Guy Fawkes Night and Leprechauns

Oh my goodness...its a great thing that being a blogger is not my day job. This thing can be difficult to keep up with when you teach all day, have homework, lessons to plan, papers to grade, and then want a life/travel on top of that! I apologize for not updating this sooner though!!! Does anyone even read this anymore? Hello? Anyone out there? Does my own boyfriend even try and read this? Probably not; however, I will write about my travels the last few weeks. 

On November 4th, we celebrated an early Guy Fawkes Night with a bonfire. What is Guy Fawkes Night you might ask? Ever heard of "Remember remember the 5th of November?" Well that regards Guy Fawkes! This is one of the men caught scheming to blow up Parliment in 1605..and Guy Fawkes Night is the celebration of his failure. The Brits typically celebrate by burning bonfires or shooting fireworks. Another little known fact is the "Anonymous" mask or the mask from V for Vendetta is based off of Guy Fawkes. Whoooo history!! Here is a few pictures from the bonfire:

Now onto one of my favorite trips from the semester...Ireland!!

We left for Ireland on Saturday morning, November 9th. We took a short, hour flight into Dublin, and took a free bus into Dublin's city center. We had bought the Dublin pass which let us into lots of city sights and allowed us some free refreshments at certain places as well. As soon as we arrived we took advantage of this deal and went to Bewleys for some free cheesecake and hot chocolate.

After Bewleys we went to Christ's Church cathedral to look around at the beautiful architecture. While all of the cathedrals we have been to have been beautiful, I'll be honest- they are all starting to look the same. But here is a picture or two nonetheless.

These clothes inside the cathedral were used in the Showtime show The Tudors.

Ireland's Bridge of Sighs directly outside of Christ's Church. I have now seen two of the Bridge of Sighs bridges.

After the cathedral, we walked to the Guinness Storehouse where we walked each floor to see how the beer is made, all about Arthur Guinness, how it has been advertised over the years, and taught how to pour the perfect pint! There is actually some science behind it (which as a teacher I appreciated). 

   

You have to wait 90 seconds for the Guinness to settle before you can top it off. When Guinness is poured, the white bubbles settle downward; and as bubbles are lighter than beer, one might think this defies the laws of gravity. However, the beer flows downward near the walls of the glass, dragging the nitrogen bubbles along-creating the creamy white "head" of foam resting on top of the ruby red brew. Yummy?! I didn't exactly think so..while I may be able to pour the perfect pint, I can't exactly enjoy the perfect pint I created. Anyways, after the Guiness gift store we took a horse drawn carriage to the area to where our ride for the evening was waiting for us. We bought dinner/show tickets online for the Merry Ploughboy Pub and a driver picked us up to take us to our reservations. Let me tell you, this is one special evening. We enjoyed a delicious 4 course meal (mine included bread, clam chowder, lamb shank with potatoes, and apple pie) along with two bottles of wine for the table. While we dined on our feast we listening to authentic irish folk music played by three kind gentlemen. Most of the songs we did not know, but some were so moving that I had tears coming to my eyes. The whole experience was marvelous. One song we did have fun singing along to was "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean" which the whole room sang and swayed to together. After the folk music, irish dances came and danced! There were three girls and one guy performing and we thoroughly enjoyed watching, clapping along and a few of the girls were able to join in! Erin and Kali were brought up to join the dancers, and the rest of us had a blast laughing and cat calling them the entire time. I took a few videos which I will cherish and show to whoever would like to peek into our night :) After the show, we were taken to our hotel where we all passed our after our long but incredible day.

The next day, we woke up early for our Irish breakfast and cabbed over to where we we were getting picked up for the upcoming adventure. A tour guide picked us 5 girls, and 9 other passengers up in a van to take us to the Wicklow Mountains. We stopped to enjoy the breathtaking sights.and we couldn't help but take quite a few pictures of the "straight from a postcard" scenery.

We drove to where we would begin our real tour.. on horseback! We arrived at the stables where the owners assigned us each a horse and began teaching us how to ride-English style. First off, my horse's name was Jerry..and he was awesome. He was very chill and relaxed..and was a pro. He knew what he was doing and I let him do his thing. Our typical conversations went like this: "Jerry, go this way...oh you don't want to? Fine. Oh, I guess that was a smarter way to go. Good job, Jerry. Teamwork." So Jerry was a sweetheart..Unfortunately for me, I am allergic to horses (or anything with fur for that matter) and guess who forgot their allergy medicine on the trip? You are right my dear reader..me. So I had fun sneezing my head off the entire trip (which was my own fault). In fact, the owners would say "Where is the sneezing girl?" if I went more than 5 minutes without sneezing. Ok, enough about that. Now English style riding is a bit different than how I know how to ride a horse. The saddle is a bit different, with zero raised bit in the middle to hold on to. They also do not use stirrups, but as we were beginners we did. So for our ride they throughly taught us for roughly 45 minutes how to ride our horses-walking, stopping, steering, and trotting. We then were taken out into the wide open fields of the Wicklow Mountains. IT WAS STUNNING. I have told several people this..and I am not sure if I can emphasize this enough, but this experience in particular was one of the best I have ever had. The open air, the gorgeous green fields with the changing fall color of the trees, the feel and power of the horse..it was just incredible. Even with me sneezing every 5 minutes. 

Horseys

I think I was a jokey in a past life. Minus the whole allergies thing

In the far distance you can even see the sea! I forgot which one though to be honest

Me and my pal Jerry :)

So after we took this amazing tour in which we saw areas from A&E's show Vikings, and where parts of Braveheart were shot, we had a quick lunch at Poppies (where a scene from the movie Leap Year was shot). Our tour guide then drove us all over the Wicklow area, stopping at particular sights.

Here is the bridge from a scene in P.S. I Love You (with Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank)

Sorry if this is too many scenery pictures for you..it was just so gorgeous that I had to share.

Now after we drove all over the Wicklow area, we made our way back to Dublin. We asked our tour guide (who was Irish) for a recommendation for a place to eat/see some live music and dancing. She then dropped us off at a particular pub and said this place had good music and dancing every night. We took her word for it..and regretted it not too long after. The best way to describe the experience was commercialized. After enjoying the Merry Ploughboy the night before, it was like going from an amazing mom and pop experience to a TGIFridays. The food was unimpressive and overpriced, the music was not very great and the act talked too much, and the dancers had zero heart in their dancing. You could tell it was all for a pay check. While we were disappointed in our dinner..we had such an amazing day that we went to bed with happy and full hearts. 

On our last day we walked around Dublin, went to the Kilmainham Gaol (prison) and strolled along Trinity College. I was desperately looking for some antique-like shops but as we are not from the area..we could not find any. A little disheartening but overall the trip was fantastic, and I look forward to going back again. As a whole, Dublin is full of real people. While London is posh and stiff, Dublin is hearty and full of life and culture. The accents were great: they do not pronounce the -th sound. Three becomes tree, thought becomes taught..when they speak quickly it becomes gibberish. So we had a great time and everyone should go!!

Sorry about the long post but I get excited relating my adventures. Tomorrow I will catch everyone up on the Birmingham Christmas Market we went to this past weekend. 

As always, love love love