Today I write from a change of scenery. I won't lie, it had been coming up for a while so I should have been prepared for my re-entry into normality but it still feels weird to be back in my own bed after being away from Australia for so long. Yes, just over a week ago I boarded my final flight back to Australia from London Heathrow, ending my journey of five and a half months. I'm still not sleeping very well (jet lag is not only unfriendly it is an absolute bitch) and trying to get back into things is taking way longer than expected. Enrolling in uni (which I still haven't finished) and organising myself (photos, work, outstanding uni work, actually unpacking properly) takes up most of my time in between listening to "hipster" music loudly on speakers of quality that I will admit I have missed dearly, watching the odd episode of Community, an outstanding comedy that anyone who's been in a study group will relate to (Arabic class I'm looking at you) and getting it into my head that I won't be travelling again properly for at least another year and a half. Sadness. So now as I sit in the warmth of my home at my desk, I play catch up with my blogs; the beginning of the end, the last of some of the best times of my life.
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| James, Andrea and I at Silent Disco. |
As I sat on the train whizzing through the English
country-side towards Durham (I'll get to that story soon!) I was still playing catch-up with my blogs. I’d had
a few good train rides and suddenly I was almost back up to date. However, things happened and time moved way too quickly (it's true what they say about time flying when you have fun) and now I'm way out of date once again!
My journey continues as my flight landed
in Dublin. As I looked out of the window I was greeted by rolling green hills,
grey skies and a very damp atmosphere. I will admit I did think to myself (but
only once) “why did I leave Nice and the nice weather again?” however after kicking myself strongly in the head as I
walked out into the terminal and hearing the melodious accent of the Irish
customs guard and the humorous way in which he stamped my passport (yay! More
stamps!) all of those thoughts disintegrated as I remembered why I had wanted
to visit Ireland so strongly.
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| McSwiggans Full Irish Breakfast. So good. |
I made my way to the tourist information centre and found
out where I needed to catch my bus to Galway and £16 later I was on my way to
Galway. My heritage as a Joyce is actually located around Galway so I found it
quite nice and a little sentimental that it was my first stop in Ireland.
I made it off the bus late in the evening and started
walking in the direction that I though the hostel was in. The reason I say this
is because there were actually no street signs that I could see, so I was relying
on directions alone. However, I arrived safe and sound if a little damp (my
umbrella was broken and I ended up ditching it two days later) at the Hostel to
find James sitting in the kitchen surrounded by people. I walked up and met
Andrea, his Irish friend whom he had originally met in Adelaide, Ian, a
Canadian soldier from Afghanistan and a random German couple. We immediately
set off to look for dinner and after a quick trip to Tesco we went back to the
hostel, made ourselves dinner and then met up again with Andrea to go out.
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| The Spanish Arch. |
The plan was to go and watch an open-mic night at the local
pub. Andrea’s brother was helping to run the night with his friends, and we
figured it would be nice to go and have a gander at the local talent.
Apparently, according to James, this included us, and towards the end of the
night Andrea and I were “asked” to perform (it didn’t matter what) a few
bathroom practises of “Make you feel my love” and a couple of pints of Guinness
later and we were ready. It went really well and we had the pub in silence
which is something that doesn’t happen very often so we were pretty proud.
The night didn’t end after we finished performing; the group
of us made our way down to the silent disco at a different pub and danced (or
tried to) the night away to different music. I had never been to a silent disco
before but can highly recommend them if you’re slightly uncoordinated (not a necessity, but the nature of the beast caters well for you) or just love a good time. You can loose yourself in your own little world and just forget for one moment that you're in a club and instead just laugh and have a good time as if you were dancing around your room at home at some good news.
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| Party on, Galway... |
After the silent disco we retired back to the hostel where drama unfolded (not really, I was just about to scream at a french girl who stole my bed, no biggie) but after a nights sleep in another dorm I awoke somewhat refreshed and ready to greet the slightly overcast, grey Galway day.
After walking downstairs to greet James and Ian, we decided that we would have the first of many diet-destroying meals and headed out to the local pub McSwiggans for a full Irish breakfast, complete with giant lattes and black and white pudding. After some serious eating with a little bit of planning thrown in for effect, we set off on our day of discovery and exploration which included the Spanish Arch and Galway museum. We ended the day once again with pizza before heading out to catch up with Andrea at an arts show "5 ways to drown" which Andrea didn't end up attending. I did like the show (a modern dance and theatre show) however wasn't quite sure what I liked due to the obscure story-line and minimal explanation.
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| Irish Castle on the way to the Cliffs of Moher |
Moving on.
The next day I decided to do a bit of sightseeing. I was in "Joyce Country" and being a bit proud of my roots I decided to take a tour of the Cliffs of Moher and Burren. I had a rather cold and bitterly windy but still lovely day seeing some of the best and most charming country that Ireland has to offer before heading back to the hostel to meet with James and Ian and once again heading out for Guinness, ending up at a nice pub and spending the night singing louder than the acoustic duo playing in the next room and adding a few of our own harmonies.
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| The Cliffs of Moher-still beautiful shrouded in fog |
The next day (if my memory serves me correctly) Ally flew in and we spent the day once again exploring before deciding to spending the night at Andrea's house. We moved back to the hostel the next morning and spent the next few nights there whilst we did a day trip to Connemara and Cong with a group of hilarious American Exchange students. Apparently my status as "the single one" is hilarious and myself and the guy I was sitting next to, Andrew, quickly became the butt of the driver and James' jokes For the entire day. You can imagine my excitement at this prospect.
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| Connemara! |
That night we moved accommodation for the evening after having no luck with a couchsurfer and then set out in search of dinner. We ended up at the same pub that we had frequented over the past few nights and had a lovely dinner before heading back to the hostel (not as glamorous or dramatic as our last hostel) for the evening, as in the morning we were to take a train to Dublin for a night before heading off on a Paddywagon tour of Northern Ireland.
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| First stop on the Paddywagon tour |
We set off our our Paddywagon tour the next morning, refreshed and ready for the many adventures that the tour would inevitably bring. We set off on a bus comprising mostly of Aussies and before we knew it were headed North towards Drogheda and and Monasterboice before spending the night in Derry, doing a walking tour of the city walls with a local who lived through the civil conflict and of Bloody Sunday. The night was spent on a pub-crawl that was no Portuguese "get beyond the second pub" challenge but still provided many laughs. We spent the next day driving through the rolling Irish country-side on our way to the UNESCO World Heritage listed Giant's Causeway before hopping back on the bus to take us to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge and on to Belfast. We spent the night in "Paddy's Palace" (don't stay there, it's not very nice) before going out for a tour meal and then heading to a local pub called "Filthy McNasty's". Yes, really.
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| From the Derry city walls |
The next morning we took a Black Taxi Tour of the city taking in the peace walls and all four of the gates separating Protestant neighbourhoods and Catholic Neighbourhoods. These gates are still closed and locked every night from 6pm. After this we went back to the hostel and changed buses (the tour had split into the 3, 6 and 10 day tours) before heading into town for lunch. James and Ally went for the extra-cheap option of sandwiches whilst myself and the rest of the tour group found a nice pub meal with a couple of lunch time ciders before heading back onto the bus to take us to our afternoon activity of the Titanic museum. The museum was well worth the few hours we had providing a good mix of history, the actual sinking and the post-tragedy repercussions and I found some of the stories fascinating. This was the final stop on our tour, and we spent the next few hours on the Paddywagon bus heading back towards Dublin.
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| The Giant's Causeway |
The next day James and Ally flew out, leaving me to my own devices in Dublin for the next day or so before I headed off to Scotland. My plans for the evening included dinner with Andrea, however dinner is never just "dinner". As I arrived at the restaurant where we were to have dinner, I received a text from Andrea saying that she had managed to get our names on the door for a private gig by a band called Kopek. Needless to say we spent the night partying away between the gig and another smaller gig by a band called Arrow in the Sky. The two bands couldn't be more different; Kopek, a rock band who were a mix between Mona, the Kings of Leon and The Foo Fighters (an awesome mix in my opinion-although you could add more band to that mix; check out my favourite song "Floridian") and Arrow in the Sky being a more mellow folk and blues band that I automatically fell in love with.
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| James and myself on one of our many tours... |
The night proved to be a highlight of my time in Dublin and indeed Ireland, and all in all was an awesome send-off from Ireland as the next day I was to find my way once again to Belfast as a stop-over on the way to Bonnie Scotland, Glasgow being the next stop on my itinerary.
As this story ends so does my blog post. Ireland marked the beginning off the end of my time in Ireland, and some of the best and most memorable times of my entire "Post Morocco" Trip. As always,
Until next time,
Love Love!
Clem xx
**Special thanks to James Bird for some of these photos. All of those ones with that vintage-y filter? Yeah, James was experimenting with his "hipster side" and they were the result. Thanks JB!
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