Dublin Zoo

First of all I want to apologize to everyone for my long silence. I am a bad friend and I apologize. But I have been way busy. I have a zillion pictures to post and it will take a bunch of posts so bear with me as this will come in installments. First off I went to the Dublin Zoo which was really fun. These are the gorillas obviously, they were really cool. I think the dad was in a bad mood though, but can you blame him?
I took a whole bunch of pictures at the zoo. I won't bore you with putting all of them up. Just a few of the cutest. These are red pandas. Now I am sure that they are not really as tame as they look, but don't you just want to take one home to be a live teddy bear?

And of course I have to put up the picture of the otter for Andrea. I spent a good twenty minutes or so trying to get decent pictures of these guys. They are really fast when they want to be.

We saw some wolves as well but they were definitely not up for having their pictures taken. They were hiding where you could see them kind of but not get a decent picture, though to their credit they did have a fantastic vantage point to keep an eye on us. On the other hand, the tiger seemed just fine with being photographed, as long as we did not disturb his nap.

All in all a pretty cool day at the zoo. It is in Phoenix Park, which is this totally huge park here in Dublin, like thousands of acres huge and the Dublin Zoo is one of the oldest in the world. You could definitely tell it was an older zoo. Especially the central park with it's old school tiny buildings named after people who donated them and not the animals inside. Had a good day. More will be posted soon - Kilarney and Paris are on the way.

Limerick and Bunratty Castle

So this past weekend I visited my friend Deirdre's family in Limerick. Are you guys noticing a trend that all my posts are about the weekends? Up above there is a rainbow I caught out the window of our room. Deirdre's dad was born and raised in Limerick so she has about 50 (I am not hyperbolizing for effect here guys) relations: aunts, uncles, cousins there. We stayed with her Aunt Ruth who was so sweet to us. Now Limerick has a castle right in town, I think it is called King John's castle, I got a picture of it over the Shannon there up above. But Deirdre's cousin Gary, who was nice enough to go sightseeing with us on Saturday, informed us that King John's castle is much too touristy and therefore annoying. So we were off to visit Bunratty castle and folk village in County Clare.
Probably the coolest thing about the castle was the dungeon. It was down this tiny winding stair. The passageway was like 4.5 ft high and 2.5 ft across. You had to brace yourself because it was steep. Then you got to this doorway which they have gated now so you don't fall in. And through the doorway is the dungeon.
There it is. It is taken from above because it is probably a 20ft drop down to the bottom there. It was pretty dark but my flash lit it up. The black dots on the ledge are fake rats for effect. Cute, huh? It was really cool. Once you put someone in there, they are not getting out unless you drop a ladder down. I totally wish I had my own castle.

There were some really beautiful stained glass windows in the place, like you can see above and lots of restored period pieces. Some of them are from Bunratty and others are just period. The castle was restored in the 1950s. It was kinda cool because they had a little village set up around it so you could see what it was like to be the peasants as well as the royalty.

Real thatched roofs and turf fires burning in all the grates. All the cottages were real from somewhere but many of them had been dissassembled, brought to the site and put back together. It was really cool.

Then at night we went out with some of Deirdre's cousins who were our age and went to the bars in Limerick. The first night was really fun, the second I was rather tired and we ended up making it a shorter night. You can't party all the time. Then on Sunday we had a nice leisurely day, slept in, had tea and then a lovely dinner with Aunt Ruth before we headed back to Dublin. Just in time for me to catch the Red Wings game streamed live over the internet. All in all a lovely weekend. And shocker, I am actually staying home this coming weekend, but I am sure I will have lots to tell you anyway. We caught the World Cup qualifying match against Cypress on Saturday, Ireland played not so well but won anyway, so we are going to go to the pub to watch the next World Cup qualifying match on Wednesday against...um...well someone else. So that should be fun too.

Until next time, a yellow rose means friendship, I love you all.

Glendalough

On Sunday I went to Glendalough with Matt. It is pronounced Glen-due-lock. It means the valley of two lakes. Which it quite literally is. There is a big lake and a little lake in the middle of the Wicklow Mountain National Park. There are some really cool old monastic ruins in the area. It is the monastery that was founded by St. Kevin. He was the monk who, the story goes, was praying one Lent with his hands outstretched, palm up to the sky. A blackbird landed in his hand and laid an egg there. St. Kevin stood there with arms outstretched until the baby bird hatched and flew away.

In that picture you can see part of the ruins of the monastery in the background. It was soooo beautiful. It is almost reminiscient of up north in Michigan except the hills are bigger and the leaves have barely started to change at all and it is already October! I was actually walking along and it hit me, wow I am totally in Ireland right now. It was like I forgot for a bit or something. I guess that means I am at home here which is a good thing. There are all these trails that go up around the lakes and to the monastic sites and up into the mountains. We did not end up having time to take the really long trails cause we kept getting sidetracked and going to explore all the side trails and climb things.

Like this big rock. You can't see it so well in the picture, but it was quite large, taller than me. So I used the tree on the right edge to climb up on it. See what happens when other people take your pictures, they don't accurately communicate the large size of the impressive rock in your picture. Ah well, such is life. I guess everyone can't be quite as perfect as me. And you know me, I could not be content to walk along the path and just look at the pretty landscapes, I had to go traipsing all over anywhere that wasn't fenced off. It is so much more fun that way. It was only a day trip so I may go back with more friends at a later date.

It is a bit hard to see but that blackness just left of center is actually a cave at the top of a rather treacherous incline that I just had to climb to look and see what was in the cave. It was apples. It actually looked like it was the home of some animal, either that or the messiest person in the world crawled in there to eat apples. But my favorite place was probably the really old cemeteries that circled the monastic site.

You can see some of the really old gravestones in the fore and the big round tower in the back. The monks used to hide in there and pull up the ladder so the Vikings could not get them or the relics when they came raiding. I loved walking among all of the gravestones and trying to read the really old weathered ones. They still use it to this day for people who live in the area which is fabulous. So much better than our icky new-fangled flat cemetaries in the states. And of course they had the beautiful Celtic High Crosses over many of the graves.

Now that is the kind of headstone I want. It was so peaceful there. I can totally see why someone would think it was a good place to settle to contemplate God. And that is now even with all the tourists and paths, just imagine what it was like in the 11th century. Ok guys, almost done, just putting in one more pic, for my mom, who likes pictures with people in them.

That is my friend Matt who went with me and I. I wonder if that is a real sentence structure I just used. See now I have internet access at my house so these entries are gonna be so long and frequent that you will all just want me to shut up. Anyway, that is all for now.

My TD

I met my TD yesterday. His name is Trevor Sargent and that is him over on the left. He is the head of the Green Party in Ireland and has been since 2001. And get this, when Bush visited Ireland a while back, he totally drafted a warrant for a citizens arrest against Bush. I just know we will get along. He seems really nice. I will be working with him and a guy named Gerry who is the chief of staff/speechwriter for the Greens. I have a project that I am working on but can't post details like that online. Don't wanna get deported for treason or anything. I will start actually getting into the work on Tuesday. My TDs constituency is North Dublin so he is around more than the TDs who have farther away counties. I am really excited about getting started on this phase of my trip.
We went to the Peacock theatre the other night which is the black box of the big state theatre (Abbey) and we saw Hamlet. It was really good. The language was original, but of course they cut it because the play is like 5 hours long if you don't. They updated the setting and costumes and the like. There was a really cool use of spinning panels for the scenery and projecting onto the white walls for effects. The actors were really good. But Shakespearian English in an Irish accent is like a whole new level of complicated. So that was really fun. And the best part is, you can get theatre tickets to big professional shows for like €15 which is so much cheaper than the states. We are going to 2 more shows while we are here for sure, we already got our tickets. One is a one man show that won a bunch of Tonys on Broadway and the other is a Laramie Project-style show about the inquiries into Bloody Sunday. So that should be fabulous as well.