Dublin/Cork

So Dublin was cool... Last night I saw a comedy show at a pub and got back to the hostel by around 1 a.m. In a room of 10 people, only two got back after me -- I beat the two American girls by like 10 minutes. It's really strange -- everyone gets in early at night and wakes up before 8 a.m. Then they loudly dig through their stuff. Which means I wake up before 8 a.m. It's fantastic.

My first crisis has been averted -- Bank of America decided to put a hold on my account (I told them before I left that I'd be using my card in Europe but the woman yesterday explained that just because they put a notation on my account doesn't mean the automated system that puts holds on accounts understands it. I'm hoping this doesn't happen again.)

So in Dublin I did the National Gallery, Temple Bar, a few pubs, walked up and down the Liffey, the Dublin Writers Museum, and was going to do the Guinness Storehouse tour but read in my tourbooks and heard from a few locals that it was a waste of 9 euro, so I just walked around the outside, took pictures, and drank lots of Guinness in pubs. It's so much better here. Seriously.

I also found out that a friend here's dad is a senator in Dublin, and she asked if I would have been interested in him showing me around the government buildings. Yes. But now it's too late, because of lots of things, namely the fact that she's in the middle of finals and I have a flight to London in a day and a half. She said she'll try to work something out, but... yeah.

So my first day in Cork has been pretty lax. The train was delayed and I didn't get in till around 2:15 p.m., and didn't get back to her place and settled till 3 p.m., and most things close at 5 p.m. So I did the Cork Public Museum, which had a lot of historical artifacts, but I knew very little about Irish history short of the potato famine, and I still know very little about Irish history short of the potato famine.

Tomorrow I'm going to see the Blarney Stone, and also check out an art gallery in downtown Cork. I also might swing by the workplace of a very hot Irish guy I met at a restaurant last night. Given the fact that I look like absolute crap, smell bad and have very fluffy hair, I was very confused about him talking to me. And given the state of the hostel showers (or at least the two I've stayed in so far... one where you had to hold down the button to keep the water going, and the other that barely dribbled water), I've also determined that for the next three months, I'm going to have very hairy legs.

Right now I'm in a cafe at University College Cork, which has an absolutely beautiful campus. It's sort of a mix of old and new buildings, and green hills with little houses as its backdrop. It's a nice change from the metropolitan feeling of Dublin. I'm also clearly taking advantage of the free Internet I get with my friend's password.

Now I'm going to figure out the bus schedule for Blarney, and book hostels in Canterbury and London. I'll write more at some point...