In Ireland I drank a lot of booze, in Italy I ate a lot of gelato

Mm'mm yeah, it's a good life.
I've been on hiatus for the last ten days. From Friday to Wednesday I hitch hiked around Ireland with my friend Cullen. I got back to London late Wednesday night, and then left early Thursday morning to go to Venice. I'm pretty exhausted...

When Cullen and I were telling people we were hitch hiking, we got a lot of mixed reactions. There were a few people who thought it was cool, but mostly people were convinced that we were going to die and were saying their last goodbyes Thursday night. It was actually really easy, and we got everywhere we wanted to go, even though it got off to a really rocky start.

Cullen and I were taking separate planes to Dublin because he messed up booking his flight. He got to Dublin around 8am, and I wasn't getting there until around 2pm. We didn't really make plans to meet anywhere. We kind of left it as "well, if you want to hang around the airport, whatever. If you don't I'll call you when I get there and we'll meet up." Helllooooo foreshadowing.
I dropped my cell phone in an airport toilet before I even left London. Of course I didn't know his phone number, so I couldn't use a pay phone. Hell, I don't even know my own phone number.

It gets worse. I have a US passport and I was so anxious about getting to Dublin that I didn't read the fine print on my boarding pass. I was supposed to go to the check-in desk at the airport, before I went through security, and get my boarding pass checked and stamped. Did I do it? No. So when I got to the gate and tried to get on the plane, they wouldn't let me. I cried. Crying is how I passed my drivers test, so I figured it might work at the airport. It did. And thankfully, Cullen took a nap at the Dublin airport and was there when I got there. Yay!

We spent Friday night in Dublin, had some drinks, and headed out Saturday morning for our hitch hiking "adventure". We took a bus to the outskirts of Dublin, walked up the motorway to a gas station, sat on a picnic table with our sign destination sign "Blarney", and within two minutes the lovely Miguel picked us up and drove us the two and a half hours all the way to Cork. We hung around Cork for a while, listened to some good jazz, kissed the Blarney Stone, then hopped on a bus to Galway.

Galway was amazing. We stayed there for three nights. Good food, good music, good alcohol, good people. Good times. Fantastic. We took a ferry to the Aran Islands and spent an afternoon bicycling around the island. I hadn't biked in years. It made me want to go out and buy a new bicycyle. We did get caught in a few rain showers, but it was beautiful. The island is covered with a never ending web of stone walls, and the beaches are so, so clean. We climbed up to the top of Dun Angus, which is some sort of old stone fort. I think I could see my house from the top! It was a perfectly clear day by then (after getting caught in a rain shower) and you could see the whole island practically spread out at your feet.

The next day we took a bus tour to The Cliffs of Moher and hiked in The Burren. It was so windy in The Burren that I got blown over a couple times. The Burren is essentially a stoney, sort of mountain region. You're not allowed to take anything, no rocks (sorry Mom!), flowers, bones... nothing. It's a several hundred euro fine if you get caught. The Cliffs were beautiful. They go along the coast for 8km, I think, and they're about 700' high. Our tour guide said 11 people have fallen off the cliffs so far this year. Obviously, you don't fall from them and live. We got caught in the rain there too. Once again, if you don't like the weather in Ireland, wait 15 minutes because it'll change. Yup, just like New England!

To end our trip, the next day we thumbed a ride from Galway to Ennis, about halfway to Shannon Airport. The arrangement for thumbing rides was simple. Cullen held our destination sign and stuck out his thumb. My job was just to look pretty, and ocassionally stick up my thumb in some cute sort of way. I did a good job! The guy that gave us a ride was super creepy, but I think that's a story more appropriate for Christmas dinner (Mum, I know you're grimacing, but I also know you secretly love it!). After we got out of his car (thankfully), a woman named Kate picked us up and told us all about her seven grand children. It was very relaxing conversation for right before getting on another ryanair flight.

So we got back to London late Wednesday night, and away I went again early Thursday morning. Venice is great, except it might have helped us a little bit if atleast one of the four of us spoke more than one word in Italian. Or Thai. The owners of our hostel only spoke Thai. There was a lot of communication through hand gestures! I think all the weight I've lost being in London I gained back eating gelato. Mm'mmm. Mint, nutella, biscotti.... Delic'.

Lots of new pics! Check 'em out!