Day 68 - Paris to Zermatt

Got up at 7, determined to make the 8:40 train from Paris to Geneva and then from there to see the Matterhorn. It was a spur of the moment decision to go, but i really have nothing but time and have wanted to go to Zermatt ever since i saw Matt (Moore) and Geoff's (Matthews) pics from their trip a couple years ago. At the time i thought it looked like one fo the nicest places ever and had to go see for myself while have the chance. Would be a long, long ride there, but i was hoping worth it.

I was an idot though and hadn't packed so it took awhile to get moving, woke up everybody in my hostel dorm room banging around in the dark, and for the 3rd day in a row didn't get a chance to shower. Class act. I finally got on the road and rushed out to the subway station and then under the city to the Lyons station.

I got there with time to spare, only to see utter madness inside the station. . Just happend that my big travel day decided to coincide witha one day train strike by the lazy French.

Awesome!

Luckily though not all trains were stopped, but only about 1 in 5 regular trains were running, meaning I couldn't get out of Paris until 10:30. So that whole getting up early, rushing out the door thing was for nothing. I'm sure the people in my room would be happy to hear that. And with the way my body felt after last nights festivities, a couple more hours of sleep could have done me a world of good.

So with two hours to kill i went off in search of breakie and eventually found a place to have a coffee and omelette at a somwhat reasonable price.

Two hours later i was tucked in my seat on the train and off for the land of tunnel cheese!

The ride was great. Really nice train and some of the most amazing views, especially as we got closer and closer to Switzerland.

Day 67 - Dublin to Paris

Got up at 6:30, finished packing headed off for this spot near the Spire where the airport shuttle apparently leaves from. Picked up a local Irish delicacy for breakfast, then made it to the spot just in time for the bus. Ride was just under an hour, then checked in for the flight where they charged me 28 Euro extra because i was 4 kg over the 15 kg 'Ryan Air Limit'. Bastards. Then had to sit around for 3 hours for the flight because it was almost an hour late leaving.

The flight was fine. Went up, came down an hour and a bit later, and lost an hour because of time zones. So by the time we landed back at the Beauvais Airport it was almost 2 local time.

Waiting for my luggage i met this kig, Elliot from Ottawa who's only 18 and is taking a year off before going to university. We rode the bus from Beauvais to Paris together, than took the subway together back to the Aloha hostel.

By the time we got to the hostel it was almost 4. Soon as we walked in i ran into Mike (the guy we met originally in Vienna adn then again in Paris the night before we left for Ireland). He'd been there since we left and was leaving the next day for Belgium.

I dropped my stuff off in my room, cleaned up abit, then the 3 of us hit the grocery store to get some cheap beer for the night. On teh way back we hit 'Old Faithful', the same Chineese place that me and Rob had eaten at so many times before. Mike and Elliot were very surprised with the big hello and hand shake that i got from the two owners when we walked in....haha.

We brought the food back to the hostel, ate, then headed to the upstairs common room/movie room. We hung out there for the rest of the night talking, playing cards and telling stories. The three of us ended up being joined by two 20 year old girls who were quite the amusing pair (Edmonton and Melbourne) as well as a very annoying kid from PEI adn later in teh night by a very, very drunk Aussie girl who didn't seem willing to give us the time of day earlier, but was now all of a sudden loving us in her drunken haze. We all got pretty wired up together and all crawled upstairs to bed at some point when the beer was gone. Elliot was especially done in by trying to keep up with Mike and me. The poor kid was in a world of hurt and had he not got so drunk could have had either of the two 20 year old we were with all night....haha. Stupid kid.

Day 66 - Limerick to Dublin (again)

Got up at 10 and rushed to dress, make sure i had all my stuff, siad goodbye to Rob, and then caught a cab to the train station.

ON MY OWN!!!

THANK GOD!

(just kidding of course)

I was actually pretty sad leaving Rob behind. I was really hoping he´d change his mind last minute and change his flight and come with me.

So i got to the statioon and hopped on the 11:30 train to Dublin. That first train ride was really weird being alone for the first time in almost 8 weeks. I got to Dublin around 2:30, then jumped on a city bus to Temple Bar and then walked to Temple Lane where i was staying at Barnacle´s hostel. Pretty sweet hostel. Very nice and clean, big enough rooms and beds, and a huge kitchen area for cooking your own meals. I threw my stuff on my bed, chatted abit with the two girls in my room (from South Africa and Italia) and made plans to meet the South African girl, Lindsey, for a pint at 8ish. Then i headed off to wander on my own.

I wandered around the Temple Bar area and south of there for a couple hours, stopping to do some shopping and buy some presents and souvenirs and then bought some pasta and sauce at a market on the way back to the hostel.

When i got back i decided to go for a quick stroll north of the river and found a place that would cut my hair for €6. I just told the guy ´short´and next thing you know he pulled the clippers out and did a stroke through my hair. Apparently ´short´means pretty much bald in Ireland. So me and my crewcut wandered abit more then back to the hostel, showered, cooked, and ate.

I met Lindsey at 8 and we went for a walk looking for a pub (not hard in this area). We ended up wandering in a big loop for 30 minutes and ended up right back where we started, right next to our hostel at a pub called The Temple Bar (in Temple Bar....confusing). Lindsey turned out to be yet another med student, studying in Johanesburg and is in Ireland during the African Summer Break (December through March) to work and live in a new country for the sheer experience. She´d landed a job in a coffee shop and for a cateror part time.

We had a couple pints of Guiness each and chatted about our countries and compared how different they are. Very, very different. When she asked me after our first pint if i wanted another, i responded ´Does a bear shit in the woods? ´, to which she responded, ´I don´t know. We only have regular animals back home like lions, elephants, and rhinos.´.

Case in point.

An Irish band started playing during our second pint, so we watched them for awhile, then called it a night early (11ish) and both went to bed as she had to be at the coffeeshop at 6, and i had to leave the hostel by 7ish.

Day 65 - Limerick

Got up around 10 and then we sat around waiting for Dave to come home from Maureen´s. He´d reserved a car for us so we could drive up the coast to see the cliffs and go to Galway. We gave him a call around 11 and he said he´d be back by 12:30.

12:30 went by.

1:30 went by.

2:30; Dave shows up.

Was a bit annoying because i was excited to get out into the country and see a bunch, but with him coming back so late and with it getting dark so early, we wouldn´t get a chance to see much. Can´t complain though, he has been really awesome to us and let me stay for free basically for 4 nights, so no big deal. Another place i´ll just have to come back to.

So we got going by about 3 adn set off for the Cliffs of Moher. The drive was pretty awesome through the green of Ireland. I love how they leave old stone structures standing in the middle of fields. Some of them look awesome. Especially the ones where there´s only a wall or two left with the old window holes still there. The roads were soooo narrow. I don´t think i´ve ever seen anything narrower and whinedier (is that real word?).

We got to the cliffs of Moher, parked and then wlaked the path up along a field to the edge of a cliff. We could see down the coast at a bunch of other cliffs. It was gorgeous. By the time we got there it was 4, so the sun was pretty low in the sky, making for some awesome pictures. the cliffs were huge; they must be at least 150 feet. I´m guessing they could see me waving all the way from Newfoundland. From there we drove south down the coast which was pretty nice too, and then back to Limerick.

At 8:30 we went out to a steak house where i had my first steak in over 2 month. It was awesome. We got back to Dave´s around 10:30 and he headed to bed because he had to work early Monday and me and Rob stayed up for a bit and had a couple beer. It was our last night together so we hung out for a bit, remembered some of the thing that´ve happened to us together over the past few weeks, then went to bed ourselves.

It has definately been good.

We´ve had some amazing times together, seen and done some crazy things. Its so weird that we´ve both been looking forward to this tirp for so long and just like that its done. Its gonna be weird for the next couple weeks to not have Rob there for everything, especially on trains and hostels (who´m i supposed to snuggle with a night now!?). thing just won´t be the same. I know it´ll be fine travelling on my own, but half the fun has been having a good friend to share it with and he has definately been that....tear, tear.

Day 64 - Dublin to Limerick

Took us awhile to get moving this morning after the debauchery of the night before. Woke up to the smell of half eaten chicken chow-mein mixed in with the wonderful smell of Rob´s shoes and Dave (he just stunk period).

When we finally did get moving we caught a cab down to the Guiness brewery. The whole operation is actually absolutely huge and Guiness property and warehouses and stuff stretch along a huge portion of the river and through alot of the downtown area.

There was a pretty big line to get in (seeing as it was Saturday and the Guiness brewery is ´the only place worth visiting in Dublin´) and about half an hour later we got in. It wasn´t really a ´brewery tour, more like a museum. Pretty much teh same as the Heineken museum, but for Guiness. Had all the history of how Arthur Guiness switched from brewing an ale to a porter and how he roasted his hops to get the black colour of Guiness. Then there was a bunch of stuff about how Guiness used to be shipped, about how they brewed it and brew it now, and a whole floor dedicated to the famous Guiness posters and slogans. The whole museum was in the old brew house and started on the ground floor and we kept going up from floor to floor until eventually we were up on the top floor where they have a big circular bar on the roof with a 360 degree view of Dublin called the Gravity Bar. When we got up there we got a pint of Guiness (i asked if they had anything Canadian on tap and only got a stare....sense of humour = negative). They pour it in a pattern so that when they top it up there´s an outline of a shamrock in the head (foam). Pretty cool. I have to say that i´m definately more of a Guiness fan leaving Dublin than i was coming in.

Of course on the way out of the museum you have to walk through the store where i bought more stuff than i have room for in my bag. They must make sooooo much money there. After the museum we walked around for a bit and Dave took us for a walk through the Trinity College campus (where he did his med school). Pretty nice campus.

We got back to the train station in time to catch the 3:30 train to Limerick beacuse Dave had to get back for a hospital ball at 7. All we´d had to eat all day was a pint of Guiness so we grabbed a few €5 sandwiches and bottles of Coke at the station.

We got back to Limerick and cabbed back to Dave´s place by just after six. Dave hurried to get ready and Maureen came by with Dave´s tuxedo and brought me and Rob her DVD player so that we could rent some movies. We hung out with Max for awhile while he waited for Dave to get ready.

Dave has got to be the slowest person i´ve ever met (maybe even slower than Oreo). Dave, on several occasions over the course of the weekend, would say 30 minutes and be ready or show up an hour and a half later.

After they finally left, me and Rob walked to the mall and hit the Tesco (grocery store) for some dinner food adn then rented a couple movies (Ring 2 adn Soldiers and Saints). We got back to Dave´s cooked some pasta for dinner, then just watched some movies and went to bed.

Day 63 - Limerick to Dublin

We got up around 11 with both Millman boys looking pretty rough. Well...they´re both pretty ugly to start with...but they managed to look even worse come the morning.

We got up, cleaned up, showered, then headed for the train station to catch a train to Dublin. We got on the 12:30 train and then switched trains at Limerick Junction and got to Dublin around 2:30. We jumped in a cab and went to our hotel, dropped off our bags, and then went to ´Rocket Eddy´s´for a burger and fries.

From there we rolled north for about 40 minutes to Temple Bar. ´Temple Bar´isn´t actually a bar, its an area of town, on the south side of the river where there are a ton of old old pubs and stores with the streets pretty much all cobblestone.

So we sat down and had our first pint of Guiness and watched some crickett (Australia/West Indies) and after our pint switched to a different pub, had another pint of the ´black gold´, then to yet another pub where we this time stayed for a few pints and watched a small group playing Irish tunes for awhile. Form there we hit a couple more pubs, but none of the 3 of us much remember much about those.

We´re not 100% sure how we got home or when, but i know i got Chineese food from the place around the corner and we also know that Dave passed out hard, fully clothed, and then snored his ass off.