Monday 4 July 2011

Final days of Ireland

4/7
Today was a very relaxed day. Breakfast at 9:20. would have been later, but breakfast closes at 9:30, then back to bed until 12:30. After i finally did get out of the building, i walked around the Guinness brewery, then down around an old prison / military church, where the members of the 1917 uprising were buried (i just stumbled upon that), then toward the old Jamison distillery, the voyage of which i had a couple of rocks thrown at me from some local ignorant kids, (fortunately, their aim is terrible. I am guessing the street is a long way from the touristy area of Dublin. there were only a couple of locals around here. They probably do not like tourists). I found the distillery, and walked around it, then returned to the hostel. I chose not to go into the brewery or distillery as i have already spent more than the weeks budget. The clouds tried to rain, but they saw me and thaught "we will be kind" and stayed away.

5/7
I Finally hired a bike today, although at 12:20, as it took a while to get out of bed again. The bike was terrable. the frame and running gear was light and cheap, the handlebars were weird, girly and awkward, the back wheel was not bolted on tightly, the seat was too low and the chain kept comming off. All i needed was some streamers flowing out of the handle bars!  The riding style reminded me of "easy rider"  Despite this, i still managed to peddle up the coast to a fishing village called Howth; a distance of about 16 km. i had some fast food- fish and chips there, which at first sounds dodgy, but was actually very good. It was fast because there was a line up out the door, and they had a process that could process the orders very effectively. The end result was an otherwise normal fish and chip shop, that took only 5 minutes from line up to food. 
From here, i jumped back on girly rider and attempted to ride up the hill. it is importaqnt to note here, the bike had NO GEARS!  Awkward riding + rubbing back wheel + no gears + chain coming off = the bike riding me up the hill! Totally useless up anything steaper than 1 degree!  Fortunately, i found the short, steep side, so it was only a lot of effort for a short period of time to get girly rider to the top. The other side was long and almost windey, I even recorded a movie on the trip back down! I dropped off girly rider with 20 minutes to spare before he shut up shop and met up with 2 German backpackers at a pub somewhere. The rain was suppose to come today, but it saw me again and said "nah, we will still be kind" so it remained the nice Irish summer day of 18 degrees.  Any more like this, they will be calling it a heat wave, Maybe even a drought!
Night time for me consisted of "Star Trek" then "Moon", then bed.


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