the bar which was a disco-club. They played really awful house, but it was good enough to dance to, and we crawled back to the hostel just before 3am.
Then today I woke up around 9am, cursed the daylight, and stumbled downstairs to make breakfast. In the kitchen I met these really cool guys from Spain; Javiar, Javiar (seriously) and Alejandro. They were planning on also visiting the National Park today, so we decided to all go together. First we went to Lough Leane lake to check out Castle Ross. It's a really neat old castle built by the O'Donoghue clan. Then after wandering around the castle for awhile, we rented a row-boat to row around the lake. The boat-man pointed us to this great island with a super ancient, dilapidated monastery and chapel. We rowed over there in shifts (rowing is hard work!) and then spent the better part of an hour climbing all over the ruins and wandering the island. The ruins were pretty tall but with lots of low, wide walls and were perfect for climbing! It was like a giant, ancient Irish playground for adults! Woo! After that we rowed back to land, and drove over to the Killarney National Park.
Words will fail me to describe the beauty of the enormous, ivy-coated trees, the moss-covered earth, scatterings of ancient ruins, and jutting rocks. Let's just say that it's one bitching National Park! We found this giant tree with about 6 main boughs and had a picnic lunch in the tree! It was so cool! Then we walked around the park for a few hours and took a bevy of photos. I can't wait to get to a computer where I can upload photos, because they're so amazing. Now after that long day of excercise, I think I'm going to make it an early night because I'm exhausted. I met my new roommates, two guys from Germany, and I'm hoping they won't make too much noise because I intend to be boring tonight.
Tomorrow I get up early and head to Cork, which is where I'll be flying out of the next day. So much adventuring!

"You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best...

...I've been gone for a week I've been drunk since I left"

If anyone doesn't get that song reference then there's nothing I can do to help you! Truth is that I have been gone for a week. I can't believe it's only a week I've been in Ireland since so much has happened already! Yesterday I took the bus to Dublin from Gill's house and spent about 5 or so hours walking around the city. I saw a lot of the sights that Dublin has to offer. It was a lovely day with much sight-seeing and much, much walking. Then I took the bus back to Gill's (and didn't get lost, yay!) and spent the evening with Gill and her roomie.
Then today I just wandered around the neighbourhood, did laundry, and read lots. I'm reading the best Shakespeare book right now! I'm totally loving it. Tonight will hopefully be an early night for me because tomorrow I'm getting up super early to take a (gasp) 7 hour bus ride to the South-Western coast of Ireland to spend a few nights and see the sights there. ADVENTURE!!!

Everyone in Ireland is obsessed with football

I had pretty much figured that the Irish are crazy, but tonight I got to see first-hand the local insanity centered completely around football. Yesterday I met up with Gill and spent the night with her at her parent's place (we went walking around a fab park with cool old churches and lots of leprochaun trees, then watched movies). Then today she brought me to her place to drop off our things and we headed into the chaos thaat was Dublin. Apparently I have the best travel-kharma ever and happened to stumble into Ireland not only for the Dublin Fringe Fest, but also for the final game of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. The two teams playing were from the far North (Tyrone) vs the far South (Kerry) so fans from all parts of Ireland swarmed Dublin to be near the action (not including the 90,000 or so fans in the stadium itself). Gill and I made some roadies, as we are very classy and also poor, then took the bus into Dublin.

The city was packed full of excited and most likely inebriated football fans. We met up with a friend of Gill's, got some bracelets for the team I was informed that we were supporting (Tyrone) and headed to a pub right by the stadium. Words cannot possibly describe the chaotic energy of a 3 level bar packed up to the tits with drunken Irish football fans. We met up with some of Gill's friends at the bar (including 2 I'd met in Canada, woo!) and started drinking around noon or so (again, classy). Most people had gotten there and started drinking before us, and the wreckless, sloppy energy was contagious. The game itself was actually really interesting (it's crazy to admit that, because I normally loathe watching sports) with the teams neck and neck up until the last few minutes. I would cheer whenever Tyrone got a point, drink whenever I wasn't cheering, make best friends with strangers, and near the end of the game, by god, I was a drunken Irish football loving wreck! Tyrone won and the place went right to hell (but in a good way, like rock and roll kind of hell). We all cheered and screamed and hugged, and then they started playing a bunch of Irish songs. Everyone was singing at the top of their lungs, climbing on the chairs, climbing on the tables, climbing on each other! It was amazing! Afterwards we had to go get food because all that drinking and cheering really works up an apetite. I must say, though, I've probably spent the most Irish day one can possibly spend. So now when people ask if I took in the local culture, I can say that I took it in, and even though I felt a little queezy, I held it down!

Everything in Ireland is expensive!

Dear God is this country ever expensive! I have to keep reminding myself that euros are a lot more than dollars, because the prices are so high here it seems like it should be in dollars! Oh well, at least the money's really small and cute, or something.
So since I last wrote I've had two fabulous days here. On Thursday through my robot-ness and weird time-zone adjusting, I somehow managed to wake up at 5am and be unable to fall back asleep. Horrid! Then once the rest of the world was up, Brid and I took the bus to Dublin and spent the day walking around the city. Dublin is absolutely gorgeous, complete with amazing architecture, lots of cool statues, those neat double-stacked busses, and this really great door! All day Brid was like, "oh man, there's this door that you have to see, it's grand" and it was grand, but it was really funny to get super excited over a door. I got to see Trinity College where Brid goes to school and the Book of Kells, which is this ridiculously old scripture book. The best thing in the college was "The Long Room" which is one of the libraries there and it holds all of the school's oldest books and a bunch of neat busts of famous Irish people. It's also the world's biggest tease because you can't get near the books, let alone read them, and I was totally jonesing for some ye olde reading!
We also went to a fab art gallery and saw a ton of paintings from the 18th century to present day (mostly old though). They were doing some kind of photo shoot with some Irish minister or someone of importance and had a bunch of the gallery closed off. However, they didn't do a very good job of sectioning it off, because Brid and I accidentally wandered into ares we weren't supposed to a few times and security started to get really pissed and eventually they started warning each other about us on their walkie-talkies. I'm pretty sure we were one room away from getting kicked out. Brilliant!
Also through some great, cosmic excellence I happen to be in town the same time as the Dublin Fringe Festival and I saw a Fringe play that night in Dublin with Brid, her sister Maria, and her sister's friend.
Then yesterday I finally shook off the last of my jet-lag by sleeping until 4 pm! After that I was so rejuvinated I felt like I could fight the world! We spent the day just hanging around the house, and then in the evening we got some whiskey (because you know, Ireland) and did a little pre-drinking before meeting up with Gill (yay!) and another of Brid's friends and heading off to a real Irish pub! It was great; they even had barrels for tables! Yar! After drinking there for a few hours we went to a night-club, or as they say here a disco-club and did some dancing. It was really awesome, except people in the club were super pushy! I had to dance with my elbows out! So now today I'm shaking off my hangover and heading to meet up with Gill and spend the night with her.

Everything in Ireland is made out of potatoes

Well, I'm in a new Country, so I'm using a new font. Exciting! I spent my last night in Canada at Sarah's place in Toronto with Sarah and Sean. Sarah decided to be lame and go to bed early, so I was forced to keep Sean awake until 5 am or so with my rambling excitement. Then due to excitement and robot-ness I woke up at about 8 am. I had my final Canadian meal (poutine, no joke) with Sean, got to see Sarah for a bit when she came back from school and have a tea with her, then Sean drove me to the airport. The first plane ride was from Toronto to New York, and it was in one of those really little planes that always crash in movies about rock-stars. The flight was on time, which is unusual, and my luggage and I had a lovely little lay-over in the NY airport. After that I took a connecting flight (6 hours) from NY to Dublin, however my luggage liked New York so much that it decided to spend an extra night there. And by that I mean the goddam airline forgot to put it on the next plane!!! Luckily it had nothing of importance, only all my clothes and toiletries. I'm supposed to be getting them today, which is good, because I'm still wearing the same clothes and am now covered in international filth.

I arrived at 7am here, which is 1pm there, which means I officially hadn't slept in a long-ass time. My little Irish friend Brid picked me up at the airport and took me to her place. She lives in Meath county, just outside of Dublin, surrounded by gorgeous moors, and castles, and old stone fencing, and holy shit do I ever want to stay here forever! When we got to Brid's, she figured I'd want to go to bed after long awake-ness and much plane-ridings. At that point I had to explain my robot nature and how I rarely require sleep to live. So instead she made me "waffles", which in Ireland are made of potatoe, which led me to conclude that everything in Ireland is made out of potatoe!
I was WAY too excited to try and sleep or anything, so we explored the local history. We toured a couple of super old churches, a really ancient burial and ritual ground, and saw a castle, but couldn't go in because people live there. I can't believe how much history there is in this place. Absolutely property here has some kind of gorgeous old ruin, or cascading natural beauty, or (usually) both. Everything is beautiful and everyone has the most delightful accents! This place totally makes Canada look like a jar of crap in comparison!
Brid lives here with her family and they've been awesomely hospitable with feeding me and housing me during my stay. (Brid just walked in the room and handed me tea; I love it here!) Also, her parents are from Northern Ireland and they talk like leprochauns!!! No joke! They have really thick leprochaun accents and it's HILARIOUS! Along with saturating myself in accents, I'm learning lots of Irish-isms, such as calling rain-boots "wellington boots" or "wellies" and calling jogging-pants "track-suit bottoms". Delightful! I also got to meet a couple of Brid's friends and we all went to the movies.

All in all I had an amazing first day, got to immediately take in a bunch of local colour, and totally kicked jet-lag in the face! So far I'm loving Ireland; now if only I could get my clothes back...

Jolly old London (Ontario)

4 days left!

That's right, only four days left to go before I take off! My bags are packed and I've been living out of my (oversized) backpack for the better part of a week now, just getting used to the lifestyle. I've been in London, Ontario, since Monday night staying with my tiny friend Amanda and her roommate Ryan. Her live-in boyfriend (and my other tiny friend) Ryan has been in stupid Boston working for the last 6 weeks, but he'll be home tonight for the weekend, so I can't wait! That's right, this apartment comes with 2 Ryan's for the price of one! What a steal!!!

So far this week we've been mostly taking it easy, cooking, watching movies, sitting and talking, all that good stuff. But my highlight of the week was on Wednesday night when Amanda and I went and saw the Creepshow and Anti-Flag in concert. The show was amazing; I love both those bands more than a junkie loves heroin! It was a really early show (7-10:30) because that venue runs funk night on Wednesdays, so afterwards we zipped back to Amanda's pad, drank our weight in whiskey, then went back to funk night! It was great times with the dancing and the severe drunkeness. And when I popped onto the patio to get a drink from the patio bar (because, you know, I wasn't drunk enough yet) I ran into some locals chatting with the drummer from Anti-Flag! So I obviously inserted myself right into their conversation. After a little while my glorious, drunken self wound up getting into a 20 minute argument with Pat (the drummer) about where the cervix is! I even went so far as to draw a diagram of a woman's reproductive organs on the bar patio! Genius!!

As for the rest of the week, we're going out to dinner then the bar tonight. Then tomorrow we head to Toronto for the last Goodfellaz rave ever! After that 2 days of visiting people in Toronto and then I'm off! Yay!!!

She's got a ticket to ride

I GOT MY TICKET!!!

I'll pause while you collect yourselves from your overwhelming joy... That should be enough. So the rumours (started by me) are true! I have my one-way ticket to Europe purchased and printed. I'll be departing from Toronto's Pearson Airport heading to Dublin, Ireland on Tuesday, September 16th, and arriving early on the 17th. This is very exciting for the following reasons:

1. People will now have to stop asking me where I'm going
2. Now that I have a ticket it seems much more real
3. Having a definite launch dates makes me planning my final Ontario days much easier
4. Ticket! YAY!!!

That's pretty much all that I have to write at the moment. I've been doing final packing and box-moving at Dad's house and I'm EXHAUSTED. Tomorrow I leave Gravenhurst, go have coffee with Sarah in Toronto, and then on to London (ON) to visit Amanda. I must say I'm quite enjoying this vagrant lifestyle, which is good because that's exactly what I'm getting into for the next who knows how many months. Oh, and did I mention yay ticket?

Dun nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh

BAT-BLOG!!!

Salutations! You are currently reading my first blog. Well, actually I'm currently typing it, so you can't be reading it yet, because it isn't posted. Then again, when you do read it, it will technically count as "current" because that will be the present, even though right now that's the future and the present is me typing and getting very confused...
Ow, my brains!
Anyways, as you may have surmised from the title of this blog; this will be the space where I write the tales of my adventures. In about two-ish weeks time or so, I plan on hopping a plane to Europe. I haven't figured out yet exactly which country I'll be heading to first, second, etc, but I've definitely narrowed down the field (not Russia) and will be making further narrowings in the tail-end of this week. (as opposed to the head-end; which is, of course, the beginning). As tickets get purchased, dates set, and all that business I'll post all of my comings and goings as, er, well as they come and go.
So far what I do know is that I'm in North Bay, tomorrow I go to Toronto for the funeral of my dear and much beloved Uncle Foss. After that I go to Huntsville, then on Sunday I go to Gravenhurst, then on Monday or Tuesday I go to London, then back to Toronto for the weekend before leaving the country and burning this fucking place down!!!
All arson-related vehemence aside, I actually love Canada and have enjoyed living here for my 22 years on this planet. I just ache so badly to leave here and see what else is happening on this spinning water-rock we inhabit. I've felt this burning need to leave for awhile, but it's lately grown so strong that it is a burn no tiger-balm can soothe.
I don't know how long I'll be gone or how many countries I can make it to, but I've seen enough road-trip themed movies to know that I will wreak havoc that should get me arrested but doesn't, fall in love with a ridiculously hot Euro-babe, get set way off course by some mis-adventure, and then it will all work out in the end, probably to a catchy pop-rock tune, roll credits.