Brisvegas Adventurers

Yep, so we splashed out and got a car by ourselves. After doing some figures on how much it was going to cost to get public transport everywhere, and the time we would have spent waiting for the afore mentioned transport we hired a car from Irish Car rentals (just to support the locals - and because they were the cheapest).

Let me backtrack a few days and get St Paddy's day covered off...

There was some drinking, some singing a little bit of dancing and a whole lot more drinking filled up with some great people and a great venue. I was a little hesitant with some of the local brews so I sampled a few of them through a half pint glass - DO NOT TRY THAT IN IRELAND!!! St Patricks day in Cork was almost stopped because of that little mistake... After a few friendly words and explaining to them that I was Australian and everything thing was ok, the music was turned back on and up a little bit louder.

I also managed to get two hats for myself and Erika - with a little bit of bartering using a stain glass lampshade that was adorning a light next to me at the time, much to the Irish mans glee and the barmaids distress... We finished up in the wee hours of the morning with me feeling slightly under the weather and with Erika feeling a little bit hungry.

St Patricks day + 1

So with the car organised the first thing we did was go out and get drunk! We met a few people and ended up inviting 4 other people with us so we ditched the two who seemed like the least fun and opted for two Canadian guys. After packing the Opel (Europes Holden) Astra with all our gear we set off towards the Ring of Kerry. Now the highways in Ireland are not really highways, they are very narrow and very winding roads with a speed limit of 100kph on them! As hard as a tried I just could not get to the speed limit - after the first few wheel slides I decided to stop trying, especially considering that 90% of the corners are blind and there was often quite a steep drop or sheep running across the road! But the scenery is amazing and the changing weather is also mid blowing, it was sunny for a few hours then it was hailing for 30 minutes, then raining, then bucketing, then hailing, then sunny, then hailing, then really windy and hailing!

St Patricks day + 2

With the Ring of Kerry done and dusted (and some mighty fine seafood chowder consumed) we went on to our next destination, Kilarney. This little town was great, the hostel was also great - with a very mad and dirty Irish man behind the counter this is what I thought Ireland would be like. The hot water tank exploded and the Irish guy wanted to spit on all the girls to clean them! There was a lot more he wanted to do as well and his open hate for all things related to tourists was such a laugh (if you know my brother Ben he was like him but smaller and 10 times as angry).

St Patricks day + 4

With the sights around Kilarney conquered we drove on to Galway. Armed with our trusty map with sights cleary marked on it we drove past most of them! Seriously this map was placing things up to 15kms off target and with Irelands reputation for great signage (there is none!!) we just took any random road to see where it would take us. After seeing a waterfall for the second time we decided that it was in fact the one we were looking for and parked the car, only to find the only sign deep within the carpark itself stating that we were in fact at the waterfall. We have not yet planned our trip for tomorrow but that is something we will worry about when the time comes!