The Fighting Irish

When we first arrived in Ireland, I did not see the beauty that I hadheard about. We bussed in from the airport and got to see a fair amount of Dublin. Instead of beautiful, it seemed a little run down. We arrived kind of late, so we didn't get a lot done our first day, but we went out for an Irish pint. We did a few touristy things the next day, we checked out the Guinness Brewery Shop. Which was fairly entertaining, a little expensive for what you get, but we did get a free beer and a view of all of Dublin. We also checked out Trinity College which we heard was a beautiful campus. It was. Since we've been spending so much money lately we tried to keep it cheap by making cheap dinners while in Dublin. We still had five more days in Ireland, and we'd seen everything we really wanted to in Dublin, so we made a decision to take a three day tour! It turned out to be a very good decision.

At 8 a.m. our bus departed for our tour, and we didn't really know what to expect to get out of this. We definitely didn't expect the tour guide that we had. Authentic Irish character, he would sing over the P.A. system on the bus, he would say words like fick (which means to see in Gaelic) but he wouldn't use it in that context, so he was pretty much swearing over the p.a as well. There were people in there 60's at least on our bus as well. So it was interesting. He even made us switch seats every once and a while to ensure that we met everyone on our tour.
Despite his interesting and funny way of communicating with the passengers, he was quite informative as well. We learned so much about Irish history, and wars that I didn't even know occurred. I think i have discovered why they are called the Fighting Irish, they have been fighting the English for over 800 years! and they never gave up. I found the subject very interesting, mostly in that Britain seems to have kept it pretty quiet. Britain, in trying to take over Ireland, put the Irish through some pretty inhumane things, such as starvation, burnings and executions of the Irish people. There is still a lot of hate for England in some places of Ireland.

We also got to see some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Since our bus took us out to the country and to the coast, we got to see things we would never have experienced in Dublin. We went to see ruins of a monastery with few high-crosses for gravestones. Only 70 still exist in the world today. Also we got to see the Cliffs of Moher, Which may be the most beautiful view i have ever seen. The cliffs looked to be about 300ft tall on the most western part of Europe. Everything out of the City had so many shades of greens. Greens I've never seen before, I don't think i have ever look at grass and been amazed but the colour was so brilliant that I couldn't help but be impressed. I think I will put up a picture because it is hard to describe. The best part about Ireland has been the views, we even went to ruins of a castle that is said to be the best view in Ireland, you could see for miles. I got a lot of pictures there too.

Ireland wouldn't be Ireland without having a few beers, so we had a few, then a few more. It was a good time and we got to meet several people from all over. Some Australians, some... Americans... some Germans and polish. It was quite an experience, it was just too bad to make some friends and then just say bye to them the next day.

We are now back in Dublin and our plane leaves tomorrow for Oslo, so we have been recovering from our lack of sleep. Last night we just watched a movie, that came out in Canada about a month ago. We felt like we were ahead of the times. It was 'Superbad', hilarious.
Time for me to fick off,

Jesus, Mary and Joseph (trying to sound Irish)
cheers