The sheer volume of my Saturday is staggering. This post will have many links to pictures and websites because I don't want to make this any longer then it has to be (and it will be long, my apologies in advance).
To start out, I'm watching Grey's Anatomy and am almost caught up with the current season (Horrah!). Rachel and I have been YouTube-ing all the episodes and are frantically trying to get caught up so that when we get back, we can jump right into the current episode without having missed much. So anyway, that has resulted in a few lazy nights of 3+ Grey's episodes...
Friday Night: Rachel, Katie and I go to a "Master Class" taught by Gabriel Byrne. He's the Professor from Little Women, and was in movies like Usual Suspects, Vanity Fair, Enemy of the State, End of Days and Stigmata. I was expecting an actual class. Apparently that means that Gabriel is being filmed for a documentary (on himself) and he needs to show that he talks to students and "cares about kids". A.K.A. A two hour question and answer session where he answered about four questions and then was presented with an award from Gaiety. Bravo! In all seriousness, he was interesting, and I'm glad I went, but, really? It all felt a little off.
After killing a bit of time, Rach and I decided to stop by the pub that all the Gaiety kids go to after class on Fridays called Brogans. It's this cool little pub where the bartender knows all the kids and says we're all "full of shite" before pulling another Guinness for someone. We spent about two hours there talking with Mark (a Gaiety kid) and trying to figure out these crazy coin games he was teaching us. You just wait America, I'm bringing these babies home.
Sarah Mitchell arrived here that night (a girl Rach roomed with this past summer) and we all prepared to get up at o'dark thirty for Belfast on Saturday morning.
Saturday:
4:30 am: Wake up, pack a small bag.
5:05 am: Catch AirCoach to Dublin Airport. The driver tells us not to pay now but to pay on the Belfast bus at the airport, so we get this journey for free.
5:50 am: Discover that there isn't a Belfast bus until 7am and we need to be in Belfast by 8:30. Won't work.
6:45 am: Catch an Ulster Bus that is supposed to get us there in time for our tour bus to pick us up, but barely, and the fact that Ulster Bus is 20 min. late, we think we're going to miss tour for second weekend in a row.
8:00 am: PaddyWagon Bus Tour Front Office Ladies know me by name. They are working on delaying the tour until 9 so we can get on. Conversation is as follows:
"Hi! My name is Ka -"
"Katie! Hi, I'm working on it for you. How's the ride so far?"
"Fine, thank you. Umm, do we have a tour today or should we try for another day?"
"It will be waiting for you outside the bus station. Tell Rachel we said hi!"
"Thank you again, have a great day..."
"Thanks! You both too, enjoy the tour!"
I'm sending them Christmas cards. We're like family now.
We're not late for the tour bus, in fact, we are waiting for it to show up, which was exciting :-)
We discover that our tour guide is crazy (but cool). He sings to us. Over the megaphone. It was pretty funny. And his exact words were:
"I know pretty much everything. I'll tell you what I know and make up what I don't. We'll have fun!"
10:45 am: We reach Giant's Causeway and I'm blown away. Literally. It was sunny, but the wind was incredible. I have never felt like I was in danger in any part of my travels since I've been in Ireland, but this was the first time I actually thought I could get hurt. It was crazy! The Causeway was incredible and I would have spent all day there exploring if it hadn't looked like all the strong wind was blowing in the darkest rain clouds I'd ever seen...
12:40 pm: Leave for Derry.
2:30 pm: Arrive in Derry to the sound of marching drums and the sight of hundreds of balloons released into the air. They killed hundreds of whales because you KNOW those balloons will end up in the ocean (we're on the coast for god's sake) and those balloons will land in some whale's blow hole and end up suffocating them. Very un-environmentally friendly. We're promised an art walk of the Free Derry murals, but they now say that we only get about half and hour with the tour guide because the Apprentice Boys are marching and having their annual Closing of the Gates March and there's tension in the air. The guide didn't want us out in the open when the march started. However, the abbreviated tour was interesting, and later we got to explore ourselves. I could not get over that I was standing in the road where Bloody Sunday happened. Where the Civil Rights march went on. I was looking at the wall that says "You are now entering Free Derry." and talking to a man who knew personally two people who were killed that day. A man who know personally many members of the IRA and knew who committed which crimes and who started what and who blew what up. Someone threw a Coke can at us on our tour, so we moved, while the guide said "If I ever find out who did that I'm gunna fuckin' kick their ass..." under his breath. Sweet. Tensions are still high.
3:30 pm: Rachel, Charlotte, Kenna and I jump out of the bus to see the march happening in the Walled City (Derry is the only walled city left in the UK, and inside the wall is Protestant and outside is Catholic). It's kinda scary because they are on their way up the street to burn an effigy of a man from the 1680's named Lundy. Check him out here. So, the effigy was huge and scary and intense, but the police were super nice and really cool letting us get as close are we wanted (which was still a distance away).
3:45 pm: Walked down the street to get to the walls so we could walk around them. I notice the police are in riot gear. Kenna and Rachel say it's just a precaution. I notice an alarm on a building is going off. Kenna gets a little wigged out, Rachel says it's probably a "sound the alarm" kind of thing. We continue climbing onto the wall. Rach goes to take a picture looking down on Free Derry and a policeman says something mumbled behind his giant clear mask. We ask him to repeat it and he says "You might not want to be up here, those people down there have petrol bombs."
EXCUSE ME? We MIGHT want to get down? Yeah, we booked it down those stairs SO fast!
4:30 pm: Got back on the bus and headed back to Belfast in the pouring rain, talked to Kate about the Troubles for a while before pretty much falling asleep.
6:30 pm: Arrive in Belfast in time to see our bus pull away.
7:30 pm: Catch the next bus available back to Dublin and fall into the deepest sleep of all time.
11:00 pm: Home. Finally.
Today: Christmas (and grocery) Shopping!
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