A Friday in Cork

Jet lag kicked our butts last night so we went to bed super early. But we woke up @ 4:00a -- wide awake. So we played video games and finally went back to sleep early this morning until everyone else woke up and had breakfast. Resetting your body clock is ridiculously hard to do.

This morning we headed out to catch the hop-on hop-off tour bus but missed it and ended up just walking around. We stopped at Dunnes and got Andrew a sweatshirt/jacket thing for 10 euros because stupid us thought the weather would be warm and sunny and we could wear short sleeves, no problem. This was not the case. Sadly, I do not think the opportunity will arise for me to ever wear the linen pants I brought. Maggie, when you come here, pack warm clothes. I'm pretty sure while we were traveling to Cork yesterday, we saw some snow flurries -- or atleast something that looked like them.

After waiting around for the tour bus some more, we decided to get some lunch. So we went to this little place near the apartment and we had cheeseburgers. FYI, a cheeseburger here does not taste like a cheeseburger back home. The beef tastes different. Not good, not bad -- just different. After our lunch, we went back to the apartment and I took a nap while Andrew went to the English Market to get tonight's dinner -- prawns. Needless to say, I didn't partake.

Then we finally caught the tour bus and it took us all around Cork and we got lots of really great photos and made mental notes of all the places we wanted to go back to and explore. We walked down to the Finn Bar Cathedral and checked that out. It was beautiful. Then we walked back and ate dinner. I got to talk to Laura for a little bit on Skype (yay!). And we ran down to Tesco to get some snacks and drinks for our trip to Dublin tomorrow.

And then tonight we went pub crawling -- SO MUCH FUN!

Kevin introduced us to one of his Irish friends, Pat. I don't think you can really get the whole Irish pub experience unless you go with a real Irishman. He showed us a few really great pubs, all a little different than the one before. And we tried a few different beers called Beemish, Bulmers, Murphy's. Andrew liked them A LOT... probably too much. Our favorite pub was this one where filled with Irishmen dancing and singing and drinking and hugging. It was so much fun. From tonight, I've observed: people over here really like their beer, they love 80's music, they don't understand the concept of personal space, they are friendly and want to learn everything about you and answer all your questions, and most importantly, they just want to have a good time. Everyone here is so easy going and just generally light hearted and good that it makes everything you experience that much more enjoyable just to be around them. We really like it here. And I think mostly that's because of the people.

It is 3:00a here now and we have to be up by 7:00 to catch the bus to Dublin in the morning. I'll give updates as our adventures in Dublin progresses.