For Fook's Sake

Let's go to a hurling match!

What's hurling you say. It's a gaelic game that's basically a cross of pretty much every field game that we have. The players are armed with a stick called a hurley that looks like this:

(thanks Wikipedia!)

They try to get that ball called a sliotar into a goal that looks like a football goalpost with a soccer net underneath. If they get it through the goalposts it's worth a point, if they get it under the net it's worth three points. That's the general gist of the game.

We went to the Cork vs. Tipperary match tonight. Apparently Cork and Tipperary have a fierce rivalry  and so it turned out there were a ton of people going to this game. It was a long cold walk to get to the field and when we got there we were confronted with the entry gates that looked like this

You literally had to turn sideways to enter the gate. Then once you're in there there's a teller who collect the money and a little turn-y gated door that lead out to the field. It kind of reminded me of the starting gates at a horse race.

We found a seat in the stands around the center of the field and watched as the teams warmed up.

The game had a less than exciting start, the ball was rolled out in the center of the field in front of a certain number of players and they rushed upon it.

And then I was lost.

All I noted really was how fast the game was and how quickly they moved the ball across the field. They could use literally any means of doing this. They could pick the ball up using their hurley and carry the ball in their hand for a few strides, They could run with the ball balancing on the hurley (no idea how they did that), they could hit the ball with their hurlery... pretty much across the entire field, they can hit it on the ground using their hurley or even their hand. I loved how quick it was it kept the game exciting to watch.

The crowd was another experience all together. It was made up of mainly guys from pint sized to grandfather aged and everything in between with the random mother and high school teenage girl in the mix. Regardless how old, they were very... and i mean VERY, loyal to their team. They cheered and yelled players names and swore. It was 70 minutes of irish accents flying everywhere cheering on their respective teams.

There was one guy who was sat behind us that was clearly cheering for Cork. Every time Tipperary got the ball he would say "ahh For fook's saaake!!" in that lovely accent and everything. Although to be honest I couldn't understand anything else he said other than that. Also, keeping with the Irish friendliness, the two older guys in front of us turned around during the intermission and talked to us after having noticed our accents. Oh, I forgot I was the one with the accent! We were probably the only Americans in the stands. He tried to explain a little bit about the game to us which helped somewhat for the second half.

It was good craic though and definitely worth going to a game if you're ever in Ireland. It was made better by the fact that Cork won 26 - 11 :)

A City of Stone

This past weekend I took a trip to Edinburgh with API. The three other API programs in Ireland came on the excursion too. We left on Friday morning and flew in to Edinburgh around noon time. The plane we flew on was probably the smallest plane I've ever been on... it had propellers! We even had to walk out on the tarmac to board it.

Flying over Scotland

Once we landed, we took a bus to the hotel then walked to Edinburgh Castle. I didn't know what kind of castle it was going to be and was slightly surprised to see how grand it was. This was our first view....

Before we entered the castle we arrived on the Royal Mile, which is the busiest street in Edinburgh. It was at this point that I realized everything in Edinburgh was made of stone. All the houses were stone, the buildings were stone, the street of the Royal Mile was stone, even the castle was stone with a stone wall surrounding it. It all felt very medieval and Scottish... especially the bag piper than can be heard no matter where you walked.

The castle turned out to be something very similar to the Tower of London. There were different museums related to war generals and calvary and prisoner of war housing. They even had the Scottish jewels in the basement of one of the main buildings like the Tower of London. The day was absolutely beautiful though. The sun was shining and it was pretty warm for being so far north compared to Cork. The castle was on the top of a huge hill that over looked the entire city which provided stunning views.

 They even had canons! Here's a picture of Emily trying to ride the canon...

Just as we were leaving the castle the sun was setting, so obviously I had to take lots of pictures.

Easily my favorite picture I've ever taken

To finish off the night, we took a walking tour of the Royal Mile. It got incredibly cold by the time the sun set, and the tour guide was an older woman who you could barely hear unless you were standing directly in front of her. So needless to say I only heard half of what she said in the two hours we were walking. The Royal Mile was pretty cool though, it was lined with cashmere shops, fudge shops, scottish kilts/ tartan shops, Scottish whiskey shops, and little cafés of course. The most interesting part of the tour was the fact that she pointed out all the hidden places on the Royal Mile. These being the little side streets called a "close". They were basically little alley ways in the midst of all these shops and were extremely dark, usually lit with only one dim light. They were definitely very creepy, especially the fact that people live down them! We saw one guy walk down a completely pitch black alley way and unlock his door, I'm still wondering how he found his key in the darkness.

On Saturday we visited the National Gallery of Scotland. Then took a tour of Mary King's Close. That was pretty much an underground alley where we toured the houses that people once lived in. At one time, the close was not built on top of and housed about 600 people on the street. The street was extremely narrow and had buildings 12 stories high on both sides that people lived in. The people would climb wooden fire escape- like stairs on the outside of the building to get to their front door... imagine being on the twelfth floor!  When the black plaque hit the close lost about half of its inhabitants by the end of it. The street was so dirty and full of rats and fleas that the plaque must have spread extremely quickly. Now there's a building sat right on top of the close and the houses are still underneath. It's like a lost city under there, as if everything was preserved while a new life took place above it.

here's a picture of a close... not Mary King's Close though. Look how narrow it is!

After the close we headed to the Camera Obscurity and World of Illusions museum, but first stopping to take a picture with the bag piper.

Amanda and I with a man in a kilt

The camera obscurity museum was so awesome. It was probably one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. They had tons of fun things, like a mirror maze, a vortex, fun house mirrors, and mega telescopes that zoomed in on people walking around on the street below. We definitely had a ton of fun playing around with all the cool things they had in there, I felt like I was 5 again.

The castle from the dome of the museum

 This is George Heriot's School; the private school that JK Rowling based Hogwarts off of. Edinburgh was full of Harry Potter related things, after all it was written written there! If I knew more about Harry Potter I would have taken more pictures of Harry Potter related things (sorry Amanda, Brenden, and Alec! You're just going to have to go there yourself to see the Elephant house) 

The rest of Saturday was pretty relaxed. We had tea time (how cute) and then grabbed dinner after walking around Princes St. which is the other big street in Edinburgh. It's where all the modern shops are.

Sunday we went to see the Royal Yacht Britannia. Let's just say it was very ROYAL. It had to be the biggest yacht ever. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't even be classified as a yacht. I felt like I was in a floating mansion. They had two, yes TWO, dining halls. One was for their everyday dinners and the other was a huge dinning table in a giant hall where they would host dinner parties and entertain guests like the President. Then they had the sailors mess halls and dining rooms. Oh, and of course the Tea Room was an entirely separate room.

The regular dining table

The fancy dining table

Kelly and I trying to be sailors...

From the Britannia we went to the airport, we were found out our plane was delayed by 5 hours. Apparently the plane we were waiting for was stuck in bad weather so we had to wait for it to come back to Scotland. The waiting wasn't too much of a waste of time, I finally got to try haggis! Haggis is one of the traditional Scottish foods that I had to try no matter what. It was surprisingly pretty good, although I didn't have high expectations for it to begin with. After all it's sheep insides with oatmeal and other spices. I'm so sorry little lamb that I held last week. I promise I won't eat you!

First bite of Haggis!

And there you have it! My trip to Edinburgh.
I'd go back. But next time, I want to see the Loch Ness

Rainbows and Lambs

Sunday morning I was woken out of my morning daze by Maggie saying "guys there's a rainbow outside our window!" And that was just the beginning to the best day of the trip. 

The skies cleared up as if begging us for forgiveness for the crappy weather we had on Saturday. Breakfast went by in a whirl because yesterday we found out that BABY LAMBS WERE COMING TO THE HOTEL! And the best part was that we would be able to hold them.

We practically ran (in Ally's case she really did run) behind the hotel to where a local farmer had brought two week old lambs for us to hold and obsess over. Cameras were constantly clicking away and I bet within minutes those lambs were on facebook. They were so adorable though, I was finally able to cuddle with a little sheep :) I was lucky enough to hold both of them, one was really squirmy (the black faced one) and the other little guy just cuddled up to me and was content with just laying in my arms. I was so tempted to just slip away from the group and take him back to Cork with me. I don't think anyone would have noticed....

Emily trying to sneak away with the lamb

After about 10000 pictures of the little lambs were taken, drove to a spectacular viewing point. The day was absolutely gorgeous and I got lots of nice pictures from the bus, this time the trees loved me and stayed out of them. The view point we came upon was this:

I think the pictures to a better job at describing it than I would

 We listened to a guy talk about underwater diving in this area and how he's recorded the voice of Fungi, the resident dolphin. I didn't really ever want to leave this spot; but then they said we were going to another beach just down below this point and I was ready to go. We arrived at Derrynane Beach with the best weather you could ask for. All of us trooping onto such a small quiet beach must have been quite the annoyance to the few couples taking an afternoon stroll. I think I'll just put some pictures here instead of rambling on about how beautiful the beach was.

The sun is a welcomed sight

Love the waves crashing against the rocks

and an epic group jumping photo... we did one everywhere, I just didn't put them in my blog (sorry)

Then it was off to Ladies View in Killarney National Park. It was called Ladies View after Queen Victoria visited the site in the mid 1800's. Once we left the coast we also left behind the sunshine. Literally the second we passed through the mountains the sky turned black with storm clouds and it rained the whole hour and a halfish drive that it took to get there. Mary played some Irish music on the bus which was quite pretty to listen to driving through the wildest parts of Ireland. I loved seeing the amazing landscapes we drove through. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. The area is so desolate and full of agriculture land or sheep. Some parts looked like no one's ever even stepped foot on it.

Good bye Sunshine

Once at Ladies View, the rain cleared away long enough for us to enjoy the view which was incredibly picturesque. I felt like I had just stepped into a fairytale book and Once Upon A Time would be written across the entire scene. Everything was so quiet and pristine, there were hardly any houses around the area.

Another Group picture. All of us :)

The second to last stop of the trip was probably one of the coolest, Torc Waterfall in Killarney. I've never really seen a proper waterfall and this was everything I had anticipated it to be. Just see for yourself.

We didn't spend long at the waterfall... because what else do you do at a waterfall? The last stop was at the Killarney visitor's center where we ate lunch (ham and cheese baguette with Taytos). We had time to walk around the grounds. There was a big lake and a mansion, and lots of little walking paths which we explored after getting kicked out of the eating center because apparently we had to buy food from the restaurant. Anyway, the walk was nice, but cold and I was thankful when it was time to get back on the bus to head home.

We arrived in Cork at nearly 6 and it felt so good to be back. I needed to relax after that long weekend. It was definitely by far the best weekend I've had since I've been here though. I'm already looking forward to going back to Kerry. This time I'll focus on across the bay... at Dingle.

But for now, I best be getting some rest. I'm leaving in the morning at 8:30 for Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend trip with API.

Valentia Island in the Foggy Mist

Morning came and brought with it a thick fog and misty rain.

The view outside our hotel room window

We of course had a full irish breakfast and then it was off to Valentia Island, a small Island town off the coast of Kerry. It was a beautiful drive despite the rain. We drove past fields of turf which was used, and still used by some, as the main source of heating fuel for their stoves. Its pretty much just an open bog full of light brown looking turf, nothing special. Once we got to Valentia Island we stopped a beautiful site where the first cable across the Atlantic landed in Ireland. The view from this point was absolutely incredible and I'm sure it would have been even nicer if it wasn't so rainy.

We then headed to Fogher Cliff where we could climb up the tallest "mountain" (but really it was a hill, the Irish like to call them mountains though) to a lookout point of the island. The guy who talked to us Friday night actually owned the mountain because he wanted to raise sheep. But then the sheep industry collapsed and he had to make money from the mountain another way. So he built a road going up to the top with four lookout points and charges a small fee per car to access the mountain. His farm is mainly a dairy farm so of course he has baby cows.

Baby cow sucking on Maggie's finger

After obsessing over the cute baby cows we turned our attention to the task at hand: walking up the hill to the first look out point... in the fog. We weren't able to go all the way up to the top unfortunately because it was too foggy. But it was a nice steep walk up hill for about 10ish minutes with sheep running across the road and white blocking the landscape... something like this....

Every time we got near the sheep, they'd run as if we were gonna catch it and eat right there. I just wanted to cuddle with one! That's all!

Just over that hill in the picture above, the fog cleared a little and we can see what was beyond the edge of the mountain.

of course there's more sheep!

The view as always... was stunning. I'm beginning to realize that no matter where you go in Ireland every where is beautiful and different. The water was rough and crashed against the rocks on the edge of the land. The shocking part to me was how turquoise the water was, normally back home when it's cloudy and rough the water is like a deep grey. We walked a bit further and rounded a bend to this view: 

yay group photo!

 We trekked back, took a lot more pictures, and chased some more sheep. Once on the bus we drove around the island a bit... we saw more green hills and more sheep (I even spotted The Loneliest Sheep. He was standing in a giant field all by himself with no other sheep around.. and i got a picture of him but he won't show up on this post, he's too small).


The last stop before we arrived back at the hotel for lunch was... The Beach!! That's right, we went to the beach in February in the rain and had a blast. The water once again was so cool, it felt like we were on some tropical island of some sort. Of course there was a ruin of a castle or something on the beach, it wouldn't be Ireland if it didn't have a ruin. I think there was a bigger castle further to the right but it was too rainy and cold to trek over there. I know you must be thinking it doesn't look like it's raining, but it was definitely precipitating more than a light mist. Also glad I bought my lovely new rain boots because the water splashed up one too many times without me realizing.

Talk about a long day, after lunch at the hotel we went to see two stone forts in the area. They were pretty cool. They had stairs built in to the stone sides so you can climb up to the top and see 360 for miles.

standing on the highest point on the wall

My favourite part of the trip to the forts had to be when I looked at the map and realized that Ballycarbery Castle was so close. The castle (for those that don't know) was mentioned in my favourite movie Leap Year. I didn't know it was an actual castle though I thought they did some Hollywood trickery on that. I mean they did anyway by putting it on a massive hill in  Tipperary but it's not made up! It is in fact sitting right on the edge of the atlantic in Cahersiveen, Kerry on anything but a hill. I'm a bit bummed we couldn't go over and take a look at it but maybe I'll save that for another day.

There she is in all her glory

Then it was back to the hotel, inhaled dinner, and listened to a gaelic footballer Maurice Fitzgerald talk about the sport. It's basically like soccer and football combined. You can't run with the ball in your hands for more than four steps, you either have to pass it our drop it and kick it back up to yourself. I'd be miserable at the sport.

And to close out the night, we played a bit of pub trivia. Most of the questions were things from our trip while some were fun like "who is the female singer to the Black Eyed Peas".... thanks to Trevor screaming "FERGIE!!" we can safely assume everyone got that one haha. My team surprisingly came in second. I walked away with two Valencia slate coasters, they're really cool I swear, and enjoyed a celebratory pint of Carlsberg.