so, historic tour of scotland over (with particular emphasis on all the places my dad has crashed vintage cars throughout the st andrews area during his university years), we wound up back in glasgow to send my sad little sister back to australia for school and ourselves jumped on a plane to belfast, northern ireland, and then into a hire car (fancy) to drive down to dublin. the WT09 party now including vivienne and i, obviously, and my parents- the ones we must thank for lifting the general standard of nutrition, transportation, cleanliness and accommodation of v and i from very low to quite good, really. at least for a week, anyway.
this journey from the highlands to dublin was made considerably less pleasant by the fact that i'd somehow contracted a vicious stomach bug, but i won't bore or disgust you with the details. anyway, vivienne and my parents got to know each other even better than they already did as i lay around and moaned.
SO. DUBLIN.
For those who have had the fortune to visit this lovely city, it's not full of drunken irish people as most would have you believe (there's still a few around, obviously, it probably depends where you hang out) but in fact lots of pretty buildings and double-decker buses in bright colours and friendly people with incomprehensible accents and welcoming-looking pubs and bars that sell nothing but guinness.
the fact that there must be hundreds of bars like this, all full of people and making money, is merely a testament to the irish love of guinness. as pretty much non-beer drinkers, vivienne, my mum and i all politely had a sip of the pints we were served at the end of our tour of the guinness factory and then watched my dad, a dedicated beer-drinker, happily devour everything we had failed to consume (this being the best part of 3 pints of guinness). all i can say is well played, andrew main.
in dublin we also saw the earliest copy of the bible still in existence, the book of kells (which for those who care was in fact written on the isle of iona, before being taken away when my violent norse ancestors turned up and ransacked the place in the 14th century). well played, ancestors. we also did lots of other fun stuff but in the interests of keeping things short(ish), i will let you be imaginative.
in short, dublin: big tick. go there.
from dublin we ended up in a place called Youghal, which promised us 'miles of golden beaches' and in fact was cold, windy and full of teenage mums, but was slightly improved by a really really incredible seafood restaurant, a nice hotel built before Captain Cook had even been born, let alone contemplated discovering Australia, and the fact that the town is pronounced Y'all.
then, we lurked around killarney while i attempted to re-apply to university (i'm still not 100 per cent sure the UAC even knows i exist), then headed to a beautiful place called Kells where my great-aunt used to live, in the very bottom-left corner of Ireland. alas her enormous old house was a bit lacking in the heating and hot water departments, but a fire was constructed and we all sat around being jolly and actually had quite a nice time.
from Kells we whizzed up through the countryside to a place called Carlingford Loch, which was nice but seemed to have a bit of a girl shortage judging by the ridiculous number of beeps we got wandering around in trackies, and then to the VERY FAR NORTH of Northern Ireland, to see the Giant's Causeway.
for those who don't know, the Giant's Causeway is a zillion-year-old series of rock formations on an incredibly beautiful coastline where my dad wandered around being friendly to spanish tourists and we enjoyed the view.
and, lastly, we headed once more to belfast to fly back to glasgow, our highly enjoyable family (vivienne replacing laura) holiday to ireland. my lovely parentals headed home to sydney, and v and i jumped on a bus to edinburgh.
but THAT, as they say, is ANOTHER STORY.
much love to all concerned x
