Jameson Distillery and Wicklow

I decided to do another whole post for Jameson, since I have a whole bunch of photos for it. So, Friday rolled around, and a bunch of us decided to go to the Jameson Distillery! It was very, very cool. Pretty much just as cool as the Guiness Storehouse, but not quite as big. 

We got a guided tour, as opposed to Guiness, which was a self guided, and our tour guide, Hugh, was really cool. We learned how the aging process works, and why an 18 year old whiskey is so much more expensive than say a 6 year old whiskey. 

Barrels that the whiskey is aged in.

 The best part of the tour was when I got to be a taste tester. This is the mat that they gave us, with the Scotch on the left circle (I must have given mine to my friend Nick) Jameson went in the middle, and the Jack Daniels on the right.

This is the Church of St. Michan, which is where the catacombs were. The inside of the church was not really anything special, but of course the tombs were, which had no photography allowed.

"This Do in Remembrance Of Me"

Sort of looks like a Harry Potter podium

This morning we woke up and went to breakfast around 8:00, and left to catch our bus at 8:30. The ride to Wicklow was gorgeous, as evidences by some of my terrible "through the window" pictures. 

These next few pictures are the field where Braveheart was filmed. Apparently, quite a few movies were filmed in Wicklow, including, My Left Foot, P.S. I Love You, Saving Private Ryan, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Lassie.  

This was a bridge from P.S. I Love You. We were driving really fast, that's
why Karen's hands are in it, I had to move quickly to get the picture.

This was our fist off the bus photo opportunity, and it was GORGEOUS!!! I felt like I was actually in a post card. I'm not sure which lake it is, but regardless, it was beautiful.

Me standing awkwardly. I need other people in my pics.

After we left that lake, we headed to the Wicklow Mountains, which are in a national park. We went on a 30 minute hike up to another lake, but first we crossed over this river:

Beautiful, I know.

And past Rapunzel's tower:

And our first stop was St. Kevin's monastery. St. Kevin was this really weird guy who wanted to be spiritual, but didn't want to be a monk, so instead he just lived as a hermit in a cave on the side of the Wicklow Mountains. He one day sort of accidentally started healing animals, and soon became a spiritual leader to many people. Then some people from the Catholic church asked him to build a monastery. He didn't want to at first, but eventually gave in, with one rule: Every year, for the duration of Lent (40 days before Easter) he was allowed to go live by himself and be a hermit. The church said fine, and he built the monastery. 

I was looking out for ancestors, and maybe found some!

This was Christine McHugh, she was 52 when she died.

And here we have Edward McHugh (weird, right?) and James McHugh!

Seriously though, Rapunzel's tower, right?

Our final destination was the lake further up the mountain. It was outrageously warm! I took a shoe off so that I could take a step in it, and it felt like bathwater. We hung around there for a few minutes, and then needed to head back to the bus. Overall it was an awesome day, and I am so so so glad that I decided to go on this trip to Wicklow.

Oh and I wanted to show everyone back in the States what it looks like at 4:30 am here. Bright as day. Good thing I have awesome black out curtains :)

4:31 A.M.

Wating and waiting and waiting for Godot...

If anyone ever recommends to you that you should go to a play called Waiting for Godot, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GO. This was probably the most boring piece of entertainment I have ever seen in my entire life, and I have seen A LOT of boring movies and read A LOT of boring books. That was last night at 8, and it didn't end until 10:30, so after that a lot of us were desperate to do something that we would actually enjoy, so we ended up watching Bridesmaids :) Once that was over, it was around 1:30 am, and, naturally, I wasn't tired in the least, so I wrote a movie review of In the Name of the Father (which is actually a great movie with Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson). Today, I woke up a tiny bit late for class, but I was actually kind of gratefiul because class is SO boring and pretty much a waste of time anyway. So I went late, and no one really noticed, and after class we all went to the Jameson distillery!! it was so cool. I can't decide which I liked better, Jameson of Guiness, because at the end of both you get a free drink (at the end of Jameson I had a Jameson and cranberry juice, DELICIOUS!). I also got to be one of 6 people in my group to be a taste tester at the end, and I got to try Jameson, some brand of Scotch, and Jack Daniels next to each other and see which ones were the best (definitely Jameson). After that we went to St. Michan's church, one of the oldest churches in Dublin. but what is really interesting about this church is what was underneath it. On either side of a tunnel lined with limestone and mortar are long narrow galleries filled with coffins. All but one of these are still active, meaning if someone died and was related to a family who owned one of these tombs, they could potentially be placed in there. The last time a  person was placed in these tombs was 17 years ago. In one of the galleries, we were actually able to see 3 real life mummies! I was shocked when our tour guide told us that we could - and were supposed to - shake hands with one! We all went into the gallery and grabbed hands with one real life mummy, just reached out and gripped the bones. It was really creepy. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed, but a couple of people took some while the guide was not looking, so those will be up soon. I can't believe I only have 9 days left here. I know that I will come back here at some time in my life, and I hope it's really really soon.

Riverdance!!!

Yesterday was amazing! I woke up and went to class, which was probably more boring than any other class ever. We watched a film version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, and it was awful. Just absolutely terrible. But later that day I went and got a ticket to Riverdance!!!!  The show was at 7:30, and we all bought the cheapest tickets, which were 25 euro, and the absolute last row in the entire theater. But once it was 7:25, and there were quite a few rows ahead of us with nobody in them, the ushers came up to us and told us we could move up to any other seat in the upper circle, so we got to sit in 40 euro seats, even though we only bought 25 euro seats. I would have been really mad if I was one of those people who paid 40 euro though. The show was amazing! The main guy and girl in the show were both fantastic, and it did deviate a bit from the original, but it was still really good. By the time it was over it was already 9:30, so we headed back to trinity to get ready to go out that night. We only went to two different places that night, we started at the Quays on Abbey Street, and then moved on to another bar down the street with a bit of a younger crowd. Today I finally did some laundry, and tonight we’re going to a play on campus, so I’ll have more about that tomorrow. Cheers!

 Yay pictures!! I couldn't take any during the show, but here are some of the theater:

It was called The Gaiety Theatre

This was the view from our original seats. See those seats about 5 rows
down? That's where we actually sat :)

That was a really pretty chandelier that lit the whole room. I liked it,
so I took a picture of it

Translations

So today, we had class in the morning, which was ok. After wards, me, Sarah, both Karens, Jill and Caitlin all watched the new episode of True Blood. ‘Twas pretty awesome. Once that was over we all went to Spar (kind of like a Wawa) to get lunch. At 7:00 we left for the Abbey Theatre, where we saw the play Translations. The play was…. slow to get started. The actors were all good enough, but the plot was boring. It centered around a group of townspeople living in Ireland, who host a couple of British soldiers who are there to Anglicize the names of places in Ireland. The play is mostly about language, and the miscommunication that can occur when two people who speak different languages (in this case, Gaelic and English) try to communicate. The ending was very abrupt, and I’m still not quite sure what happened to some of the characters, but I guess I didn’t hate it. I’m spending tonight studying for my midterm tomorrow, so no drinking at the pub for me tonight. Wish me luck!

Lazy Sunday

Today was rather uneventful. I slept in, which was absolutely glorious. My roommate, Casey, got back from London today, and she said she had a great time. They went to the Globe Theater, and saw Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, and all the typical touristy things. I went out on my own into Dublin to grab a sandwich for lunch, and I also looked around for a jersey of some sort to buy. I wanted a hurling shirt, but all I could find were soccer jerseys. I happened to wander into a bookstore called Hodges Figgis, and they had a copy of Harry Potter in Irish!! It’s called Harry Potter agus an Orchloch (Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone). This brings my 1^st HP book count to 7 J After that, I did some reading, some writing, and watched one of my favorite movies, The Sound of Music. Then I went at got dinner at a place called Spar with Nick and Casey, and now here I am, writing this. Tomorrow I should be seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity, and we’re also going to a play at the Abbey Theatre called Translations. More one that tomorrow. Cheers!

Cork

Greetings!! I'm sort of going to skip over the last week, because nothing really all that important happened. Well, we went to Tara, but my camera was dead, so I don't have any good pics from that yet (I'll steal some later) for this post, I'm going to write about my trip to Cork! We had a free weekend this weekend, so a bunch of us hopped on a 4 hour bus ride to the wonderful city of Cork! I stayed in a hostel with about 6 other people, and it was so small!

This was our room at the hostel we stayed in. It was tiny.

We mostly just walked around town, getting a feel for the city. we ate lunch/dinner at this bar called The Old Oak, which was really good (and really cheap). We ended up back there later that night for drinks. basically our first day was not all that interesting. The next day however...

We also happened to see Bellatrix Lestrange walking down the street.

was one of my favorite days in Ireland so far. We woke up around 9 in the hostel, and met up with Cara, Karen, Caitlin and Jill at a place called Wholey Grain for breakfast. From there we went to a tourist place on Grande Parade Street and got info on how to go see the Blarney Stone. We hopped on a Bus Eirrann bus and took the 15 minute ride to Blarney castle. It was beautiful!! Seriously, it was amazing. The climb up to the top of the castle where the stone is was extremely treacherous, the stairs were very narrow and steep. Once we got to the top, we all kissed it and will hopefully have some good luck for the rest of the trip.

The scary and dangerous stairs. the only thing to hold onto was that rope in the middle.

View from the top

Sarah kissing the stone

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

Me with a mandrake (Mandragora) plant (in my Harry Potter shirt!!!)

 After that we took the bus back to Cork and headed to a hurling match. Hurling is ridiculous!! I don’t know all of the rules, but it seems like it’s a lot like field hockey, but in the air instead of on the ground. Guys run around with these hurling paddles, I think they’re called, and basically hit this ball that is kind of like a baseball down this field. To score, there is two options: you can either hit it between these two goal posts (picture a field goal) and that gets you one point, or you can hit it into a soccer net which is directly beneath the goal posts and that gets you 3 points. Right now, that’s all I know about the game, other than that I wish it was more popular in America.

By the end of the match, it was almost 5:00, and Kelia, Sarah and I were going to catch our bus at 7, so we headed back to our hostel to pick up our stuff. We were extremely tired and hungry, (All I had eaten today was a croissant at breakfast) so we stopped at a subway to get sandwiches to eat on the bus. The bus took another 4 hours to get home, and now I’m really tired, so I’m headed to bed. Night all!