One Last Rainy Day

I might be able to blog tomorrow night for the final entry, but if not, at least I have today to wrap it up.

I made this blog to act as a journal for when I was in Ireland and as a way to show my family everything I was seeing. Once I get back home, it'll be superfluous, so this is it. That's why I've been so fanatic about doing an entry for each day--it's a way of keeping track of how long I've been here. Today is the 134th day. Kind of crazy.

Everything is packed except for the clothes on my back, my boarding pass is printed, the bus ticket and schedule are already in my coat pocket, and I've started giving away my extra food. There's not much left for me here now.

I meant to go for one last walk to the bay today, but it's rainy and supposed to just keep on drizzling the whole day. I'll just have to remember what it looks like from the pictures I took a couple of months ago. So much looks different now, though--the country is finally turning green from all this rain and temperate weather. I kind of wish I could stay and see the summer. Since we're higher up in latitude, the sunlight hours just go on and on. The sun woke me up at 5 a.m. this morning, and when I went to bed right before 11 last night, it still wasn't completely set. It sure is different from when I got here and had very few hours of light every day.

I guess I should get going. This is bittersweet: I'm so, so excited to finally go home, but I have loved living here this spring. Someday I'll come back.

Good night.

Smells Like Bleach

And...I'm doing my post for today early, since this is the one time I'll be on the computer today.

So far today I've re-mopped the floors, aired out the whole house, washed my bathroom, and vacuumed my bedroom. Aine and her boyfriend just got back and commented on how nice the place smells...I guess it's good if you like bleach...

Other than that, I'm just doing random errands today and giving away stuff that I don't need to keep. I'll be back briefly tomorrow when I come to print off my plane ticket. It looks like the ash is gone over Ireland for a bit, so I should be good to go. Cheers!

So bye.

What Timing

So this is my post from last night...

Yesterday was productive: I cleaned the fridge, washed the kitchen, organized all the random food that people left behind, bought some groceries, organized a potluck Sunday dinner at my house (and made an amazing casserole, if I can say so myself), and then crashed my computer.

Yup. It's out of commission.

We were sitting around watching stuff on YouTube, and it contracted a virus and froze. I spent 6 hours trying to fix it, but to no avail. Good thing this random computer lab in the business building is still open.

And that was basically it.

Smells Like Bleach

Oh my goodness--the cutest commercial is on again! It's this little baby counting to ten in Irish. He's adorable!

Cough...sorry. I was supposed to be writing about real stuff.

I'm so frustrated! Today I got up early to meet Alice and Courtney so we could walk Jackie to the bus station and say goodbye. If I only I went on that flight with her--I'd be in Danvers already and wouldn't have to worry about the ash cloud anymore! It's started to blow back down here, so I don't know if my flight will be delayed on Wednesday. Ugh.

The other American who lived in my apartment also went on that flight, so now I'm the only one left here. Well, besides my Irish roommate, but she's not coming back until Tuesday because of her final Wednesday. It's a bit lonely, but yet has some boons...such as:

• I can leave my stuff wherever and not have to worry about it or care that someone else might take it.
• I can eat all of their leftover food, which means I might not starve before Wednesday (a good thing, I think).
• I have a chance to clean the house without it getting messed up immediately. For instance, I bleached and mopped the floor downstairs and cleaned the counters. Tomorrow I'm vacuuming upstairs and cleaning the fridge. I might leave the stove for my roommate, though...
• I can go to bed early and sleep--no drunk people to wake me up!

So yeah, this is kind of nice.

Assuming my flight can take off Wednesday, it's four days and counting!

Night y'all.

Chinese Goodbye Party

Today was enjoyable a bit. I did the usual TV, reading, packing, and going crazy. However, I did get everyone to come over for supper. We ordered Chinese and watched horrible shows. Jackie is leaving tomorrow, but wants to stay longer--and I want to leave now, but have to stay until next week. We had a brainstorm and rushed up here to see if we could swap tickets, but it's another 100 euros on top of what I already paid to switch the date. Needless to say, I'm waking up early to help Alice and Courtney walk her in to town to say goodbye. I was quite excited for a few minutes though!

After everyone left, I watched Tarzan (yay!!) and then headed over to Jackie's place for the latest episode of Glee (isn't it sad how much TV I'm ingesting? blech). We helped her take out the garbage and sort through some hand-me-downs, then it was time for sleep. As in, now. So bye!

Oh, and can I say congrats self for finally getting caught up? Heh!

Night...

Thursday 5/6

Day 13:

So on Thursday I slept in extra late for lack of other things to do, then finished packing (a.k.a. squeezing all the stuff in somehow). The three of us puttered around in the garden before having a final feast of a million leftovers. I took a couple pictures of the house to remember it by.

This is the front.
And ze back.
And the chickens!
After that, they drove me to the bus station, where I found my bus to get to Haverfordwest in Wales. Their daughter Mandie picked me up and drove me back to her house, where we watched TV until 1:30 a.m. when it was time to drive down the hill to catch the ferry. There was a drunk old Irish man who kept following me and telling me where all the good places to sleep were, but I managed to lose him during the security check and found myself a lovely corner to curl up in. And after that, it was the bus and then two more to get back to Galway...but I've already covered that. And now I'm caught up! Heh.

Wednesday 5/5

On the twelfth day of traveling, my true love gave to mee...

Lots of pictures.

Our trip started with a bunch of errands in town in the Volvo, since the other car was acting up and had to go to the shop. I would have offered to help drive, but I just would not have been able to manage left-handed shifting, 'cause it was a manual. Ugh.

Anyway, we headed to Tintern Abbey as the first stop of the day. I have to warn you right now: there are a million pictures here, and it's not even a quarter of what I took. It was beautiful there and if you want your eyes to fall out I'll show you the rest.
The river that runs by the abbey.
See it, hiding in the back? The little white building is where we ate lunch (yep, another pub).

The outbuildings are mostly just remains.
Yeah, I dunno, it's just cool.
The cathedral, however, is still standing in lots of parts and is one of the best-preserved medieval cathedrals in England (or something).
Inside the church part, the inner wall stands on this side but has fallen down on the other. You can see parts of the fallen rock down the lane here. The roof is reconstructed, but it sure provides good shelter for all the doves.


And the inside. It's breathtaking. I know it wouldn't have been grassy way back when it was in use, but it looks so beautiful to me, like the columns are just rising up from the earth. We lucked out and got there on a sunny day, which made it so much more special. It would have looked even more different back when it had a roof and windows.
A person for scale. Yeah, it's huge. I was standing up on a balcony to take this shot.


This balcony, to be exact. It was the night walk, where the monks would sneak in for the 2 a.m. prayers.

In some parts, the remains look like those of a castle. Oh, speaking of, get ready for another one coming up...
Just a pretty shot with the sun. So angelic!
The doors. Sadly, the one on the left that looks open wouldn't budge for me.
Some more remains across the road.
The most famous side of the cathedral--you can probably guess why. There are graves on the ground in front of this entrance--see them?
From the inside.
The remains of that other inner wall.
We spent a lot of time there, and I had too too much fun running around and exploring. There were a lot of random Americans there for whatever reason, so Martha and Jack kept chatting them up and introducing them to me. Hello, Iowa.

After lunch, we headed to Goodrich Castle. I obviously did not put up a fight about going to another castle. This one had a cool little automated guide thing that you held up to your ear to give you the history of the castle as you wandered. It got annoying, though, since the guy wouldn't shut up and it meant you had to go in order and listen to everything. I quit halfway through, I'm sorry to say. I just couldn't take it!

Anyway, the view as we walked up:

Yay cross-shaped arrowloops! Oh, and those two big holes (plus the third to the right) are from the latrine tower. Oh, yes, we learned a lot about old poop.
English Heritage is working on making this castle somewhat refinished, so they have replaced two of the original stained-glass windows (they were knocked out who knows how long ago). You'll see this from the inside in a minute. It's interesting, however: this window is in the chapel, which is in...the gatehouse. Bit of an unusual combination, 'cause usually you would want the gatehouse to be the most defensible location...which means no windows. Inside the chapel there are arrowloops and sections for soldiers and even a hole for the bar to the gate--when it was opened, it would have blocked off the pulpit. Must have been one patient priest.
The barbican.
Looking down into the moat, you can see that it was built right on top of the natural rock outcrop.
A modern bridge where one or two drawbridges would have been.
See the two channels? Those would have been for two portcullises-- you know, those big iron gates that crashed down. There were also murder holes above our heads and numerous arrowloops, like this one that looks into the chapel.
There were a lot of schoolkids around, drawing.
Cannonballs left from the Civil War in the 1600s. These are what reduced the castle to the remains it is today.
The solar, or the main living space. It would have been several floors high.
The main plan. You can click on the picture to see it larger.
And here's the real reason the castle was taken down: Roaring Meg. It was special-built to destroy this castle. Nice.
The remains of the stable outside.
One of the unique features of this castle is that it has an extraordinarily high number of washbasins, like this one. Cleanliness was a sign of gentility according to my automated guide, so they must have been quite high class here.
The keep is built of a different stone and is the only building which is still intact up to the top for people to climb up on. Crazy people. Like me. The stairs say "dark and dangerous," and seriously, they are NOT kidding. I clung to the rope the whole way up and was shaking from nerves by the time I got to the top. I am quite glad I didn't have to run up and down those stupid stairs way back when to fight with swords. Ugh.
See? And they got worse.
But the view from the top was lovely.
Another fun part: the dungeon. It was this big dark hole in the wall, which I was too afraid to go in by myself, so instead I turned on my flash and looked at it from my camera. Good enough.

More washbasins.
I love how you can see the different levels in the remains.
Had there been a floor, I would have liked to sit in this window seat.
If you look on the left, you can see the remains of the sloping roofline.
Cross-shaped arrowloop!
The romantic remains of a set of stairs. So cool!!
Why hello down there!




This is the window that we saw from the outside.
Driving away, the castle was still visible up on the hill.
Okay, so you probably just died from castle overdose, but I loved every minute of it!

Basically, the rest of the day we just watched TV, read, packed, ate, etc. I was a bit lonely, so it was nice to know I would be going back to Ireland soon.

This last video is the one that wouldn't load yesterday, from the Round Tower.