give you pleasure in so many ways, dear

I had a fantastic, albeit exhausting, weekend. The pictures are posted below, and they speak volumes, as pictures typically do. The weekend definitely had more alcohol than my previous excursions, possibly because we could only find seats together on the outbound train by hanging out in the dining car, which meant that we needed to keep ordering things, and we solved this problem through wine rather than sandwiches. Kerry and I kept it going through a couple of pubs and several pints of Guinness, which led to a rather nasty wine/beer hangover on Saturday morning. We soldiered through it, though (almost-apt metaphor, since her father's a retired Marine), and did a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry on Saturday. The tourist season is clearly picking up, as evidenced by the fact that the tour bus was almost full. However, we're clearly in the early-bird phase of the season, as evidenced by the fact that almost everyone on the bus was over seventy, which meant that it typically took about ten minutes to get all of the geriatrics off of the bus at the various photo stops. The thing about having one's living expenses in a foreign country mostly paid for is that one quickly becomes priced out of the range of most of one's age-appropriate travelling group; Kerry and were willing to splurge for lunches in restaurants (!) rather than sandwiches from the local convenience store, which meant that we had to continue hanging out with the geriatrics rather than the other four people our age who had somehow ended up on the tour. We did meet two truly lovely older ladies, though; amusingly enough, they ended up on the same tour that we did Sunday as well, which was nice.

The Ring of Kerry was gorgeous, and this was the first time I actually wished that I had rented a car; the cost is prohibitive since I'm under 25 and require an automatic, but it would have been very easy to spend a couple of days winding through the small villages and awe-inspiring ocean views without the heavily-prescribed, constrained tour-bus experience. I can't really describe it in words, but there are a couple of pictures below. On my own, I would have spent more time harmonizing with the ocean and less time touring replica bog villages and watching old men herd sheep (to the appreciative ooh's from the men, and the appreciative glances from the women--he's probably a hottie for the over-eighty set). But, the tour was good too.

That night, Kerry and I befriended a couple of guys our own age, which was a strange experience for me since I am usually completely withdrawn and standoffish in bar settings; also, I would have preferred to just watch the Eurovision song contest, but Kerry struck up conversation with one of them while I was in the bathroom. It has become clear to me that I cannot flirt in anything approaching a typical manner; I found one of the guys incredibly annoying, partially because he was just *wrong* too frequently. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I completely lost interest in anything he had to say after he told me that I was wrong about St. Patrick's being a Protestant cathedral; I felt that it was impolite to argue (or perhaps I fell into the traditional gender pattern of letting the guy believe that he's right), but considering that I went to Easter services in St. Patrick's specifically because it was Church of Ireland rather than Catholic, I am completely positive that I'm right.

I know I have major issues with being right; I can handle not being right myself, although I'm sometimes begrudging when it happens, and I take pains to make sure it's an infrequent occurrence. I also don't mind when other people aren't right, particularly when it isn't a big deal. But I hate when people aren't right while they're trying to show off, especially if it happens eight or ten times over the course of an hour or two. So, needless to say, I was not enthused about the fact that we spent five hours with these guys. We did serve to rescue them from the old people they had befriended on their tour of the Ring of Kerry (apparently they were on a geriatric tour as well), and it was nice to have someone to chat with--actually, that's a lie. There is no circumstance in which I could imagine being friends with the guy who was always wrong, and the other guy seemed nice but he didn't talk enough to outweigh his obnoxious friend. So, I would have rather watched the Eurovision song contest by myself than hang out with them until 2am.

And that, my friends, is why I'm beginning to fear that I'm not an ideal world traveler. I'm too shy to start talking to strangers initially, and then when I get to know them, I get sick of talking to 85% of them before we reach the point where we might actually be friends. So, I'll never be the type to make loads of friends in every city; I'm more the type to writing scathing, sarcastic commentaries on the people that I happen to allow to engage me in bouts of conversation when I'm feeling particularly generous/bored. That could make for interesting travel literature, but it definitely won't be of the feel-good variety.

Anyway, Sunday we went on a bus tour of Dingle, which was fantastically, amazingly beautiful, even though it rained the entire day and we got soaked. The wind was roaring off the ocean, so photo-stops by the coast were powerful experiences--the wind threatened to blow me over as the waves pounded on the rocks below, and I could understand why Ireland feels like such a mystical and magical place. Imagine growing up surrounded by ocean--it must create a different psyche than the type created by plains, or forests, or deserts, or mountains. I will perhaps talk about this more again someday, but for now I need to go to bed. Suffice it to say that the weekend was great, and I'm looking forward to more travelling in the near future.