---So it appears that Picasa doesnt work on a mac, which is what I was counting on since thats all i have access to, so I wont be able to pick out the best pictures nor will i be able to process/ clean them up at all, so these are basically concept shots.---
On to Limerick Junction…
I’m on a train in Ireland, making our way through Limerick Junction to end up in the town Doolin. We plan on seeing the Cliffs of Moher, some famous cliffs on the central west coast. I haven’t had a chance to sit down at an internet café here yet, and so using Greg’s laptop will have to do.
I’ve only been in Europe for 4 days now, but I feel like I’m getting the hang of traveling pretty quickly. While I was on the plane to London I was getting pretty damn anxious, mostly because I handnt had time to find the directions to my London hostle “The Generator,” before I left. I was flying blind and it was both liberating, and stressful. Everything went pretty smoothly as soon as I had found an internet café in the Airport, but before that I was a bit lost. I didn’t even have the right calling card number, so if there was no internet I was SOL on finding the hostle.
I was supposed to meet my friend Greg at the hostle at around lunch time, but no such luck since I arrived at 2pm instead of 11, when I should have been there. I wandered confused for a bit, but quickly got tired of that and just went to sleep in my 4 person dorm room. A couple of Italian party boys were my roommates, who weren’t much for chit chat. I suppose I wasn’t either, I probably looked like some sort of monster with how jet lagged I was.
A knock at the door woke me up about 2 hours later, and to my relief it was Greg. We walked around a bit just to get oriented, but then we gave in and went to the bar that was part of the hostle. This hostle was a mass produced, 700+ person hostle. MTV had been there a few weeks before we arrived, so that should tell you at least a little something about what it was like there. Everything was cold chrome and neon blue colors, with an industrial grating kind of theme that really did look like an MTV set more than the kind of hostle I had in mind. It was good though, that night we partied in the bar, did some lame quiz game in the bar (which we lost even though we got most of the right answers from the emcee, who had a crush on one of our groupmates), met some kickass Canadians and Australians, and then passed out.
Next day was filled with the stereotypical London bus tour… You all can guess what that was like, pretty standard tourist musings. I would have never gone on something like that, but the Canadians and greg were going, so I figured that I would tag along. I was still lagged out of my gord, so having something do the commuting for me wasn’t a problem with me at all. We stopped in Hyde park to throw the Frisbee around, but it seemed that we were all still really tired, and our Frisbee circle got closer and closer till we were practically handing the Frisbee to each other.
The next couple days greg and I spent traveling to Ireland. We made it to Ireland after some impromptu train, bus, and ferry hopping. Somehow we managed to get on each train, bus, and ferry about 5 minutes before it was about to leave. Some kind of dumb luck is on our side right now, but even if we had missed all of them I wouldn’t have minded. This is the kind of vacation where it doesn’t really matter what we are doing. We are in Europe, if we get stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I see that as an opportunity to see a small town in the middle of nowhere. I suppose greg and my mentalities of traveling are a bit different, since I’ve already done the tourist site traveling thing and he hasn’t. I suppose that might get on his nerves a bit, but nothing is binding us together to stay together, though its always nice to have a good friend to travel with. In any case, whatever happens in Europe, I’ll be happy with. Even if I lose my camera, which would upset me sure, it wouldn’t be the end of the world… at least my backpack would be lighter, right? I just don’t wanna lose my passport, that would be a bit inconvenient.
Right, that’s all for now from the small 2 coach low-speed train heading west. More later, if I can get to a café to post this and something else…
