Adventure within an Adventure within an Adventure

That's right, this was adventure inception!

Though we had an absolutely fantasmagorical time in Ireland, it was a bit of a hassle actually getting there.  I have some pre-departure drama that I would like to share with you all to start:

Originally, there were going to be four of us making this trip: Marc, Tom, Tiffany, and myself.  Tiffany had been the one to post in our internationals group on Facebook about a St. Paddy's day trip, so it makes sense that she would be there, then Tom and I actually got everything going and did a lot of the detail planning, then Marc joined us a couple weeks before we left and was the one who found the best flight option for us. So we all had something to contribute, right? Yeah, well, not all of the contributions were positive.  We were all together when I found and booked the hostel and everyone was pretty excited, so naturally we assumed we were all in it to win it, right? About a week later, when the guys were looking at flights, both of us girls were busy so we didn't join them.  When they found flights for €300 round trip instead of the €500 one way that a lot of the airlines were charging, they jumped on the good deal, of course, not wanting the flights to be gone the next day when we could all get together, so Marc bought all 4 tickets on his credit card, expecting us all to be mature adults and pay him back.  They messaged us about the tickets they bought, the costs and times, but they worded it a little awkwardly and Tiffany thought that it was €300 one way instead of round trip. Needless to say, she got a little freaked out.  We straightened things out and she was excited again even saying (verbatim) "Oh, I'm totally in if it's only €300!" Then, the Monday before we were supposed to leave (4 days after telling me she was definitely in), Marc gets a message from Tiff saying she never planned on actually going with us and that she refused to pay for the tickets that he had bought in her name.  When he calls her to see what's going on, she curses him out, calling him immature along with a whole host of bad names, then hangs up before letting him speak at all.  Now, none of us had known Tiff very well before this, but she had always put on a happy face and seemed nice enough so this was a pretty big shock to all of us.  Both of the boys tried to get in contact with her, but neither were smart enough to meet her face-to-face and all they succeeded in was putting her on the defensive.. I went over to her room and talked to her calmly a few nights before we left and asked what had happened.  She said that she assumed because she had gone a few days between the booking of the hotel and the booking of the flights without any information (while we were all supposed to be doing our own flight research, btw...) that the trip had been canceled via telepathy (that last bit is my own, but really? Who cancels a trip without letting the other people involved know??).  She had gone ahead and made other plans and financial obligations for that same weekend without telling any of us and then had the balls to say she was taken aback when Marc bought the flights without asking her first! (Just so you know, a facebook message was, in fact, sent while they were buying the flights..) She absolutely refused to pay for any of the ticket, meaning that Marc - who, by the way, is one of the better guys that I have met in a long time; he's very level-headed, honest, and kind - was out €300 because the airline (Ryanair) wouldn't refund him for the ticket that close to departure time.  Our only chance was to find someone to take over the ticket and Tiff wasn't too eager to help us with that either... We did manage to find someone who wanted to go, but the fees for changing the name on the tickets turned out to be too expensive (not a whole lot of options when you fly with the cheapest airline around), so it ended up being just the three of us. 

In all honesty, I was actually pretty ok with it being just me and the guys.  I haven't had a whole lot of chances to hang out with just guys lately and I miss it.  Our traveling was a little bit ridiculous - we had to take a train to Paris, then a the metro to meet a shuttle that would take us almost 2 hours outside of Paris to Beauvais airport, where we took a plane to Manchester, then a different plane (not a connecting flight - a whole new flight) to Dublin, then a taxi about 20 minutes outside of Dublin to this itsy bitsy village of about 300 families called Donore where we were staying.  On the way there, it was nice because we didn't really have to rush at all between our connections.  We had a nice lunch in Paris after walking down the Champs-Elysée and we played cards for an hour or two in the Manchester airport while we waited for our flight =] Every chance I got, while we were traveling, I took the middle seat between the boys.  It was cozy there ;] 

When we finally got to Dublin (after 14 hours of traveling, I might add) the driver of the taxi we took to Donore had the boys freaking out because he had never heard of the village before.  The boys thought I had booked a bogus hotel and that we wouldn't have a place to stay.. But after a few calls to friends, he found out where to go and we were on our way! The driver's name was Jason and he was absolutely fantastic!! He told us stories and asked us questions and gave us advice on what to do the next day in and around Dublin.  He drew us a little map of where to find a good place to eat and told us when the best time to check out the big bars would be.  He told us about Irish customs and personalities, saying that if you ask an Irish person directions, they're more likely to take you there than just point you on your way, and if they don't know the place, they'll call friends until they figure it out for you! When we finally got to the hotel in Donore (much to the relief of the boys ;P ) Jason told us that he had a taxi driver friend who lived nearby and he would give him a call to see if he was working the next day.  If he was, Jason promised us a ride back into town for €80 (the ride out had been €70) and he also promised that if his friend couldn't do it, he would get us back to Dublin if it meant coming back out himself, even though he wasn't working the next day! So, we got his information and said thank you and good night.  

When we went inside and checked in, we got another surprise... I had booked two rooms with two beds each (I thought..), but when Tiff backed out I had emailed the hotel and asked if we could just put a roll-away bed into one of the rooms.  They emailed back saying that they didn't have roll-away beds but that they would give it to me half-price! It seemed like a great deal!  When we got there, however, they only gave us one room...with one bed...for two guys and a girl... haha you should have seen our faces when we opened that door! There was a bar attached to the hotel, however, and we decided to figure it out after we had a couple drinks in us haha! So, we dropped our stuff off and went down.  

When we got there, we settled in at the bar (after Marc, who is quite attractive, got hit on a bit by an older man haha It weirded him out a little but it was hilarious for me and Tom ;P) and immediately started talking to the man sitting next to us.  His name is Peter and he is amazing!! Actually, everyone there is amazing!! They all made us feel completely and utterly at home there in that little village.  The guys were kind of shocked when we ordered pints and they were only 4€! We had a long discussion with the locals about how a pint in O'Donnell's is €10 and the beer isn't nearly as good there as it is in Ireland. They asked us all about where we were from and what we were doing in Europe/Ireland and when we said we were only staying in that village for the evening, Peter tried for about an hour to convince us to completely cancel our Dublin trip and do the tour of that area because there is a huge tomb about ten minutes away in a town called Newgrange that is apparently a sort of pilgrimage for hundreds of people.  He told us he would personally give us a tour of everything around there, but we already had financial obligations so we couldn't. He made a damn convincing case, though, and even invited us back, saying we could stay with him and he would cook us a real Irish meal (the boys were disappointed about missing breakfast in the morning at the hotel, but we were leaving just before it opened...) and he would take us on the grand tour of the area for free, where it would normally cost us about €5! Here's a picture of him and the guys (left to right: Peter, Marc, and Tom):

I am definitely going to try to get back there at the end of the semester and I think Tom, at least, will too.  The rest of the night was spent talking with everyone in the bar.  The women took a real liking to me and I talked with them for probably 45 minutes while all of the guys talked.  Then, we found out that the Irish really like to sing when they're drunk haha! Song after song after beautiful song filled the little bar for I don't even know how long! They even got me to sing a couple of songs! We finally started back to our room at about 1:30am but they convinced us to stay for one last song.  We all sang The Voyage, which was very fitting, if you ask me.  The video's a bit dark but here's a little snippet:

When we got back to the room, Tom graciously slept on the floor when we found some spare blankets in the closet.  We had been considering all sleeping on the bed the short way but that seemed like it could get dangerous if anyone rolled or kicked in their sleep.  Marc and I ended up sharing the bed.  In the morning, Jason was back to pick us up.  We told him about our amazing night and asked him what plans he had for St. Paddy's day.  He had advised us to try Guinness that night instead of in the morning and we had taken him up on the advise.  He was really surprised when I said it went down smoothly and that I really liked it haha - he thought I wouldn't have handled it as well as I did. It made me laugh ;P When we told him that we hadn't had a chance to have breakfast, he drove us around in Dublin until we found a store where we could pick up some food and he didn't charge us any extra! Then he drove us into the heart of Dublin and dropped us off right in front of the Guinness factory, where we were going to tour.  When we were saying goodbye and thank you, he told us that if we needed any help over the weekend, we could call him and he would do his best to help us out and if we were ever back in Dublin to give him a call and he would take us wherever we needed to go! I'm excited to see him again, too! After all that, it was barely St. Paddy's day and I was already in love with the country and the people!!

Now, we were at the Guinness factory for a self guided tour that cost us only €10 and included a pint of fresh brewed Guinness! The factory itself was HUGE and really cool!! They had a ton of interactive things for us and a lot of cool things to look at. It took us a long time to get through the whole thing.  I put lots of photos up on facebook if you'd like to take a look! (Ma Grande Aventure album, scroll all the way down and you may have to click the "view more" button.) At the very top of the factory, they had a gravity bar where we could get our free pints.  It was really cool because you could see the entire city from there! It was beautiful! While I was looking out the windows, a woman came up to me and asked - in a heavy Minnesota accent - if I was wearing an ND tee-shirt.  I was, but I was kind of amazed that she had seen it because the UND logo was the size of my pinky nail on my shoulder... She said that her son was going to UND next fall! Such a small world! We didn't talk for very long but it was still pretty cool haha.  

After we had finished our pints, we left the factory and went to find good places for the parade! We inadvertently picked a place that was closer to the end of the route, so we had to wait for almost two hours for it to reach us.  It was worth the wait, though.  It was kind of a weird parade. There were a lot of steam-punk themed floats...If you don't know what that is, Google-image it. I thought there would be more green in the parade, but the crowd definitely made up for it! haha It lasted for a little over an hour and by then all three of us were stiff, hungry, and needed a bathroom - BADLY haha. 

We found a restraunt off the beaten path and and had a very yummy lunch.  The guys had some traditional Irish food, but it was a little harder for me because all the traditional Irish food had meat in it.  (Peter had laughed at me the night before when we were talking about food and I asked if there were any traditional Irish dishes that were vegetarian....) Afterwards, we just kind of wandered around and looked for good bars to check out.  It turns out that Ireland is NOT a good bar hopping country.  All the people there find a bar early on and sit there all night... We did a lot of standing haha which kind of sucked for me, because I had worn my rain boots (it was supposed to rain all Saturday, but of course it didn't) and they were rubbing the skin clean off my calves, even through my jeans.  Even now, I have perfect rings around my calves.. We did eventually find a good bar though and sat there for a while.  Closer to the end of the night, when we were all crashing, we started playing card games to keep ourselves awake and one of the waiters got in on the action, teaching us a new drinking game haha.  Even though we were in Dublin over St. Paddy's day, the biggest drinking day of the year in the biggest drinking country in the world, none of us drank a whole ton. We pretty much kept a buzz the whole day, but nothing more.  For one, it was pretty difficult to make it to the bar through the crowd haha and for two, we didn't really relish the idea of traveling another 14 hours the next day with wicked hangovers.  Especially since our first flight left at 6am!  We did check out "drunk street" though to see how crazy it was. It was insane! At one point, none of us were actually walking, we were just being moved by the crowd haha.  We decided not to stay there for very long...

Around midnight, we started making our way to the airport.  We had planned on staying in the hotel for two nights but it was so expensive getting there and back that we didn't really see the point in it if we were just going to turn around and come back.  We started walking north so that we could catch a taxi from a cheaper area.  While we were walking, Tom pulled out the map just to make sure we were still on the right track and immediately we hear a voice saying "Hey, hey man! Hey, wait up!" A very, VERY drunk Irishman was attached to that voice and he had stopped us to make sure we weren't lost!! Jason really didn't lie haha! We talked with him for a little while and he was surprised that we were going to spend €20 on a taxi when we could spend that in the pubs haha.  He also gave us directions to a good place to get a taxi, which, conveniently had been exactly where we were already going haha.  We all wished each other a good night and a happy St. Paddy's and were on our merry ways. When we had gone as far north as we could walk (it turned into highway after that) we caught a taxi, and this driver was just as nice as everyone else.  Both the boys were pretty exhausted so I did a lot of the talking with him and told him we were only there for the weekend to which he commented "Really? You've already got the Dublin accent!" That made me smile haha. 

When we walked into the airport, we saw that we were definitely not the only ones who had thought to sleep there.  We found a table and promptly fell asleep after shoving our things under the table to be protected by our legs.  When we woke up to catch our flight, there were even more drunk people sleeping at all the tables and even spread out all over the floor! It was an interesting sight haha. 

Our flights went through Manchester again, but this time, we had about a 6 hour layover so we decided to explore a little bit.  We had an English breakfast and looked around Piccadilly. It was really cool and very beautiful =] Sadly, it was a Sunday, which meant that absolutely nothing was open...We had a pretty hard time just finding that one café... After a couple hours, we made our way back to the airport and finished up our full day of traveling to arrive home at about 9pm. 

It was a long and exhausting trip, but I loved spending it with the guys, seeing all the new sights and meeting tons of new people.  It's definitely an experience that I will never forget!!
What about you guys?? Tell me your St. Paddy's day stories?? Or any stories in general? I feel like I'm losing touch with some of you! =[

Gros bisous à tout le monde! 

À bientôt!

Morgan

P.S. Don't forget to read the next post, since it's technically before this one and they're kind of a pair! <3