Goodbye Ireland

Hello again, this is your friend Mike now residing in the country of Spain and in the town of Granada. We actually got in last night and the first thing that we did was go to a tapas (sp) bar to get a few beers and free food. It was pretty sweet. Spain has already proven to be a much cheaper country than Ireland ever wished it was. The only thing obviously is that here I don´t know a lick of the language and so getting around could be a problem. Luckily thus far the guys who are already here have a grasp on it to a certain point. Mr Ryan seems to speak it almost flawlessly and Nithin seems to get around pretty good. Well i´ll take this time summarize what´s happened in the last few days. Most of this stuff I did with Ryan Brandle so you will probably see him write about it as well. Yesterday we left for Spain via cork, Dublin, London, Granada. We ended up having to take flights out of each of these places to the next because it was the only way that we could get to Spain with our time table. The flights weren´t that expensive but because it was a budget airline (Ryanair) the seats were practically on top of each other and they were the most uncomfortable flights i´ve ever dealt with. Oh well part of the experience i guess. Anyway, the original idea was to take a bus back to Dublin from Cork because it would have been much cheaper than the flight, but because it was some kind of crazy holiday in Ireland this wasn´t possible. We would have gotten to the airport either late or barely with enough time to catch our flight out of Dublin and that wouldn´t have been acceptable. Now that we have left Ireland and spent just a ridiculous amount of money on beer, food and accommodation i think that the ¨vacation is over¨and it´s time for the super saver vagabonder mode to kick in. Something else that was kind of cool from Ireland was the Blarney Castle. The castle is just a few miles outside Cork so it wasn´t that difficult to get there. I was actually pretty impressed by the whole thing and I´ll try and get pictures up later on in the week. I was going to do it today but I forgot my usb cord that hooks up to the computer for transfer. Anyway, obviously at the Blarney Castle there is the Blarney stone, which you are supposed to kiss and you will receive good luck. The story is about a king who lived there and who had a speech impediment and then once he kissed the stone his speech was flawless. Speaking of luck of the Irish, another interesting thing is that they have what is called the wishing stairs that is basically a set of stairs carved in a huge rock that is on the property. The idea here is that you are supposed to walk up and down the stairs with your eyes closed and you wish will come true. We only walked down it backwards with our eyes closed because we weren´t sure that you had to walk it up backwards. A lot of people thought we were crazy for doing this because of the slight danger factor. However, there were sides to the steps for support, at least for most of the way so there were no problems. The coolest part of the castle is something that most probably wouldn´t see just by going there. When you approach the castle there is an entrance that is like an underground cave but also acted as a prison cell at one point i think. Anyway, this cave was really really small and there were no lights anywhere so you couldn´t see to far in. When we arrived we tried to explore the caves but we couldn´t get far due to the lack of light. After we walked around a bit we figured out that Brandle had a lighter on him and we decided to give it a go before we left the area. I have picture of this as well that I´ll post up later but basically we used the flames from the lighter and a couple of flashes from my camera to get way back into the cave. We talked to a guy who said originally the caves went for a mile or so but they closed it off at one point so that people didn´t get too far. We probably got about 150 ft or so which led us under the castle. After Blarney, we went to a fish and chips place that is supposed to be one of the best in all of ireland. It was pretty cool, they give you this giant cod and a ton of chips to eat. I couldn´t get close to finishing this. We went out one more time to the bars and Ryan´s friend Jimmy said goodbye to all of his friends. This led us to the morning of yesterday when we experienced a day of 4 airports and three flights in 14 hours or so. It was pretty exhausting. Oh, i just want to mention something about the London Stansted airport real fast that was quite annoying. First of all they try to rip you off in all kinds of ways. I wanted to fill my water bottle up so that i wouldn´t have to purchase a very expensive one in the airport but they had no water fountains and in the bathrooms they only have hot water. Thus I was forced to buy a new bottle. Secondly, they have some weird policy that they won´t tell you what gate your flight is in until about an hour before it boards. I can only assume that is is because they want you to hang out in their airport mall and buy up all of the food and other crap that you can. It was actually quite annoying because I just wanted to find a place to sleep. Well that´s it for now and like I said all of this happened with Brandle, so i´m sure he will repeat /add a bunch of info about what happened. Until next time.