Rolling Green Hills and Leprechauns

I have friends!  After being mostly friendless for the past 6 months, it's so nice to see Emilia and Dante, two Modestans who have come out to London for 2 weeks to see the sights with me.  They arrived on Easter Sunday, and ever since then it's been a whirlwind of traveling.  And eating.  With maybe a little bit of drinking in between, just a little.  But when in Rome, you know how it goes....

Our first day got off to an unpromising start when Emilia and I spent 2 hours waiting at the Victoria tube station, where we were supposed to meet Dante at 10 am.  Turns out he was also there, but somehow we miraculously missed each other that whole time?  Who knows.  Anyway, we visited the British Museum, which pretty much covered the history of the whole world (or so it seemed), and saw the Rosetta Stone and a few other odds n ends.   I was kept busy trying to keep those 2 awake and pumped full of caffeine, because they were exhausted from a red-eye flight, and it seemed like the probability of them lapsing into sleep-walking increased exponentially as the day wore on.

Emilia and I at Pret, the British version of Starbucks, on caffeine stop #1

Tuesday started at 3:30 am, when Emilia and I woke up to take 2 buses to the Stanstead Airport, 40 miles outside London, to catch our flight to Dublin.  At first, Ireland seemed just like England, but after spending even 2 hours there I noticed a difference right away.  The Irish are so friendly, and proud, yet self-depreciating at the same time- a very charming combination!  They are quick to tell you what they love about their country, but just as quick to crack a joke about the "bloody fools" running their government, and the potential doom of their economy.  There are literally 5 pubs per block, I'm really not exaggerating, and I think it's safe to say that the Irish do love their alcohol.  But they also love their music, and nearly every pub or bar we went into over the course of our visit had some type of live music going on.  My favorite part of Dublin was the CRUNCHIE MCFLURRIES at McDonalds.  I ate an embarrassing number of McFlurries over the course of the 3 days we were in Ireland.  I'm not going to disclose the number.  Just imagine if your favorite childhood candy bar was available in McFlurry form for a limited time in a foreign country...what would you do?  Yup, I thought so.       

My blissful discovery of this marvel

Needless to say, I was very dismayed when we got back to London and they also have that variety here in London.  How did I never notice that before??!  I'm going to need to reign in my new addiction though, if I have any hope of fitting into my clothes by the time I leave England.

The next day we spent traveling around Dublin, taking a free hostel tour of the city, with a hilarious free-swearing tour guide who brought even the oldest and driest history come alive.

According to our guide, the most "unique" architecture you'll ever see in your life.  

Our third day we took a day bus trip into Wicklow, Glendalough, and Kilkenny, which is about 2 hours outside Dublin in the neighboring countryside.  Probably my favorite part of our trip, it was soo beautiful and green and medieval.  Makes America seem like a newborn baby compared to Ireland!  

An old monastery in Glendalough

Glendalough- the valley of the 2 lakes

Emilia and I outside the Kilkenny Castle

Our tour guide was a buck-toothed Irish man who kept making "baahhh" sounds every time we drove past a sheep (which was a lot), but at least we learned more a lot about the places we visited, and Irish history, than we would have otherwise!  

That night we went on a pub crawl with our hostel, with a group of other young travellers who turned out to be primarily American as well.  We tried a sampling of 5 Irish pubs and bars, which was actually really nice because our guide took us to a good variety of places where we could get a feel for the Dublin nightlife scene.  That's all the description I'm going to go into regarding this event, although I will say that none of us were hung over, and we still woke up on time the next morning, so we didn't get into tooo much mischief relatively speaking....I will say that we were all disappointed when we checked our wallets the next day though!  Oh well, at least we did our bit for the Irish economy.

After visiting the Guinness brewery on Friday morning, we flew back to London on Friday evening, with Emilia and I finally arriving back in Chiswick at 10:30 pm after taking 4 buses and a plane from Dublin (I'm telling you, we're bus experts now).  We slept like the dead that night, and like champs carried on running on the traveller's treadmill when we woke up bright and early the next morning to take a Oscar Wilde walking tour of London.  We still haven't caught up on our sleep from all of the traveling, walking, eating, and drinking that we've done in the last week, but as they say, we can sleep when we're dead!  

Tomorrow morning we are waking up early again to take a bus to Stonehenge and Bath for the day, so there will be more to follow....