Ireland-Day 5 & 6 and the long journey home

When we started this blog we had the intention of writing a different post for every day. That way we wouldn't miss even the tiniest memory. Well..4 years later we still haven't finished it and now we have hardly any memories left. I guess Alzheimer sets in when you get to be our age. The 29th year of life is pretty tough on the pre-frontal cortex. (Ok, so maybe I have no idea where that even is... I'm guessing it's somewhere towards the front of the brain, and I have no idea what purpose it surveys, but I figure pretty much every part of your brain is pretty important... and it sounded right so I'm just going to go with that.) Anyway, now I'm just wasting time. Speaking of wasting... once we went on this trip to Ireland and you know, because it's surrounded by a body of water, which means anything goes. So... wasting..that's where I was going with this. We got wasted. Every day. And Every night. Which is probably why I can't remember much of these last 2 days. The alcohol became a part of us. We were nearly fully inculturated into the Irish ways. So basically you are just going to get a list, with a few extra details. 1. We went to the Rock of Cashel. Sounds like a pretty bad-A place right? We thought so too. Until we got there and it was just a big fancy old church. I don't remember much about it other than that Janae and I weren't super interested in the tour we were forced to go on. I hate tours. I'd rather just walk around at my own pace and maybe stop and read a few signs here and there. And for some reason we were not about to stand for that long. It's not like we had been walking all day long, this was the first activity of the day, maybe it was the $70 worth of chocolate weighing us down. It's hard to be fat. So Janae and I decided to sit for the whole tour. We'd find a nice little rock or wall to sit on or by and just chilled while the rest of the group stood. The awkward part was that we always seemed to pick a spot that was pertinent to the tour. So there we are, minding our own business, not at all paying attention to the tour guide, and next thing we know, he is point above or around or behind us and all eyes are on the two lazy Americans, who can't stand for 30 minutes. He started making a joke about it every time. We became part of the tour. How's that for inculturation? After the tour we split from the boys. Who knows where they went for lunch. We went to a cute little place where Michelle and Janae got Shepard's pie. Legit Shepard's pie from Ireland. It looked delish but it didn't look gluten free so I got a salad. Then we waited for the boys, which we often did. While we were waiting we saw this adorable Irish family. They had a bright red-headed son that just had his first communion and boy did they love him. I have never seen a kid get so much attention. So naturally we started creeping on him and taking pictures. Don't judge. We had to. For Scott's movie.

2. We headed to Killkenny Castle. We walked through this adorable little Irish town by an adorable little Irish river. The castle was huge and really cool but we don't remember much about that. I have vague memories about some kids doing some weird dance moves or par-core on the castle grounds. The details are vague. As Kanye says, I'll blame it on the alcohol. The inside was cool from what I remember, but yeah, like I said, memories are vague. There were lots of pictures of ladies in the castle. Like a huge gallery. Scott and Greg were trying to pick up on one of the tour guide ladies, trying to get her to say 33 and a 1/3..or as the Irish would say, terdy tree and a terd. She caught on to their childish games real quick. Dave was stuck with us again. Poor guy. Fortunately for him, we introduced him to the game "1 or 2?" Basically he had to choose which portrait woman he'd rather be with. (I believe "be with" is meant in the biblical sense. We try to Mormon up the game..lie to ourselves, make us think that we are deciding which dude we'd rather go to institute with, but let's be honest, that's not the point of the game.) Anyway, Dave was the only one who could play because they were all girls, but he sucked at the game. He refused to pick one or two. When we asked him, his response was always, "Jacqueline." So lame. He didn't even marry her so I bet he regrets missing out on all that fun.

3. Apparently we ate dinner by the castle, but we don't remember that. However, we do know enough about ourselves to confirm that we did in fact eat dinner. We probably washed it down with about $30 worth of chocolate. Day 6 New day, same rules. 1. We wanted an authentic Irish breakfast so that's what we set out to do. We learned very quickly that Irish people don't wake up as early as American's. Because they need more time to recover from their hangovers. If I remember correctly, breakfast wasn't served until 10am. Which is the same time McDonald's stops serving breakfast back here. Dave decided not to join us, so he just slept in the car while we ate. I mean, he had to get up real early for that 10am breakfast.

2. We needed to check out an Irish Mormon church while we were there. Which was uneventful. There were a few American families there so we weren't a novelty. What's the point of going to church in a foreign country if you don't get a lot of attention for it!? Fortunately for us, we went in jeans because we were still planning on doing a lot of site seeing that day. But, Michelle had to one-up us and wore a skirt. The members there thought we were so wicked. They thought Michelle was so righteous. I also remember that there were a lot of red-heads there. Scott took lots of pictures.

3. We went to some historical battle field place. Really, I remember very little about this place, but there was an incident. We'll call it "The Incident." At some point while we were taking pictures, Dave made a comment to Greg that was pretty offensive to him. But not offensive to anyone else in the world. Greg is just real sensitive. So Greg got pissed and stormed off. It took us forever and a day to find him which made us late to our next location. Stupid Greg. I was over it, but now that I remember it, I'm pissed all over again.

4. We tried to make it to the most ancient burial grounds ever. New Grange..but we got there after it was closed. Scott tried to sweet talk the worker to get us in but he failed. So we had to settle for pictures from a distance. We did find some cool little burial grounds a ways away (that were locked too) but in an area that we could roam around freely. Scott did a jig with the sheep. Then he chased the sheep. It was funny.

5. We made it to Trim Castle which apparently is also known as Killarney Castle which is apparently also known as the Braveheart Castle. It was cool and old and there were lots of tourists. We took a really cool roommate candid while we watched Scott charge down the hill straight toward some of the unsuspecting tourists. I'm sure there was more to that location but I don't remember.

6. We headed back to Dublin for the night so we could catch a flight early the next morning. Temple Bar, we were told, was the most happening place there. Lots of food and live entertainment. I was dying for Mexican food, which happens to be pretty rare in Ireland, but we lucked out and found a place. Michelle was being real frugal so she bought a pizza from a drug store and brought it into the restaurant with her. She was eventually kicked out of the restaurant with her food and ended up eating it on the steps outside while we enjoyed Irish-Max. Not to be confused with Tex-Max. She came back in while we finished up our meal and put her head on the table to sleep. She gets real grumpy late at night. We just roamed around the rest of the night without the boys... saw lots of live entertainment and finally saw a red-headed Irish man do an Irish jig.

7. We decided to get a hotel for the night so we could get a good rest but Dave and Greg didn't want to pay so they slept in the car. We offered to sneak them into the hotel room but they were too stressed about the possibility of someone finding out that they were sleeping on th3e floor, so it was just Scott, Janae, Michelle and I for the night. The long journey home I don't have much to say about the flight home, except that it was long and maybe 2 other things. The flight from Ireland to New York was uneventful. But things got hopping' when we got to JFK. There were birds in the terminal. That was weird. They just walked around while we waiting, 4 hours or so, if my memory serves me right. A funny thing happened, or not funny for the pilot of the Air France plane that collided with an American plane on the tarmac. We were stuck in our plane for well over an hour while that incident was taken care of. Glad to be part of history though. And this concludes our trip to Ireland. I am so proud that after 4 years we finally got it in the books.