Ireland & Las Fallas

Hello All,

Sorry it has been a very long time since I have been on here, I apologize, it's just hard to blog when you are always on vacation. :) Well, March 12 Kyle and I left for Ireland. We spent 5 days there, including St. Patrick's Day, and then came back to Valencia for Las Fallas. Our first night of our Ireland trip was spent in the Bristol airport because we got in late and flew out early, bad choice, but something every student abroad does at least once. When we got into Dublin, we went downtown to catch the tour bus that Kyle signed us up for. This was a very nice tour. We went south of dublin and saw the 40 foot, which is on the coast where people go swimming everyday all year long supposedly to keep them looking young, also saw James Joyce Tower, and much of the country side. One of our final stops was the ruins of an old monastery. All that was left of it was a tower, the walls to the church, an out building, and the cemetery. We also walked some of the park around it. Then we went into the Wicklow mountains and went to a viewing area overlooking Guinness Lake. It's called this because it is shaped like a pint glass, has a very dark color, and Guinness actually trucked in 30,000 tons of white sand to create the frosty top. Then we got back on the bus and all had a shot of Jameson together. In short this was the tour which actually lasted about 8 hours. Well worth it.

The following day we went to the Guinness Storehouse and Jameson. That took up our entire day. The Guinness Storehouse tour was self-guided and we were able to pour out own pints of complimentary Guinness and then received a certificate proving that we are Certified to Pour Guinness. lol The "tour" ended in the 360 degree viewing area at the top of the storehouse. Overall, an excellent tour. The Jameson tour was not self guided and was actually very short. I was not all that impressed, but I did learn a little bit from it. At the end we were given a glass of Jameson whiskey either, straight, with ginger-ale, or with cranberry juice. I took the ginger-ale, it was surprisingly very good.

Our third day in Dublin was spent walking around the city looking at the old buildings and taking tours of some of them. We went into City Hall and they had an exhibit on the history of Dublin and Ireland, very nice. We also took a tour of Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral. We were even allowed to go down into the crypt of Christ Church, which was pretty sweet. We also went to the Wax Museum, which was quite interesting. They had some interesting figures in there. Anything from the Ninja Turtles to Pope Benedict XVI. We tried to get into Dublin castle but by 2:00 all the tickets were already sold out.

Our last day in Dublin we spent at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It was not your typical parade. For example one of the floats was a big turtle with a DJ on top with his mixing board playing techno, that was it. And the majority of the floats were pushed. After the Parade we went to Hurling Match and a Gaelic Football Match. Hurling is a lot like lacrosse and Gaelic Football is like soccer accept more physical and you can use your hands and run with the ball, but you have to dribble it or bounce it off your foot every so often. It was really sweet to watch and we sat next to some Irish guys whole explained to us what was going on. I would have preferred the Rugy game Ireland vs. Wales, but those tickets were a little bit out of my price range, cheapest being 250 euros.

After the games we caught our plane to London-heathrow, slept in the airport again and then got our flight to Valencia. When we got to Valencia, we took a siesta and then were ready to begin the Fallas festivities. Lucy and Lauren came down from Madrid for Las Fallas and we sat in our apartment until about 1 in the morning pre-gaming, but that actually ended up being all the game that Kyle and I had for that night thanks to the house drink Kyle and Eddy decided to make which was made up of anything and everything that they found in our liquor cabinet. The following night was much better. We went out and watched the "floats," more like statues cuz they were never in a parade and never moved from their location, that each neighborhood made burn and then went to the big one in Plaza Ayuntamiento. I am pretty sure that they were all made up of very little wood and a lot of Styrofoam. The floats were located in very small places in downtown so the firefighters were present for each one watering down the surrounding building so that they did not catch fire. This is something that you would never see in the States. If Obama saw this, he would shit his pants. The rest of the weekend was very nice and relaxing.

I just got back from a vacation with my parents around southeastern Spain and am in the process of preparing for my next trip in which I leave for in 2 days. When I get back from that one I will do another blog, maybe.;)

God Bless,

John