A Paddywagon Through Ireland

Dublin wasn't how I imagined it to be, but then again I never really could picture it properly in my mind. I arrived rather late on Saturday night and spent the night socialising and having a good ol gasbag with Sam, my Irish friend whom I worked with in Brisbane. My first real day we both went into Dublin, checked myself into the Paddywagon backpackers for the night, then we were off to have a good explore around and hit up the Jameson Distillery, which was heaps of fun! But before I knew it the day had drawn to a close and I was relaxing in the hostel, getting all ready for the departure of my three day Paddywagon tour the following day.

It was an early rise for the Paddywagon that was departing at 8am, but I was so excited I didn't notice.  Barry or Bazza as the Aussies called him was our bus driver for the three days; he's from Cork and is a typical Irish guy, funny! He introduced himself and his pet sheep, Seamus who is a toy, and we were instructed to make sure we took him out and got photos with him. It was a mixed bag of people on the bus, but it was mainly full of Australians, so when Barry called out "who's from Australia?" there was a great big cheer, then he asked "and who's from New Zealand?" and I yelled out thinking I'd have some support, but no, it was just me, the one and only kiwi on a bus mainly full of Aussies... There was a mixed bunch of people though; we had a South African guy, a couple of girls from Denmark and Germany, a few from America and a Canadian.
The first main destination for our Paddywagon bus was Galway but not before we went off the beaten track and Barry took the massive bus through narrow windy roads to show us some real Irish country side. Our first Main stop was Cong, where the film The Quiet Man was mostly filmed. It is a quaint little town in Country Mayo and has two Loughs (which means Lake) either side with a river running through the town and joining the two loughs. So lunch and a nice walk around the old Cong Abbey was a lovely way to spend the first stop in Ireland, and already I could tell this would be a super trip, I was seeing amazing country side and meeting some great people.

Lough Corrib, the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland and the second largest lake in Ireland, was stop number two for the first day of the tour. It was only a 15 minute stop but was lovely to get out and get a good look at some beautiful views. Then we were onto Killary, we made it there after a few more narrow windy roads, and I was starting to feel like I was back in New Zealand, though NZ doesn't have the ruined churches and castles. Killary is where the film The Field was made, though I have not seen this movie, nor had I seen the one that was filmed in Cong, but it was still pretty so I got some good pictures. Killary also has a sheep and wool museum, which I found rather funny so I took a photo of that as well. After Killary we drove past a large amount of bog land, I did keep my eyes peeled for a bog 'man', but I think that they can only be found in the British Museum. Mid afternoon and we had arrived at Kylemore Abbey, it's so pretty there! A great castle-like abbey that over looks a small lake surrounded by gardens, by now I'm really starting to fall in love with Ireland.
We drove past a few more bogs and ended up in a tiny town called Connemara, we were driving along when Barry told us we had to get out and check out what the statue of the giant meant, as every tour group he tells don't believe him, we all looked a bit confused wondering what could it be that we wouldn't believe Barry? So out we hoped and walked over to the giant where underneath him it said "This is Connemara (Con son of the sea), built in 1999, for no apparent reason". Behind the giant was a monument and on this monument it said "On this site in  1897 nothing happened", oh don't you just love the Irish? I don't think you'd find anything else like that anywhere in the world!

Galway Girl soon became the song for the trip and it all started with Barry singing it for us, of course we all sung along in the parts we knew to help him out, we must have looked mad all singing in this great big bus. So after the singing of Galway girl we, well Barry with our permission picked up a hitchhiker, who was so drunk he stunk the bus out with the smell of alcohol, but it was a bit of a laugh to see the look on Barry's face when he realised he'd invited a drunken/singing/smelly hitchhiker onto his bus, we were all thoroughly amused. After getting the hitchhiker out of the bus as soon as Barry could, we were in Galway.
Galway is amazing, the atmosphere as soon as you arrive just lets you know that this is a place full of history and character and Galway soon became one of my favourite places I have been and definitely my favourite place in Ireland. We quickly got settled into our backpackers then went out to have a walk around. Galway is small so we pretty much managed to see most of it in about an hour. Barry was still a bit of a tour guide here, and he took us to a place were we all got a good meal then we all headed onto a typical Irish pub. Now I always thought I knew what and Irish pub was like, after dancing for so many years and spending close to every St Patricks Day of my life in one, I really truly thought I had the Irish pub scene down pat, but no, I was far off. I soon found out the Irish pubs in Ireland are the real deal, they have the band, the beer, the music, the laughter, the everything, no pub will ever be the same, and these are so much fun! We'd spent a good part of our night here and I'd managed to drink half a pint of Guinness, which I don't think is too bad considering I don't even like the stuff, but because of where I was I thought I'd get into the spirit of things. The night had potential to be a big night out, but since we all had to be up early to get on the bus, we thought we'd be sensible and head back at a semi reasonable hour. Though it was only a Monday night, it was obvious that Galway would be a big night out any day of the week.

Paddywagon day two and we were destined for the tiny town of Annascaul on the south west coast of Ireland, it was also another day of seeing amazing places and some beautiful Irish countryside. We stopped at Dunguaire Castle, Corcomroe Abbey, then we stopped at The Burren which is this rocky land, full of limestone which goes for miles and miles and in the middle of it all is Poulnabrone Portal Tomb, which is pretty much two massive rocks with one rock placed on the top, and just like Stonehenge you wonder 'did they do it?'. Then it was onto the Cliffs of Moher, which are just stunning and it was so lovely to walk around the edge of them, though I can't say I liked the very sharp drop that was right there, but it was a great stop and a wonderful experience to walk around this area. Though the Cliffs of Moher has a serious bug problem which needs to be dealt with, these small black flying insets were everywhere and I mean everywhere! You couldn't open your mouth without one deciding to investigate, and by the time we made it back to the bus, the little creepy crawlies where in our hair and our clothes, it was insane.
Day two was a pretty intense day, we'd all seen a lot and we're all feeling rather tired, but we'd arrived at our backpackers for our last night of the trip and we were all going to make it a good night. The backpackers was well set up for a very small town, with its very own pub called The Randy Leprechaun, so we had some dinner here then tried out a few Irish drinks and I'm not talking about Guinness or Jameson, I'm talking about Car Bombs and Green Frogs. What are those I hear you ask, well a Car Bomb has the same concept as a Jager Bomb, but instead of Jager and Redbull it's Baileys and Stout (like Guinness) and Irish whiskey, sound absolutely awful, but they are in fact rather nice. A Green Frog is blue Wicked, Smirnoff red and an orange Bacardi Breezer, and this makes for a drink that is far too tasty and extremely easy to drink. So after sampling a few of these drinks we were onto karaoke for the evening and a lot of laughing and carrying on!

Paggywagon day three, the last day of the tour had come around super fast and I was not ready for it to end, I was having far too much fun, but there was still a long plentiful day ahead with lots of places to go and see. Killarney was our first stop and we would start here with a lovely horse and cart ride through killarney National Park. The driver of our horse and cart was great, he was telling us stories about Leprechauns and where we could find them, telling us that the troth over in the field was a leprechauns Olympic swimming pool and the small concrete square sticking up in the road was a leprechauns gravestone. He even told us that "if you drink a good few pints of Guinness you can see leprechauns and that if you drink too much Guinness you may even fall over one", this I found extremely funny. After the horse and cart ride, we thought we'd head off to a pub to find an Irish Coffee, since none of us had tried one and we'd thought it was a good way to start the last day of the tour. Finding an Irish Coffee in Ireland was harder than we expected, but that was mainly due to the fact that it was only 10am and most pubs were shut, believe it or not! My first Irish Coffee was amazing and I think I'll most likely be having a few more of them in the future because they are super yum. The next stop after Killarney was Blarney where we would see Blarney Castle and Kiss the Blarney stone. Now kissing the Blarney Stone isn't the most comfortable of situations, I'm not scared of heights, but I don't particularly like them and to kiss this stone you have to go up to the top of the Blarney Castle where then you hang backwards over the edge with someone hanging onto you, you then move over the edge more and hang down more it's then that you kiss this stone and are pulled back up by the person hanging onto you. A very interesting experience indeed, but very worth it as now I can say I've kissed the Blarney Stone I am now meant to have lots of good luck; we'll see how long the good luck will last.

On our way back to Dublin now and we made one last stop at The Rock of Dunamase, a very ruined old castle surrounded by green fields that seemed to go on forever. It was so peaceful and beautiful here that I don't think the last stop on the tour would've been any better than this. Here is what you really imagine Ireland to be like, it was so scenic. The castle was built in the 12th Century and there is very little of it left now, that Barry said to make the most of it as he doesn't think it'll be much longer before it becomes nothing but a few rocks in the ground. Ireland must have been so amazing hundreds of years ago.

The tour ended and I said my goodbye's to my new friends, I'd had so much fun the past three days, but I was ready for bed. Anyone that ever goes to Ireland I'd recommend you do a Paddywagon Tour, they are a lot of fun and you see so much that's off the beaten track you really get a chance to see Ireland as it is. Ireland was everything I imagined it to be and so far stands as the best country I've seen so far, it lived up to all my expectations and more.
I love Ireland!

Scary Movies

Last night I watched Paranormal Activity for the second time. Why did I do this? I have no idea. I am a chicken when it comes to horror and thriller films, I close my eyes and block my ears and try extremely hard to think happy thoughts. Paranormal Activity is by far the movie that scares me the most! When I first saw it at the cinema, I left feeling rather nervous and found it very hard to sleep for a week because every bump in the night or breeze outside I thought was some ghost or demon trying to come after me, not to mention while I was watching the film I screamed at the end because of something that happened that gave me such a fright (I won't say what for those that haven't yet seen this film).
So last night I would have been found hiding under the duvet cover with me eyes tightly closed and my hands firmly blocking out any noise that was coming from the screen. Ghost movies like this seem to get me shivering in my boots every time, I don't know why, just gives me the heeby jeebies and yet I still can't seem to stop myself from watching them. Maybe it's the adrenaline rush, like why do people go on rollacosters if they scare them to death? Maybe for me it's horror films. Who knows?

I must say though that I am kind of excited to see Scream 4, 11 years ago was when the last Scream film was released and I remember not being old enough to get in and see it so my friends and I tried our hardest to sneak in the cinema; we failed miserably. So as much as scary movies leave me with sleepless nights and thinking that some sort of monster is coming to get me, I'll keep watching them.

London and spring

The weekend was absolutely stunning! After a long hard winter, I had managed to convince myself that I may actually never get to see the sun again. Well the sun finally decided to grace us all with its presence just in time for the weekend. So while I had to work on Saturday, I made sure that I was out in the sun for Friday afternoon and all day Sunday.

Richmond Park is where I spent the majority of my lovely sunny Sunday afternoon, for those who have never been it is a must! A great big park located in South West London, it's like being out in the wop wops, when you're still in London. So my friend Heather and I meet in Victoria, grabbed some picnic snacks and cider from the supermarket and headed out to the park, for a lovely picnic lunch and an afternoon stroll. We did spend around 4 hours walking around and I don't think we even made a dent in what's to be seen out there. Though the highlight was when we stumbled across two deer in the middle of this open field. We tried to sneak up to them, well to get as close as we could without thinking that our lives were in danger and also scaring the deer away. So after getting a few good snaps of the deer and having a lovely walk around through the park, we decided it would be a wise move to try and find our way out before it got dark as we both had absolutely no sense of direction! So all in all Richmond Park was absolutely wonderful and I'll most definitley be heading back there to spend a lovely sunny day.

Later on in the early evening I caught up with Neil and went for another wee walk through one of the local parks. It was so nice to see some sun for a change, so I wanted to make the most of it. So we got an icecream and sat in the park for a bit. It was still too nice of an evening to head home so Neil took me to a bar on the canal in Maida Vale which was really nice to sit there, drink a cider, and enjoy the lovely spring day. Just when I thought it couldn't get anymore like a perfect spring day, a swan went swimming right by us along the canal.

Spring you are my most favourite time of the year.

Cheese and Vegemite sandwiches

The one thing I've learnt, well really am still learning about London is how to save my money. It's so expensive to live here! I was thoroughly warned about how broke I would be while I was living in London by many different people before I left, so I did come over here with the expectation that I would never have any money. I thought I'd keep some of you amused by telling you about the way that I'm currently living in London and the things I am sacrificing in order to try and see some of the world. So one of the biggest things I found to be wasting money on was food, mainly buying my lunch. I might have spent anywhere from £3 to £5 buying my lunch, which I didn't think was that bad, then when I actually took a moment to think about it that's £60 - £100 a month! That's flight somewhere! So I quickly resorted to making my lunch everyday.

Vegemite you can buy here from most major supermarkets, granted it's only the small jar, but give me a small jar of Vegemite over none any day. Normally I would use Vegemite just for my toast in the mornings and maybe the odd roll, but the past couple months I've been making Vegemite sandwiches. I soon got bored of this and upgraded my lunch to cheese and Vegemite sandwiches which is something I do enjoy. Please note that it wasn't every single day I was eating these, there is the odd day every now and again where I might splurge and buy something for a few pounds, but I was definitely eating a lot of sandwiches, so many sandwiches in fact, that it has actually got to the stage now, that while writing this, even the thought of cheese and Vegemite sandwiches is making me feel ill. This morning while making my lunch I thought to myself that I would be fine to have the old trusty again for lunch today, but the fact of the matter is the weekend made no difference, I went to work, ate my sammies and actually felt yuck! Cheese and Vegemite sandwiches have taken a turn for the worst and now the old trusty snack I can't bear the thought of.

The things I am doing to try and scrape by, shesh! All in all there is definitely a positive to this and that is the travel. I am really starting to feel that I'm finally getting ahead and really getting to see more places, although these next two months are a bit crazy, as I did go a tad over bored on the travel and book a little too many trips away. Might have to resort to some extra budget saving systems, but tonight when heading home I did have to go via Sansbury's and pick up some ham, ham sandwiches tomorrow people! I'm moving up in the world! I know, not so budget, but it was ham or noodles at 10p a bag, and I don't think I could do the noodles thing right now especially since all I eat for dinner is mainly pasta, why? because it is cheap! .... next week budget noodles will be on the cards though *sigh*

I think to anyone who isn't traveling my savings way might seem a bit nuts, especially since I could quite happily go out and on a last minute decision just book a trip away. I often get the rather puzzled look which is a look that could only come from two thoughts "You must have a lot of money if you can travel so much" or "How the heck are you travelling so much, I thought you were meant to be poor?" To the people that think this your answer is the title of this page... Cheese and Vegemite sandwiches (and also not a lot of new clothes). Most of the time I feel like the only other people who understand this is my fellow travelling friends, who all know far to well that if you're going to travel so far around the world you may as well actually see it! I'd rather be poor and travelling places than have money and doing nothing, not that I would do nothing I'd spend it on clothes and waste it on nights out.

So as much as I can't stand the thought of a cheese and Vegemite sandwich again, there is a positive to come from this now very much love hate relationship and that is I'm starting to see the world! So dear cheese and Vegemite sammies, you do actually do a lot for me and I owe you big time for helping me save to see the world, but right now I don't ever want to see you again!

And that's my tip number 1 for saving in London.

Hanging out with your wang out

I guess no where is really safe now days and living in London you do come to expect the unexpected, but I certainly wasn't expecting what happened to me last week. I thought I'd write a wee note about my interesting moment last week, as some of you might find it extremely amusing.

So last Tuesday night, I'd just been around to see Neil and was on my way back home. Now where I live I'd like to think isn't a 'rough' area, it certainly isn't a flash area of London, but I don't think it is awfully bad, however compared to some of the surrounding suburbs it isn't too crash hot.

Anyway, so I'd jumped off the bus and made my way down my street, I noticed a slightly dodgy looking man standing on the side of the road looking a tad strange. The thought did run through my mind to cross the road, but he was only about 10 houses away from mine, so being so close to home I thought I'd just carry on as usual. So here I was walking along, in my own wee world, iPod in, minding my own business, I thought I'd just walk past him not even acknowledge that he's standing there and I'll be home in half a minute. So I'm walking past Mr Dodgy, and I just glace at him and he's standing there, on the side of the road, between two cars, facing me/the footpath with his wang hanging out of his jeans, and no he wasn't going for a wee, he was actually just standing there with it all hanging out!!!! My poor eyes burned in my head, and I got one hell of a fright, so I quickly up'd my walking pace, grabbed my keys out of my bag, before heading up my footpath swung around to make sure he wasn't following me, ducked inside and locked the door. I was feeling a bit violated after this, but what could I do.

So that's my wee story about one interesting event that happened to me last week, that I thought I'd share with you all to have a wee giggle over.... though at the time I didn't find it funny at all. Let's just hope now that the all the dodgy people stay away from my street!