Oh and another thing...

Tomorrows my birthday, tomorrows my birthday. Woohoo, woohoo, tomorrows my birthday!

We may happen to be located in London...

The Londoners are formal and polite, its so weird! Well, its not like its muuuch different than home, but they say "mind the gap" and "please refrain from using this railing". London is large. Today we took a free tour (same company as Edinburgh) which showed us where about half the stuff is, so tomorrow we're going to take the other free tour and see the other half! After the tour, we ate some lunch (which was uber hot, apparently they don't understand that we like air conditioning, even at this latitude) and went to the National Gallery. We saw lots of famous paintings by lots of famous people, it was cool. Laura got reallly bored. I enjoyed it, as did Rachael. (As Laura screams sooo did I! Which is such a lie) After that we relaxed in Trafalger Square, listened to the rants of a crazy screaming woman (we could barely understand her, but she was very enthusiastic). Now we're going to have dinner, then have ice cream as we look at Princess Di's memorial. More on that later!

(... rotate head...)

laura and her wrong font...

Edinburgh. So if I remember right, Laura left on saying we got our tickets. That we did, so we officially made it to Edinburgh. We weren't able to buy our tickets to get to the airport until 3:30am, when we showed up at the bus (which we almost missed, because we didn't know where to go). If we had missed it, we would of had to pay a really expensive taxi fare, but luckily we caught it so it doesn't matter...

Edinburgh is AMAZING. It is gorgeous and safe and happy and old. We've been hanging around old town mostly, which hasn't changed in a few hundred years. We went on an awesome free walking tour, where we learned that Edinburgh is pretty much a KILLER town. Meaning that they killed a lot of people. A lot of hangings. Interesting that it is now the safest town in Europe! Our tour guide was awesome, so much so that we chose to PAY for a night tour (a "ghost" tour- really just a detail of all of the witchburnings, head choppings and hangings) which was also really cool. We've hung around the parks (picnicked), looked at all the free stuff (some museums and cathedrals) and just wandered around. And my general conclusion is that Edinburgh is amazing and we need to come back! Parents, I definitely recommend it to you (in fact, we're making a list of all the places you might like and why). I don't have the camera connector right now, but we'll put up pictures soon, I swear!

(rotate head 90 degrees, please. That's the writers museum in Edinburgh)

(Amy and Rachael playing with interactive exhibits at the National Museum of Scotland)

Well anyway, tomorrow we head to London so we'll get back to you from there!

@"#\ they have funny keyboards here

Amy doesnt know I'm posting this- ha! She's asleep in bed upstairs right now, as is Rachael. We made it to Galway today. This is the first night in many nights that we didnt accidentally fall asleep at 7pm... at least they made it to 9 tonight.

(View from the Aran Islands... rotate your head 90 degrees clockwise... we havent figured out how to rotate them yet...)

I have decided that Killarney was more Irish than touristy... we passed through a few more towns on the way here that looked very similar, so either they are all touristy or they are all Irish. I just thought i should clear that up for you. I know you were probably dwelling on it... and I hate to have you dwelling on anything like that! I'd rather you dwell on things like... global warming, or... world war 3, or... your shopping list for tomorrow.

Another thing you dont have to worry about anymore, and neither do we, is how we're getting to Edinburgh- we gots ourselves a plane ride over there. Woo! So no fretting, other than whether you want turkey sandwiches or PB&J.

I accidentally threw away a real plate today. We were at a Supermacs (which are common in Ireland, like burger king and mcdonalds but nicer) and were getting up to go when I dumped everything on my plate into the garbage. Rachael pointed out that I had indeed just thrown away a non-disposable plate, but I it wasnt mine so I wasnt going to go fishing through the garbage to get it out. Yeah that's right. Take that Supermacs.

Once we figure out how to upload pictures to this thing, we're going to post some pictures. Actually, let me reword that. Once we get onto the computer while we have both the camera and the connecting cords, then we're going to post some pictures. So then you get to see some of what we've seen! Arent you excited?!

I dont know if you realized this, but irish keyboards have the @ symbol where we usually have the " symbol. And they have small return buttons so I keep hitting # instead of enter. AND they drive on the wrong side of the road. AND they have white lines in the center of the road and yellow lines on the edges. AND they sometimes have white lines between lanes of the same direction, so I have no idea how they can tell if it's a one-way or two-way road. Good thing I'm not driving. We met some people from New York the other night who were adventurous enough to try driving. And they ended up in an accident, just as I would expect would happen to me.

Poor Arney...

What ever did he do wrong? Apparently they are into murder here... a lot of names start with kill...

Our last day in Dublin was nicely relaxing- we walked down to the park and ate bread and cheese while listening to a country duo sing, laying in the sun (they sounded more twangy than most of the country bands in the US...). We were going to meet up with Paul and take a train over to the coast, but somehow we got separated from him and after making a valliant effort to find him again, we decided that we were super hungry and needed to eat. So we did that instead. Paul ended up making it over there, and at least we got to see the pictures. The most disappointing part is that we didnt get to see Enya's house. My heart is broken. And crying.

We left Dublin on Saturday. We hung around the station for a few hours. I ate me some good ole chicken and fries. And although I was tempted to rub the grease on Amy, I withheld and was a good person. I found out when we got to the station that there was a festival going on while we were there, and that there was a parade that night... but it was too late for me to go. Anyway, I lived to get over it. The train here to Killarney was lovely- through the typical green fields and rolling hills that I imagine when I think of Ireland.

Killarney is very cutesy. Im not sure if it's really touristy or just irish... I cant tell. Yesterday there were musicians and dancing in the street, and aparently tonight there is some old boy-band group playing. We were told NOT to go to that one... Today was spent primarily riding our bikes through the Killarney National Park. Initially, I will admit this, I didnt want to ride my bike... I'm poor and cheap. But after walking for about a half hour and not getting anywhere, and seeing people breezing by on bikes, we decided to turn around and get us some bikes. My tush is a little sore, but I got to see some very nice lakes, old houses, and even a castle... oh my! I like ending the day a little sore (not necessarily my tush... but my legs are a little tired) because it meant we had a good day.






I feel a little bad for Rachael because she's not used to Amy and my constant fake arguments... really we arent fighting much, if at all (other than, 'well do you want to get a bike?!' 'I dont know...''well what dont you know?!'... that type of stuff). I hope we dont drive her crazy :)

Well I should wrap this up. We've got to figure out how we're getting to Galway tomorrow. And how we're getting to Edinburgh. Hmmm....

Laura (and Amy)

Day two in Dublin...

Yesterday we woke up bright and early to see as much of Dublin as we could, via a walking tour. We looked at the brochure for a paid trip, and just did it ourselves. We went with Paul, whose a roommate of ours. It was a really long walk, like...really long...like 9 hours or so. We found a really nice park with live music that we sat and listened to for awhile, and we actually plan on going back today and having a picnic. We saw lots of castles, cathedrals and old buildings (its cool to be in a place that actually has buildings older then a couple hundred years)--plus we just got to hear a lot of awesome accents. The weather was temperamental, it was nice when we started and when we were at the parks, but the rain would come and go and at one point was actually quite hard. When we went under cover at Dublin Castle, we actually ran into a friend of mine from college, who is in Dublin as well! And we actually ran into her again at a tour that we did later in the day. Very unexpected! We had lunch at a cute little pub, and they actually had a vegetarian burger. Ok well now I'm just telling you random details so I'll go, but all in all the town is gorgeous and the people are really nice--like, people asked us if we were lost whenever we looked at the map (and we always were), we didn't have to ask! Tomorrow we're going to Killarney, so we may not be able to get back right away. Til next time!

Some new friends in Dublin! Our first dormmates, so exciting :)

We're actually gone...

We've arrived in Dublin so our trip has officially begun! We had two flights to get here, one from Seattle to JFK, and the next straight to Dublin. The first was 5 hrs, the second 7 (surprisingly even). There wasn't much turbulance, yet I (Amy) did feel slightly sick at the end. On the second flight Laura and I originally sat by a cute old Irish man who was on his way home, and he was sweet too because he switched seats with Rachael so that she could sit with us as well. We arrived at 8am, and got to our hostel at 10, after wandering around town for quite a bit of time...we had no map, see (quite difficult with a bus, having no idea when the exit would be!). We planned to nap from 12-1, but that didn't really work out, seeing as we woke up at 7pm! That night we explored the town with a few roommates, Dublin is quite beautiful! And I love the accents. Today we're off to explore the city, so hopefully we can get back to you soon with our impressions!

We leave in three days...

I would have to say that we failed at maintaining this blog and writing everyday. Oops!

Well I will do a quick update on where we are now! We have booked our hostels for the first two weeks with Rachael, and I am about to make a list of things to do in the various cities. We have also purchased our Eurail and Britrail passes, meaning that transportation will be easy! After Rachael leaves on June 30, Laura and I are going to go up to the Lake District for a few days, then to some place that we have yet to choose, then down to France. HOPEFULLY, this will all be chronicaled as we're doing it, therefore I won't go too much into the future and ruin the surprise!

Right now I'm back in Edmonds, doing Laundry, planning a going away party and beginning to pack. Laura is coming down today, and once she's here we will also plan out a few last minute details. Honestly, by most peoples standards, we're way behind schedule on planning and getting ready, but by ours, we're doing just dandy!

Well lunch is served (oh how I love being at home again!) so I must go, but I WILL return more frequently then I have in the past, I swear!