Ireland, my love.

"My dancing is freaky?"

My Guinness Hat!

Cause if I had a mustache...everyone would be in love with me!


Davy Crockett had no clue.

The Cliffs of Moher aka my only non-drunk picture in this post.

I've had the BEST time in Ireland. Dublin was incredible. To start off with, Jane (a friend I met at Sasquatch last year) graciously invited me and my sister to stay with her. Her apartment is huge, and we got a real bed, and a real shower, and real hospitality. She was so nice...she even picked us up and dropped us off when we went sightseeing! Unbelieveable. She made our trip to Dublin so much nicer than if we had stayed in a grimy Dublin hostel the whole time. I owe her a gallon of chili con queso dip and a taco bell feast to last the ages (all food she can't get in Ireland, that we share a mutual passion for).

We cavorted and gallivanted around Dublin for 3 days, and although we saw a lot of the city, I can't really say we DID much...except drink. Oh man, did we drink. We even went to the Guiness Factory, which I actually enjoyed. I've never drank Guiness before this trip, but it's so delicious over here! I'm not sure I want to try it back in the states though, because I have the feeling that the reason it's so good is because of how fresh it is. I drank SOOOO much of it over here.

We went out every night in Dublin, and i'll tell you...the Irish can drink. We got wasted every night. There was live music at almost every bar, and they were these little "irish" bands with fiddles and traditional drums and whatnot, but whenever I would shout out "WONDERWALL!!!!", they would always play it for me. I sure love me some Oasis! It was great. Then there was this song called "Wild Rover" that I had to sing the chorus to the bartender to actually find out what the name was...then I scurried back up to the band and screamed out my request (even though they were about 5 feet away), and they played it and everyone in the bar was singing and drunk. The thing is...i'm pretty sure "wild rover" is an irish song...but I have the feeling it's just one of those songs that drunk tourists like and request. Whatever.

While we were all singing along, I yelled at my sister and our friend Nadha..."We have to sway to this song and slosh our beer glasses around!". Only problem? We had already finished our beer. What a dilemma! We obviously didn't have enough time to go back up and order more beer while our favorite song was playing...so...solution? The only reasonable thing to do was to steal people's half finished drinks on the bar just so we could wave them around and crash them into other people's glasses. It was so much fun.

After all the drunk pub singing, we headed to a club to dance our drunk little hearts out. As you can see in the above picture, I came to the obvious conclusion that my sexiest move is the robot. But you knew that already.

Finally when the club closed, randomly these irish people took a shining to us (i guess?) and invited us back to their place for a house party. We said why not? and took a taxi with them...the party was pretty fun. My favorite part was when I got to wear a fake mustache. Apparently my sister was trying to get me to take it off but I refused. I think i look goooooood. Eventually we were so drunk, and sleepy (it was about 4 in the morning), so we took a cab ride back to Jane's and fell in bed and didn't wake up till noon the next day.

The last couple days have been filled with sightseeing and driving. We went from Dublin to Galway, but I was sick so I don't have much to say about that city, then from Galway we rented a car (scariest thing ever driving on the left side of the road in a manual car!) and have been driving around the irish countryside. We went around the Dingle peninsula (that name tickles me), then around the Ring of Kerry today. Gorgeous green pastures, stormy beaches and sheep wandering around everywhere...sigh...it's just what you would think Ireland would be like. I loved it.

Tomorrow morning we fly back to London and then? Well gosh darn! In 3 days (the 18th) I fly home sweet home.

Northern Ireland

So after beautiful Edinburgh, we headed off to the gritty city of Belfast. Personally, I wasn't really interested in it. I know that there is so much history involved within the city...but It's just so depressing. I hate hearing about people killing over religion (although the conflict was more complicated than that), and Belfast has such a bloody history, and still is pretty segregated. I hate the idea of going to a memorial of like, "here's where 20 people were gunned down for no reason!", and then taking pictures of it or something. I know it's important to remember, but it's just pretty sad. My sister really wanted to go though, and I conceded because going to Belfast meant it would be a hop, skip and a jump away from the Giant's Causeway...something I was really excited to see. Aaron told me about this amazing sight...a natural cooling of volcano that made the stones all into these jutting up hexagonal figures. I saw pictures of it online, and I had to go. And I wasn't disappointed at all. It was just SO cool. One of my favorite things i've seen on this trip I think.

Spooked

So I'm being a slacker again...mostly cause i'm too busy having fun to sit down and write on the computer...but I figured i'd give you guys a little picture to tide you over till my next real blog entry. This is a famous cemetary in Edinburgh. I went there to draw it, and got pretty creeped out actually. It got dark while I was there, and I was listening to chad vangaalen, which if you know him, his stuff can sound a little creepy.

Anyways...ONE WEEK TILL I RETURN!!!

Lovely, Lovely Scotland

Loch Ness

Hiking

We bought these ridiculous scottish tams. Yes, we know they look ridiculous, and we love them. There's a pom pom on the back of them too!

An old fortress

A painting of a Broch (fortress) staircase I did

On January 2nd, we started our tour of Scotland with MacBackpackers. It was so great. I'm not usually crazy about the guided tours, but this one was wonderful because we got to see so many places that we never would have if we hadn't been driven around in our little bus. There is so much natural beauty in Scotland...I've discovered that I like seeing the country way more than the city. It's so peaceful, and there were about 10 million scenes that took my breath away. I didn't have many expectations for Scotland, but even if I had high ones, this country would have surpassed them. Our tour guide was wonderful...he was quick and witty and told us all the best stories about Scotland. He even wore a kilt! Haha...authentic Scotsman alert! My only issue with the tour was that he talked all the time while he was driving...he told us umpteen stories about the land we were passing. But, as anyone that knows me knows...I cannot stay awake in vehicles. Cars, buses, trains, planes....they all put me into a coma. I literally fell asleep in between every stop on that bus. Everytime the bus would jerk to a stop though, I would get out, pose for some pictures with Mariette, look around, maybe draw a little...I was totally awake! But after 5 minutes of the gentle swaying of the bus, I would pass out again. I have vehicular narcolepsy. I swear.

We got to see Loch Ness, which was absolutely gorgeous...sigh. One of the prettiest lakes i've ever seen. We even had a Nessie sighting (see above)!!! We went up to the island of Skye...a northern island that was simply gorgeous. We saw rivers, climbed a giant hill, saw cliffs bordering the atlantic...any type of scenery imaginable, we saw it. We climbed up this massive hill to the base of this rock. I want to tell you guys the folktale of where this rock came from.

So once there was this giant. And we all know giants have lots of silver that humans are always trying to steal. Three beautiful maidens happened upon this giant, and wanted to steal his silver, so they started thinking how they could do this? Back then, god wanted to kill anyone who did sinful things on sunday, the day of rest, so the maidens thought that they would make this giant dance on sunday, and so god would smite him, and then they could steal his silver. So they start playing music for this giant around 11:45 pm at night, hoping he'll forget tomorrow is sunday, and dance. He dances for a little while, but as the clock gets closer to midnight, he sits down, cause he knows it's about to be sunday, so he knows he needs to stop dancing. So the maidens get together and say "what should we do?". Their solution is this: They strip down naked and start dancing all sultry around the giant, implying they'll have a foursome with him. He gets a massive boner thinking about it, and gets really riled up so he starts dancing. Just then the clock strikes midnight, and god looks down and says "say whaaaat?" and smites that giant, so he dies and he falls down with his boner still high in the air.

That's what the massive rock is that we hiked up to. A dead giant's penis. As aaron said, "Why doesn't america have any folk stories like that?". Valid question. I think we need some. Why isn't the grand canyon created from some folk story about a massive vagina or something? Huh? Huh?

Hogmanay...Drunk and Lawless

Look!

My favorite picture of the night...right at Midnight.

By the end of the night, we were just taking pictures with old people apparently. Look how drunk my sister looks!We thought this guy's bald head was really gross. So we took like, 8 pictures with it.

Sneaking into Groove Armada

Hogmanay was absolutely incredible. Of of the best times i've had over here. It was just SO MUCH FUN!!! We started off the night by drinking a lot a lot of vodka, but at Hogmanay (awesome), you can bring in your own alcohol, no problem! So we brought water bottles filled with vodka and fanta.
Our first stop? The Hot Chip DJ set. So great...they played so much good music, but the crowd obviously mostly responded to Hot Chip songs. We danced like crazy and I got to hear almost all my favorite songs by them. So after Hot Chip ended, we thought...hmm? What should we do? At this point, we were drunk enough to be reckless, and of course our thoughts were to sneak into the only area of Hogmanay where you had to buy an extra ticket (and what a ticket! Around 50 pounds for a concert (75 dollars!)). No way were we paying that. But we were going to get in...no matter what. My sister had kind of heard the band, and liked them...but I had never even heard Groove Armada before. I just wanted to break the law, honestly. It was way more about the mission than the end result for me. I was drunk, it was new years, and I wanted to do some subversive shit.

You can find all this out by reading the comic I posted above, but for those of you who are lazy, or who can't read my handwriting (probably everyone), I'll spell it out for you.

We started by going to a little gate blocking off the park and begging with the security guard to let us in...Of course, our friends had our tickets, and they were already inside, and won't you please help us out sir? We're just two damsels in distress (cue batting of the eyelashes)! No go. I'm pretty sure we were pretty obvious, and the day after we heard multiple people talking about how THEY tried to beg the guards to let them in too.
So instead, we found an exit area from the concert, and snuck in there. It went through this bathroom area, and there were two guards standing right there, but I went down, and right then it was midnight! Fireworks went off everywhere...it was really beautiful, and even more beautiful because I used that cue to say "Mar...come look at the fireworks" and out she walks past the guards, like we're not doing anything wrong...we're just two girls looking at fireworks gosh golly! So we look at them for a bit, and when we think the guards have relaxed to our presence, Mariette pretends like she wants to take my picture (well, she actually does, but she was also using it as an excuse for me to edge further into the park). She says "back up!" a couple times, as she keeps taking my photo, and then we just RUN for it. We ended up being backstage, but we were too drunk to realize it at the time...so we have to JUMP a hedge to make it to the main concert area. I boosted up my sister, then she helped pull me over (with some drunk difficulties). And then....we made it! We got to be front and center for the groove armada concert, without paying a cent. Amazing. It was such an awesome night. I had the best time. I hope everyone else's new years were awesome too!

EDINBURGH! SCOTLAND! CAPS LOCK!

Don't worry, this is the view from our hostel. Yes, it's across the street from a Castle.

Overlooking some random Edinburgh park

Edinburgh is magically delicious. We arrived early in the morning of the 31st...got about an hour of restful sleep, then took a free walking tour. We learned so much about the city. It has so much cool folklore and architecture and weird things about it...it's just a really cool city. And although it is by far the coldest city i've been in so far, it's really beautiful (I guess that makes up for it). The walking tour was really fun, although the guide was pretty annoying (he thought he was sooooo funny. And he got barely a chuckle out of us. I actually kind of felt bad...all his jokes landed super flat). But the stories he told were really cool. It's like every statue, every building and every pub has it's own backstory. There's so much history here.

Meeting up with Mariette

Reunited and it feels SO GOOD

Look at me pretending to know how to read

Modern art? I thought it was a stripper pole! Hyuk Hyuk!

How wonderful is it, after 2 and a half months of traveling alone...to see a familiar face? Especially that of my sister! Mariette and I met in London on the 30th. It was so, so great to see her again. I haven't even seen her since June...which is way too long to go without seeing my sister. Seriously. My parents flew her out as her birthday/christmas gift, and i'm so happy they did. It's so much fun to travel together...even if we do squabble a bit. I'm sure you'll notice some changes to my blog from now on because...My sister loves taking photos...you lucky people! You'll now be assualted with loads of photos of me, instead of the crudely drawn cartoons you've grown accustomed to (just kidding). It's actually really nice having her here...although I hate taking photos, I like looking at them, and I HAVE taken some myself...but my sister goes nuts. She's taken more than 300 photos in 4 days. Yes. That is my sister. Different, no?

So anyways, we both flew into London, she from Portland, me from Lisbon. We met in the tube at the airport, and it was so nice to be able to TALK to someone. We chatted the whole tube ride, and I couldn't stop grinning. It was like I forgot what it was like to be able to have a conversation. It was great.

We didn't have that long in London so we hit up the Tate Modern, a modern art museum that I really liked last time we went there. There was a lot of different stuff than there was four years ago, so that was really cool. I saw a quote from Picasso that I really, really liked.

"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life."

I just thought that was really beautiful. We spent a couple hours there (I snuck in some crunchy cheetos. They only have puffed cheetos over here, and as weird as it is, the crunchy ones were something I really craved. They totally taste different! No, Cindy, unfortunately they weren't cheddar jalapeno ones. I had asked my sister for those, but she couldn't find them (a snowstorm is no excuse!). Anyways, the crunchy cheetos were amazing. A little, bright orange, cheesy taste of home.)

We left that night for Edinburgh on an overnight bus. I'm not going to lie...the overnight bus was so terrible. We were crammed up so tight, it was so uncomfortable, and I was sitting next to two people who admitted they were mental patients. Oh really? Thaaaaaat's nice....?