IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Some of this is written a couple beers in, the rest while hungover. Please forgive errors in spelling/grammar/meaning/TMI. I’m not using people’s names because I think that’s creepy which is why I will be referring to people as their nationalities.
Our story begins in Dublin. By “our story” I mean my story, and by begins I mean I had already been there a day but I was jet lagged and hadn’t really slept in 24 hours so that day didn’t really count.
Dublin is a fun city, a crowded city, a small city. There is lots to do and places to go and the streets are curvy and confusing. I was a little overwhelmed by everything, mostly because they drive on the left side of the road first and I would always forget which way to look first at a crosswalk. Also double decker busses. Everywhere.
One of the things I wanted to do in Ireland was see the countryside, not just hang in the cities, so I took a train ride to a little town outside the city called Howth. I walked along the path for hours and enjoyed the gorgeous view and gave myself tendonitis on the top of my feet because I was wearing the wrong shoes. They are slowly healing, but they honestly still hurt quite a bit. Fail.
I got back to the hostel around 4 or 5, and was going to just explore the city on foot for a bit. As I was leaving, a Dutch girl introduced herself and asked if she could join me; I ended up hanging out with her for the rest of the evening, sharing stories, getting dinner together. I learned how to say “chewing gum” in Dutch but I have no idea how to spell it so if you want to know, you’ll have to google it yourself.
The next morning I got up at the super-fun hour of 6am to get on a tour bus that was going to Galway, to the Cliffs of Moher. It was supposed to be a day-trip tour, but I had decided I was just going to stay in Galway when I got there. Don’t worry, I let the bus driver know that I wasn’t dead/lost/kidnapped like in “Taken.” Some trivia: ever seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? (I’ll forgive you if you haven’t seen it, but if you haven’t read it you can stop reading this right now because I probably don’t want to be friends with you.) You know when Dumbledore takes Harry to the cave, risking both of their lives, to get the locket that didn’t turn out to be the right locket? Well, the outside of that cave was a treacherous seaside cliff. This was filmed at – you guessed it- the CLIFFS OF MOHER. Woah. I know. Pretty sweet. Also they are completely beautiful and breathtaking and slippery and sometimes there is nothing between you and the edge.
On the tour I met a bunch of pretty cool people – a couple from Uruguay, an Australian, and a Canadian. We hung out together, took some pictures, grabbed some dinner, and talked about the differences in tipping cultures between all of our countries. It was nice to finally have some people to hang out with, but it was over way too fast; we went our separate ways at the end of a couple hours in Galway because they were all going back to Dublin and I was staying put.
This all left me and I was feeling a bit bummed- you know, alone, friendless, yadda yadda yadda. I had no one in the city and nothing to do, and kind of planned on just going back to my hostel and having an early night with my Kindle. BUT ALAS things turned out quite differently than I had thought, which is emerging as a pretty consistent pattern thus far.
I decided that I should probably try to like, meet people or something or whatever, and there was a sign in my hostel that we could go to the greyhound races for $5 (I don’t know where the Euro sign is on my keyboard and I’m very hungover right now so you’re gonna have to forgive me.) I was like…whelp, never done that before! Sure! So I went up to my room to change, invited my roommates that I had met about thirty seconds ago, and in about fifteen minutes, I was heading out with two Swiss girls and a Mexican girl and meeting our hostel group to watch some greyhounds run really really really fast.
And it was So. Much. Fun. Became friends with a guy and a girl from Germany and a guy from the Netherlands, and bet money (well, I didn’t, but I cheered for the dogs with the funniest names). We drank and got to know each other, and after the races we went to a couple pubs and drank more and danced and had absolutely the best time.
The next day, I just walked around the city with my two Swiss roommates, and met up a bit later with the Germans. It was the kind of thing where you feel like you’ve known each other for so much longer than the 24 hours you actually have. It was so nice to explore Galway – the city, if you can even call it that – is so tiny and full of life and culture. There is brilliant live music all down the streets and in the pubs. And everyone is friendly.
The group of us, along with the Mexican girl, went out to eat – which was nearly impossible, because for some reason everything closes really early in Galway, and it was a Saturday night and there were six of us. Not a good combination. It took us a walk around nearly the entire city, but eventually we found somewhere and ate. And then…you guessed it, we went to some pubs. But by some I mean PROBABLY ALL THE PUBS. We were out until 5:30 whoops. But it was our last time to all see each other possibly forever, so what are you gonna do? We said our goodbyes and parted ways.
Next day: walking tour of Galway in the morning, where I learned about things that probably would have been useful for my first day there, not my last. Missed my bus to Cork by three minutes. Which was the best thing that could’ve happened. I ended up killing the next three hours alone in a pub, but it’s Ireland, so it didn’t take long for me to not be alone, sitting with an Irishman and his three-year-old daughter. He bought me another drink, we talked for an hour about life, and he told me if I ever come back to Galway and need a place to stay, I’m welcome to stay with him and his wife and his dog and two daughters. Like, you met me an HOUR AGO. WHAT.
Finally caught my bus to Cork and went on my merry way, found my hostel, and checked in. I chose this particular hostel because of the Very Important Fact that there is a bar downstairs. I figured I would have an early night because I had drank so much/been out so late the last few nights, so I just went downstairs with my new roommate to have a drink. And then another. And another. And then we met two guys.
They were a Canadian and Australian, and the Canadian was 6’4”. Several drinks later – finished brilliantly by a jagerbomb that I definitely did NOT need – I was hammered and making out with the Canadian.
HEY MOM AND DAD HERE’S THE PART YOU COULD SKIP PROBABLY.
It didn’t take us long to discover that there is nowhere private at 3am in this particular hostel, as we both were staying in multi-bed dorms, so we ended up having a VERY interesting time in a doored hallway that led to a few rooms. We also had to avoid the security camera, which meant that we were limited to an area of approximately one square yard. We had to hold the door closed when we heard people walking by so they wouldn’t come in, but we still got interrupted several times. It was definitely all a very classy situation and not at all trashy or embarrassing.
The next morning Hurricane Ophelia came.
We couldn’t leave the hostel because of the rain and 80mph winds. Hungover Genevieve could only eat half a piece of toast in the morning. She wasn’t feeling too hot. But the bulk of the hurricane soon passed, and a group of us- me and the two guys from last night, a couple Irish guys and a Slovenian girl- walked across the city to play some pool. It was the weirdest feeling; the city was totally deserted, and everything was closed because of the hurricane. Naturally, the place they had in mind was closed as well, so we stopped at a tiny store for food to cook dinner and headed back to the hostel.
Dinner was cooked (not by me) and we started drinking at 4 and just never stopped. In our defense, there was literally nothing else to do, so we just met everyone that passed through, invited everyone to play our drinking games, and just hung out and got to know people from all corners of the earth. There was a group of French people, an American guy, a couple Italian girls, a couple Canadian girls, and more that I’m definitely forgetting because alcohol. Ten hours later, I finished my last beer and crawled into bed.
And here we are. I’m planning on exploring Cork for the rest of the day, because I haven’t had the chance to see the city at all. Tomorrow I’ll be off to Killarney, unless things change, which is always a possibility on this trip.
I haven’t even been here a week and I’m exhausted and spending way more money than I expected. But I wouldn’t trade anything for the experiences I’ve had here so far or the people I’ve met. I can’t wait for what’s next. Maybe a little less drinking today?