Howth: [noun]- a sea side suburb of Dublin and where I plan on retiring.

On the Friday of my trip to Ireland, Andy and I went to Howth for a few hours.  I'll let the pictures do the talking in regards to Howth's beauty.

 

Adorable Seals!

Delicious food!

Boats!

Boats!

More boats!

Lighthouse!

Even more boats!

Dudes rockin' out!

Ireland's Eye! And me!

Me and Andy!

My future home!

The most beautiful view ever! x2

Dawny, your first and last name were just everywhere in this country.

As you can see by the abundance of exclamation points, Howth is awesome. My decision to retire in Howth was helped by the glorious weather that happened that day.  If your looking for me in 50 years, that's where I'll be.

We went back to Dublin after a couple of hours in Howth and went to a dinner at this restaurant where there was traditional and live Irish dancing and music.  I got to enjoy even more Irish music, which was delightful.  Also I had the strongest (and probably the last for me) Irish coffee ever.  I don't know why I was expecting Bailey's in the coffee but it was most definitely whisky.

Ladies (and gentlemen), if you are looking to fall in love with an Irish man who plays a traditional Irish drum in a traditional Irish band, go to The Arlington Hotel Restaurant near O'Connell Street in Dublin.  You will not be disappointed.

St. Patrick's Day: [noun]- Saint Patrick's Day (Lá Fhéile Pádraig) is an annual feast day that celebrates Saint Patrick (circa AD 387–493), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on 17 March.

This past week has been so glorious, weather wise.  It's been sunny and temperatures have been upwards of seventeen degrees so you'll have to (again) forgive my lack of posts.

So the main reason I went to Dublin last week was to celebrate the St. Patrick's day in its native country.  The day started off pretty early because Andy and I wanted to see this annual boat race which started at nine in the morning.  The race is between two of the schools in Dublin, University College Dublin and Trinity College.

After the race we took a tour of the Guinness Brewery.  I had my first Guinness ever there and it was surprisingly delicious! They have this really cool bar, the Gravity Bar, at the end of the brewery tour where windows serve as walls for about 3/4 of the room and you can see all of Dublin.

Andy and I in the Gravity Bar with a view of Dublin behind us.

Then there was the St. Patrick's day parade.  It had some interesting floats that, to my knowledge, didn't have a lot to do with St. Patrick's day.  It was hilarious, regardless of its relation to the holiday.

Two dogs in one St. Patrick's day parade. 

Then we went back to the Guinness Brewery to have a delicious Guinness inspired lunch and stayed there for a bit because there were a bunch of events going on in honour St. Patrick.  Then we preceded to go to Temple Bar (bar in this instance meaning a place to walk along arrive) which happens to have a lot of bars.  As we were walking down the street, there was a bar playing music and it was packed and everyone was singing soo we obviously went in.  It was hilarious, everyone was having an amazing time.  The most interesting thing about St. Patrick's day in Dublin is that children are involved.  They are in the packed pubs with their semi-drunk parents just bobbin' their heads to the music.  Worst parenting ever or the best parenting ever? I don't know.

First Bar

The night continued on with going to a variety of other bars which had the same awesome vibe as the first one: happy people, good live music and lots of alcohol.  One of my favorite parts of the night was seeing this drunk man directing traffic in Temple Bar.  He was so drunk but some how managed to do an excellent job of directing traffic.

If you can't tell, he's the one with the curly blond wig. 

What I learned from St. Patrick's day in Dublin is that I LOVE Irish music.  The Dubliners are basically my new favorite band so I'm going to leave you with this gem of a tune.

Dublin: [noun]- the largest city in Ireland and the capital city of the Republic of Ireland.

Last Tuesday, the fifteenth, I flew to Dublin with my friend Andy.  The sixteenth was a serious day of touristy-ness in the city.  We took one of those no roof double decker hop on hop off bus tours which actually served to be very informative and an excellent mode of transportation.  In the following order we went to:
1. O'Connell Street (aka my mom's maiden name street, it says it on the street signs but I didn't take a picture)

The O'Connell Monument

2.  The National Gallery Ireland

3. The National Museum of Ireland which had a bunch of sub buildings like the National History Museum, "known to the locals as the dead zoo" to quote the audio guide on the bus tour.  I didn't get any pictures in the real National Museum because there were about fifty old men guards standing around telling people not to take pictures.  To summarize: there was a lot of viking stuff.

This dude here was in the dead museum and he was massive.  The picture doesn't do him justice but apparently he lived in Ireland before the ice age andddd then he went extinct.

4. The National Library was so beautiful and old and the books were the same.  There was also an exhibition of William Yeats happening while we were there so we also looked at that.  It was pretty cool and had some awesome interactive stuff which kids (so, me, basically) were just loving. 

5.  Back on the bus!

6. Off the bus at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

My absolute favorite part of the Cathedral was the fact that they sold shot glasses in the gift shop IN THE CHURCH.  Isn't there a bible story where Jesus goes nutso because people are selling food in a church? Let alone shot glasses?  I'm pretty sure there is.

7.  Back on the bus where I took a very lovely nap. 

8.  The Post Office where a lot of the Irish rebellion was planned. 

9. Deeelicious dinner + Baulmer's cider. 

Note the dude in the background prepared for St. Patrick's day about five hours in advance.

Random Pictures of St. Patrick's day type things.

Apparently the Irish like to drink...

...a lot.

Next Post: St. Patrick's day.

Frape: [verb]- to change an element of someone's Facebook (esp. status) to something silly and/or embarassing.

It's such a clever amalgamation of the words "Facebook" and "rape" plus it sounds a lot less harsh then the two words seperately, "Facebook rape".  I've only ever heard all these smart English kids using this word, never any North Americans. This is one I definitely plan on bringing back with me to Canada.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Dublin for St. Patrick's day.  I really can't believe that this day has arrived.  Last year on St. Patrick's day, to get through the pain of not being able to go out due to an essay that I had to write, I told myself that I would be able to go to Dublin next year.  A year later, it's actually happening.  I'm going to celebrate St. Patrick's day in his native land PLUS go to Ireland which is exciting by itself.  I don't think it has quite hit me yet what I'm about to experience, probably because there is some school work that needs to be completed which is blocking my view of St. Patrick's day.   

I'm bringing my computer with me so if I get a sober spare moment, I will post some pictures for your viewing pleasure.  If that "spare" moment doesn't arrive, have a great week and a happy St. Patrick's day!

Leeds at Night

I had been meaning to take a picture of these two buildings at night time for a while because they always look so beautiful.  I didn't get around to it until Friday, February 25 but I'm glad I finally did!  Annnd I'm just getting around to posting them now, almost a month later.  Sometimes, I'm just lazy.

Town Hall

Leeds University Campus - The Parkinson Building

I'm Running out of British Words

I don't know if its because I've become accustomed to them or if there really aren't that many extremely different words that the English use.  I think it's more likely to be option A.  Any suggestions?

Epernay: [noun]- a champagne bar in Leeds

On Wednesday February 23rd the Wine Society had a champagne/sparkling wine night at Epernay.  We had 5 samples of champagne (Bollinger, Moet and Chandon, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot and Sainsbury's Blanc De Noirs) and 5 samples of sparkling wines (Roche Lacour, Prosecco Ca' Rosa, Deutz Cuvee Brut NV, Lindauer Brut NV and M&S Prosecco).  One of the many intelligent things that the Leeds University Union organizes is Give It A Go, or GIAG, events with a lot of the Union's societies which allows people to try out the society with out fully committing to the society and paying the joining fee.  This champagne night was one of those GIAG events so there were about 75 people at the event.  Needless to say, it was a fantastic night.

Epernay before it was filled with 70 champagne drunk students

They had champagne bottle candle holders all around the room, it looked beautiful!  I want to try to make one myself.

 

Pictures gratefully stolen from Andy.  Thank you! 

York: [noun]- a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England.

This past weekend I had a lovely trip to the town of York with Aude, Zoe and Oliver Malone, the extended family of my family friends.  York is a beautiful town with an amazing Cathedral, York Minster.  We went to the Cathedral, did some shopping and had lunch at a beautiful tea room.  The three Malone's mentioned above as well as Dom took me in for the weekend which I greatly appreciate.  We had a very British weekend including fish and chips on Saturday night and a Sunday roast on (you guessed it) Sunday.  Thank you to the Malones, as usual it was wonderful seeing you all!

York Minster

Oliver, Me and Aude outside York Minster

Zoe, Aude and Myself in a pretty park with some pretty ruins

Oliver, Me and Zoe at the tea room

I thought I would take this oportunity to brag a bit about my cooking skills.  I made that spaghetti alla carbonara.  I know what you're thinking "There is NO WAY she made that. That's for sure from a restaurant" but if you pay close attention to the photo you will see that I'm eating out of a frying pan and most restaurants tend to serve food on a plate.  I may have been too lazy to unnecessarily get a plate dirty but that doesn't mean my meal wasn't supa dupa delish.