| Ariel You scored 62 Independence, 67 Romance, 62 Loyalty, and 57 Practicality! |
| You are Ariel! Ariel is for some the ultimate disney heroine, the girl who defies everything she knows for the sake of love. While you care a great deal about your family and friends, and would never settle for a subservient, obiedient life style, love is everything to you. You are brave, cunning, a little reckless, with an enquiring mind and a personality all of your own, but you are ultimately a dreamer rather than a realist, risking everything you care about for the chance of a dream, something you long for. Your idealism makes you an utterly charming girl and your friends would follow you everywhere, but you do sometimes get into a bit of danger by not being cautious or thinking things through. You don’t listen to your parents if their advice dosen;’t suit you, which is good, you aren’t just a brainless follower, but sometimes a little wisdom would be nice. You also would leave your friendships behind for true love, even though they mean a lot to you. Luckily for you, everything will always turn out okay, because you are good at heart, but sometimes others despair of your single minded devotion to the one you love, although it is very romantic. Lively and fun, you can be a little naiive, but ultimately you are a determined and loveable person. |
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The Wild West Weekend
West Ireland is really the Ireland that comes to mind when you think of Ireland. Everything’s so green there with loads of stone walls and rugged shore lines. Beautiful!
I picked up Richard on Saturday (after missing the bus by a minute because it came early and then catching a bus that didn’t even stop at the airport and I had to walk a km to get there – ugh) and we collected our Opel Astra rental car. After a quick stop at my place for refreshments and my bags, we hit the road and headed to Galway on the west coast. Loads of evil round abouts finally lead us to our Bed & Breakfast St. Judes. Super cute place with lovely hosts and a nice room.
We then headed out to the city centre of Galway and wandered around there for a while. Super cute shopping streets (though the stores were closed) with charming house fronts and loads of pubs. We stopped for dinner at Finnegan’s and Rich had original Irish Shepperd’s Pie while I enjoyed my pizza. His jetlag and my evil cold plus our plans for Sunday made us go straight to the B&B without stopping at any of the lovely pubs (but we have St. Patty’s coming up!).
After an early breakfast at 8:30am (uargh!) we got out in the rain and cought our bus to the ferry at Rossaveal. Luckily the sea was quite calm and we made it to Inishmor, the largest of the Aran Islands without being queasy or puking (yay). Since it was raining and we only had a day on the island, we decided to go on one of the touristy minibus tours that Lonely Planet seems to despise. Well, we actually really enjoyed ours and it was lovely to sit in a dry bus and get the grand tour with lots of comments and answers from a local instead of walking around a 14km long island in the rain. 
The tour stopped for 2 hours at Dun Aengus, a stone ring fort dating back to 3000BC. The sheer amount of artifacts from 5000 years ago in this country don’t fail to amaze me. I’m so awed that they are still around after all these years in the rain and wind! The climb up was kind of rocky but we made it up there and back down without broken lilmbs. Standing at the cliff edges of Dun Aengus with the thunder of the ocean’s waves in my ears was definitely impressive.
We had time for lunch at a cafe by the fort (yay, another tourist trap) but the soup and bread for around 4Euro were pretty good and definitely warmed us up again. Having learned from Juliane and my Belfast trip, I had packed extra pairs of socks, and woolen ones, too, so my feet were snug and warm after I changed into those.
We got back on the bus and drove around a bit more over the island. The landscape there is so fascinating; mostly rocks just covered with a bit of green and loads of stone walls. I’m sure it’d be the perfect spot for soul searching if anyone ever feels the need for that.
After the tour we wandered around a bit by ourselves and then had some Guiness at the local pub – ironically The American Bar. Had to fend of some old drunk guy – yuk – but the place was overall quite nice. The ferry ride back to the mainland was more bumpy than the one out but not too horrible.
We wanted Chinese for dinner and so we did. Unfortunatelly it didn’t taste very Chinese. I guess I’m just so spoiled from Chinese restaurants in Germany and Rich from his Asian family cooking that it just seemed too European.
Monday morning we had a Full Irish Breakfast, which was similar to American breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato, and a small potato patty. The B&B also always had a nice selection of fruits so breakfast was super delicious!
The plan for the day was to drive through county Clare and then back to Dublin. So we got out of Galway (byebye evil Galway round abouts) and on to narrow rural roads by the coast and through the Burren. The Burren area actually looks pretty bare with loads of gray rocks. We were super lucky that day as the sun was actually out, only hidden behind some clouds every once in a while. Poor Rich had to keep up with those tiny local roads that have walls right besides them and then later on with me nagging him to speed up and go the speedlimit (120kmh=75mph) on the Motorway so I’m sure his time in the car was much less enjoyable than mine on the passenger seat. Anyways, we stopped at a couple of places, like the Dolmen to take photos and then had lunch at Brendan’s Boat in Ballyvaughan. Yum smoked salmon and creamcheese bagle! Could eat that every day!
We continued to the Cliffs of Moher where they had just opened a new visitor center and also put up some boulders to keep people from getting too close to the edges and fall 200m deep into death. Of course we still saw one stupid guy climbing over them but he didn’t run over the edge (damn! – just kidding!!). The cliffs were really impressive and we were so lucky with the sunny weather! We hung out there for a while and then got back on the road to Dublin via Ennis and Limmerick where we stopped for twisty fries, a burger and tea at Mickey D’s before reaching my apartment around 10pm. Fresh rolls for dinner and then I drugged myself up with some Benalyn Night and I slept like a rock until my alarm rang this morning. I can totally see how people get addicted to that! No stuffy nose, no cough, deep sleep – lovely! Well, of course this morning my cough and runny nose are back but at least I did get some hours of good, uninterrupted sleep and didn’t feel like a shipwrecked this morning. :o)
Rain Makes Me Sick
Yeah, I think the incubation time is over and I’m now with a lovely cold including sore throat, drowsiness, cough and general ill feeling. Thank you bloody rain. Bought some Benylin at the pharmacy here as that was the only thing that has day and night capsules. Let’s see how it works. I just hope being away from Saturday until Monday this weekend will still be great fun!
Well, today was also the day that I had my phone interview for the trainee programm with my company. Good girl that I am, I had thought about some potential questions and good answers to them and had typed those up last night. I had wanted to print them and my resume out this morning before the interview. Well, when I got to the office and turned on my computer, I got an error message and couldn’t log on. Ahhhhhh! They didn’t fix it until a minute before the interview so I was all nerved wrecked. I had emailed the files to my work account but I have it set up so that my private mail is straight forwarded to a seperate folder. Well, I had forgotten that I included my own private email address in that one, too, so the files weren’t in my inbox and then my phone rang. Well, the number I had given them aparently didn’t work so the lady called my German cell and I had to give her my Irish cell number to get going.
The interview itself I think went quite horrible, like I didn’t even mention private labels when she asked about problems with retailers *sighs*. Then I couldn’t come up with good examples of where I had implemented something new or when I motivated people. Bleh. With all that IT and phone stuff going on it almost feels like some higher force wants me to not get this job.
Ugh, I have to do laundry tomorrow so Rich has some clean sheets for the air mattress, which is still inflated BTW so we won’t have to go through this pumping ordeal again. 😉 But I just want to read a bit and then sleep really early so I that this cold will get better or at least not get horrible but it feels like it is going to be one of those royal buggers. :-/
Oh yeah, I’m uploading the Belfast photos as I write this….
No, they don’t wear anything underneath…
Oy, what a weekend! A little recap in numbers for your enjoyment:
– Casualties: 3 (my umbrella, my purse, Juliane’s shoes (I already declared mine dead after the hiking trip to Howth)
– Countries visited: 2 (Ireland and Northern Ireland)
– number of times I cursed the weather: about 1 million
– number of times our umbrellas flipped: about 1000
– number of times our guide mentioned some saint or king: about 100
– number of bare Scottish butts we saw: just 1 but that was plenty
– number of houses that looked the same as it’s neighboring = the number of streets we saw –> lots and lots.
So I picked up Juliane from the airport on Friday and after a long struggle with the air mattress at home (it said with built in footpump but it only worked for our hands – think reanimating someone) we headed to the city centre to get some dinner. Dandelion Bar/Restaurant/Club was really nicely decorated and the food was alright as well (after I added loads of salt and parmesan).
Saturday morning at the crack of dawn (at least that’s what it felt like) we headed to Busaras (the central bus station) and boarded our bus tour to the Boyne Valley. John Bolton, our fun bus driver/tour guide had memorized a lot of interesting facts about the places we visited and also some cute jokes. Our first stop was Monasterboice, an ancient monastery ruin with a grave yard that featured Ireland’s most spectacular high crosses (the ones with the circle in the top of the cross). Kind of tasteless to shove groups of tourists through a cemetary that’s still in use but the crosses and ruins were really neat to see. I guess people should opt to get buried at some quieter place but maybe they like having tourists run around their bodies.
Next up, after a drive through the scenic Boyne Valley including Slane, was Newgrange. Had a nice lunch there with sandwhiches and a huge slice of lemon meringue pie :-D. The exhibit was also quite informative and then of course it was super impressive to be in a tomb that’s older than the pyramids. At some point it started pouring but luckily it stopped again before long. We were actually quite lucky weatherwise that day with blue skies in the morning and still some sun between the afternoon showers.
Our final stop was the Hill of Tara, the former assembling place of the kings of Ireland (way back when..). A slide show of ancient Irish history in a damp book shop and then we were off to walk around the hill and admire the sheep and the formations. Started raining again when we were there and we got the most beautiful rainbow all the way accross the land. I love full rainbows!
The bus dropped us off again in the city centre and we decided to stay there instead of heading back north to my suburb as we probably would have stayed there then. So we browsed some shops and then walked to Temple Bar – the main touristy bar district. Had a pint of Guiness (and not the baby glasses!) at The Temple Bar and then had to urgently go to McDonald’s to grab some grub to support the Guiness. Twisty Fries and free ketchup are some of the plus points in Ireland as well as the plasma screen TVs at Mickey D’s. Good times watching silly music videos and then we headed back to the streets. Saw some Scottish guys in quilts and well, the Guiness was talking for me so after shouting if they wore anything underneath, one of them showed us. Haha! Crazy! We hit another pub and drank a pint of Kilkenny’s while trying to avoid sleezy guys hitting on us oh but hey, they all said I sound American so that cheered me up :).
We watched the lunar eclipse over the river and then took the bus home and slept. Woke up way too early again (8am again) and got ready to catch our bus to Belfast. It was raining cats and dogs and we must have been a miserable sight walking and struggling with our umbrellas and the puddles down the 1km road that leads to the bus stops so a bus stopped and dropped us off right across the buss stop we needed to go to even though there was no stop there. Now that’s someone who would fall into the “Irish people are soooooooooooooo nice and helpful” category because he definitely was an angel for picking us up instead of splashing us with puddle water!
We tried to dry off a bit with the help of the airport restroom dryers but we boarded the bus still pretty wet. The drive to Belfast was alright, no funny jokes from the bus (but we got the “There are two emergency exits located on the aircraft – uhm bus” speech) and I felt kind of nauseaus when we got there.
It was still pouring but I got some pounds and we had coffee to warm up before we headed out to the city. Of course shortly afterwards we were drenched and headed to some museum to dry up and escape the rain. The area we walked through was really nice and Queen’s University and the City Hall were pretty impressive. The museum unfortunately was closed (until spring 2009 for crying out loud) but we found shelter in the palm house of the near-by botanic garden where it was also a bit warmer for the plants. It stopped raining then (wii!) but of course that didn’t make our clothes dry so we had to go to Primark and buy some dry clothes. Thank you Britain for better store opening hours than Germany! I got a new umbrella (mine bend and I had to throw it out sadly :() and some 3pound sweat pants (since it’s considered perfectly normal to wear track suits in public even though you don’t work out) seeing that I’m more likely to wear those again than the jeans they had there and Juliane got new shoes and a big pack of socks that we shared. Felt much better with dry clothes on and we headed to the Castle Court Mall to have some lunch. With the little amount of pounds we had left, we only managed to get some soup (talk about counting pennies) but it was good and warmed us. Then I saw that my purse strap had some off (nooooooooooooo!) so we looked for a replacement of the Tinker Bell purse (wahhhaaaaaa :(). Didn’t find one though so that’s on my to do list for the next days here in DUB). Well, we went outside again and walked to Shankill Road, which is the protestant’s main road. Looked at some of the murals but soon we headed back to more happy places, downtown towards St. Anne’s Cathedral and the Ulster college and then on to the river. By that time it was almost sunny!! Unbelievable how fast the weather can change here.
We were starving then and looked for a restaurant but Belfast is a bit like most German cities, quiet after shopping hours (not like Dublin). I guess it’s the lack of tourists and places that are open for you to eat. Well, we found this awesome place called Apartment though with an amazing view on the light-up City Hall were we endulged in rigatone pasta and baked goat cheese & ratatouille filled tart for not too much money on a cozy sofa. We left pretty quickly after we realized we could catch the express bus at 7pm so we rushed to the bus station and got there right in time to secure the front seats of the bus and enjoy a nice ride back to Dublin. There we rushed off the bus equally speedy and just caught our bus back home. Good timing!!!
Juliane and I both were pleasantly surprised by Belfast. The city centre and the area near Queen’s University were beautiful and not all houses looked the same (some did still of course). The city didn’t have good chances with that bloody rain drenching us and denying us a place to warm up at first but even with that rain we really enjoyed it.
Well, I do feel kind of sick today with a queesy tummy (that started yesterday but even before we had food) and a feeling that a bad cold will get to me sooner or later and of course I feel sleep deprived but we had loads of fun so it was worth it. Early bed time for me tonight as I have to be back in shape when Richard flys in on Saturday.
Piccies shall follow. 🙂