Sorry for not making any post recently. We haven't had internet in a while. We found some in Pamplona but don't expect to have it again for awhile. I will post again as soon as possible.

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July 4

Last night we just relaxed on the boardwalk alongside the Tilley River next to our hostel. We were just enjoying the river and the people passing by until a couple of guys next to us decided to light up a joint. We were down wind so the smell of marijuana coaxed us into going back inside. It is quite odd to see people smoking weed and drinking beer out in the open on the busiest intersection in town. This is just another of many cultural differences we have experienced thus far.

This morning we woke up late (but not late enough to miss our free breakfast of course). We didn’t have a plan yet for the day so we began searching for something to do for the day. We decided that we would travel to the Irish west coast to check out a popular town of Galway, known for its beautiful coastline. We needed to leave the hostel for the train station around 12:30 pm to make it to our train. At around noon, I began to bake my beef and kidney pot pie in the hostel’s oven. I had just finished baking it and was prepared to take it with me as we left for the train when I walked through the kitchen to find Ben just putting spaghetti in his pot of boiling water . It was almost 12:30 pm already. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to our train on time so I will have to visit Galway on my next trip to Ireland.

We walked to the train station anyway to see if there was another excursion we could embark on. We inquired of the service desk if there was any near-by towns of interest to which we could make a day trip (or actually a half-day trip). She told us of the small town of Kildare, known for its two old-style churches and its Japanese gardens. It was about a forty-five minute journey away from Dublin.

We arrived with no clue as to what we were expecting to accomplish in Kildare, but we were completely reliant on the hospitality of the Irish to get us around. Basically, all we did was walk to the two churches, snap some pictures, walk to the local grocery store (the biggest we have seen yet) and then come back home. We did, however, start a walk toward the Japanese gardens until we got about halfway there. At that point, we realized that neither one of us was willing to walk a few miles one way just to see some flowers.

After we returned to our hostel, we waited a few hours before deciding we should go out to celebrate our Independence day in a foreign land. Our French friends had stopped by the hostel earlier and wanted to go out later so I told them to meet us at a certain club. The club was supposed to be putting on a special 4th of July celebration to which our hostel gave us free tickets. At 10:30 pm, we went to the club as the doors had just opened. We were the first ones in the door and the place was absolutely dead. We then left and went to a couple famous Temple Street bars. No one could really afford a drink (about 8 USD a piece) so we just sat and talked for the most part. We did enjoy the company of our French lady friends; they are quite interesting. We exchanged a bit of information on cultural differences which left all of us in shock at certain points. The thing that seemed to shock them the most was how we didn’t know many Michael Jackson songs. We ended up staying out until 3:00 am and we had to wake up at 7:00 am the next morning to make it to our train to take us to Cork to see the Blarney Castle/Stone.

July 5

We woke up at 9:00 am. Our intentions of awaking at 7:00 am were foiled by the inability of Ben’s I-pod’s alarm feature. Of course, there was the slight possibility of operator deficiency. Either way, we missed our free bus from Cork to Blarney by missing the earlier train. We eventually had to pay 6.20 Euros to take the bus. The cost of admission to the Blarney Castle was 8.00 Euros. With a grand total of 14.20 Euros (about 20 USD) it looked like we would be sleeping outside yet again tonight.

Inside the castle area, there were many information stands telling about the rich history of the area of Blarney. There are many centuries of history and myths that the signs attempted to sort out. The first thing we did was make it across the Blarney River to go the castle. This wasn’t much of a feat since the Blarney River is approximately five feet across, just big enough that they had to build a bridge. We stepped inside the castle, which was built on the side of a rocky bluff. It didn’t seem to tremendous, but as you got closer, it seemed more and more imposing. We later found that this was because the castle leaned slightly forward, so it actually seemed taller than it was while standing directly below it.
Our next task was to climb to the top of the castle and gain eternal eloquence by kissing the famous Blarney Stone (rated the dirtiest surface on earth). We climbed and explored the castle, which was not designed for six-plus-footers as we soon found out. It really wasn’t that big, but since it was actually the living quarters of many famous Irish people, I’m sure it made for a tough house to keep clean. At one point during our climb up the spiral staircase to the top, we were looking around in a room. A sign told us to check out the fireplace where they used to roast whole pigs and other beasts for family feasts. We looked for a couple minutes before we looked up and realized that we were actually standing inside the fireplace.

We finally got to the top and made our way over to kiss the famous stone. For those who don’t know, the Blarney Stone is at the bottom of an overhanging ledge at the top of the castle. In order to kiss it, you must grab hold of the two support bars, lean completely backwards over a gap with nothing but the ground below, and kiss it upside down. This reminds me of the effort I had to put in to get my first kiss…haha (except in this case, the term “bending over backwards“ was a bit more literal). It was a quick adventure; so quick that I couldn’t even get Ben’s camera turned on before he was done bending over to make his move on the rock. However, I took my time and romanced the Stone a while longer and was able to get my picture taken mid-smooch while sporting my Munger Softball t-shirt. Maybe the gift of eloquence will transfer over to the ball field back home.

Anyway, after I put down the rumors of myself and the Blarney Stone being in a serious relationship, we proceeded to check out the rest of the surrounding area. It wasn’t anything too spectacular, but I figured we paid twenty bucks to get in so I was going to get my money’s worth picture-wise. After about a two hour excursion around the Castle and surrounding areas, we headed toward the grocery store in town. After we came out, we went to the bus stop to find our bus had just left twenty minutes ago and the next one wasn’t due for another hour and a half. We ended up finding a nice bench under a tree to shelter us from the intermittent rain until our bus came. We talked to some fellow Americans as our bus was approaching and ended up riding the same train back to Dublin an hour and a half later. Once we got back to our hostel, where they had let us store our bags even though we had checked out, we grabbed our bags and went to hang out in the common room until we got kicked out. Since we didn’t have a place to stay for the night and it was raining and about 55° F outside, we were going to stay as long as they let us stay. We ended up falling asleep and not waking up until sometime in the early morning. We actually had to leave for our train before we got kicked out. Maybe the hostel has a “buy four nights, get one free night in the common room” policy.

July 6

Today was our most uneventful day yet. We were to embark on our journey back to mainland Europe. This journey consisted of catching a train at 7:30 am, walking to our ferry, and waiting. Since there was only one train that left from Dublin to Rosslare Europort (where our ferry sailed from) we had to wake up early just to do a bunch of waiting around. After a three hour train ride to the port, we had to wait for three more hours just to check in. Once we checked in, we had to wait another hour before we could board the ferry. Once we boarded the ferry, we had to wait another hour (which turned into an hour and a half after a delay) before we took off. Then the ferry ride was going to take about eighteen hours. There are many types of entertainment on the ferry, but we were both too tired to make it to anything. Besides that, we had ten foot swells on the ocean, so my stomach wasn’t feeling great. I think I was the last one in our room of reserved seats to go to sleep, which was around 9:00 pm. I may have also been the first to wake up, around 9:00 am (10:00 am French time). I can’t believe how much these people can sleep.

July 7

(20:00) Today we have done nothing but travel and wait around for our next train. When we landed in Cherbourg, we had to walk about two miles to find the train station. Once we got there, we tried to talk our way through the ticket booth to get tickets to Royan, France. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to communicate well enough to get to our desired destination. Instead, it looks like we are on our way to Bordeaux, France. It is quite a coincidence since our French girls live there and we told them that we would not be visiting their town on our trip. All well, looks like we lied.
Our train itinerary for the day looked something like this: Cherbourg to Lison (0:45 travel time), wait for our train for an hour and a half, Lison to Rennes (2:40 travel time), wait an hour, Rennes to Nantes (2:15 travel time), wait a half hour, Nantes to Bordeaux (3:00 travel time). All in all, we will travel for over twelve hours today.

The most interesting part of the day so far was when we witnessed a girl in the train station in Lison smoking. The reason this was interesting was because she was all by herself and she looked to be about ten or twelve years old. It was one of those moments when Ben and I saw her at the same time, turned and looked at each other simultaneously, and just shrugged our shoulders wondering what was next.

It has rained everywhere we have been so far today. I think it has literally rained everyday, at least once, since we were in London. It feels like we have one rain cloud following us around the entire continent. Hopefully, Spain will be a little kinder.

July 8

(7:00) We arrived in Bordeaux around 1:00 am. We went to the information booth to find that the next train to Pamplona didn’t leave until 10:30 am and the ticket booths didn’t open until 5:00 am. Our next task was to find a place to sleep. We only had to kill about four hours in order to get to the ticket booth as it opened. We went in search of a nearby park. We found a small one very close to the train station, but it was already littered with bodies, apparently in a similar situation. We moved on and found a small grassy area near an expressway entrance ramp. Since it had been raining everywhere we went, we decided that we needed to find a overpass or bridge to stay close to in case it did indeed rain. We set up camp behind a row of bushes, but just as we began to get comfortable, sure enough, the rain came yet again. We had to move to the bridge we had picked out earlier. It was actually an underpass for a bike path. Apparently, this is the popular area for bums to come and pee; it smelled like urine and rotten fish. However, it was better than being wet. The only problem was trying to find a spot to sleep in the dark that wasn’t disgusting. I knew it would be interesting in the morning to find out what exactly we had laid out on. 5:00 am rolled around too soon, and we had to make our way back to the train station in the cold to find out what train we would be taking. I then realized that I had bedded down in something rancid and now my blanket smells almost unbearable. I wonder how long it will be before I am able to wash it (probably not until I get home). We did catch a break at the train station though. There was an older lady training a younger guy at the ticket booth. She seemed to guide him to find us a short cut. We no longer had to wait until 10:30 am to depart. We would be able to catch the 7:00 am train into Spain and then transfer to another train that would get us there quicker. Right now we are on our way to crossing the Spanish border toward Pamplona. I am going to try to get some actual sleep before we arrive.

We arrived in Irun, Spain at around noon today. We had one transfer train at the border which took awhile to transfer over to even though it was only an eight minute ride. We immediately noticed three things in Spain: you can use the restrooms free of charge, there are drinking fountains, and it was raining again. We had a four hour lay over until our train toward Pamplona. We had an interesting conversation with a Canadian at the train stop telling us all about running with the bulls. We are two hours away from Pamplona, yet we have seen at least five or six people wearing the traditional white uniform with a red scarf of the San Fermine festival. We plan on purchasing our outfits before we run tomorrow. The more we hear about this festival the more we want to just get in and get out. We are still hoping to meet up with Tiff tomorrow or the next day. It will be difficult, however, because we don’t have internet and don’t know the specifics of where she lives. We did find an internet place that charged us fifty cents to use the internet for fifteen minutes. It was quite interesting watching Ben trying to finagle a Spanish keyboard to work everything since his mouse was broken. We were able to send out a few contact messages, but when we came back to check if we had any responses at 3:00 pm, the place had already closed. Hopefully we can find internet in Pamplona or we may not get a hold of Tiff at all.

We arrived in Pamplona about 6:00 pm. The San Fermin Festival is CRAZY! I’ve never seen anything like it. I will try to post video and pictures soon, but they don’t show how many people there were there. Everywhere you look for about a square mile, people were shoulder to shoulder wearing all white with red handkerchiefs around their necks and red sashes around their waists. We went around and checked out all the bands marching through the streets and the people putting on unique displays. We ended up sitting on a bench talking to a Glenn from Atlanta, Georgia. He was telling us about all the times he has come to run with the bulls. He gave us some good advice and got us fired up to run. We walked around a little more and found a huge stage where a live band was playing at midnight that night. We were pretty tired from not getting any real sleep since the ferry, so we went in search of a place to take a nap. Since people were everywhere and the streets were nothing but trash, there weren’t too many options. It was slightly cold and we had checked our bags at the city hall building so we didn’t have any access to our clothes. We ended up walking down into a parking garage and falling asleep lying in a corner on the pavement. We were awoken by a policeman informing us that we weren’t supposed to be there. So we got up and went back outside into the cold. We ended up walking around and going into random bars and stores just to get into a warm place. By the time the concert started, we were just warm enough to stay outside and dance around a little to the music. The start of the concert at midnight officially ends the blog for the day. We were to run with the bulls at 8:00 am sharp the next morning.