mas mejillones!

ok super quick cuz i gotta head out and do some sigh seeing before siesta! went to portugal, porto was nice pretty picturesque. lisbon big city big buildings lots of tiles. lagos oh my god lagos i want to go back lagos! lots of young kids, lots of sun, pretty beaches, too much alcohol, not enough sleep. and i have arrived in seville, spain! last night i was casually talking to a girl from colorado at my hostel and turns out that she is from tajikistan and we bonded right away about our immigrant ways and about our friends and parents and russian music. so Ilina , a few others from the hostel, and i were buddies for the night and i love this girl! we walked around empty Seville, which is beeeeautiful by the way! got some sangria, chilled out, found a local bar which had daily specials like mojitos and stuff and just hung out on the street in the warm spnish night sipping our cocktails. today im going to see some pretty things like castles and churches and tonight headed for the nightlife, as thursdays it gets more dense at night, although some places only open at 3am. im especially looking forward to the food, tapas and mmm scarlett´s favorite, mejillones!! im still decided where to go from here and i just might make my way to madrid to say hi to Rafa, who knows.

adios!

goodbye goodbye and hello

wow its been a while since i last updated but here is the craic:
the past few weeks have been completely and untterly hard to remember all though they just happened... everything changed way too fast and all the goodbyes flew past me. i definately did not get a chance to part with Dublin the way i wanted to, or maybe i just did not have enough time to... either way its all been done. the past few weeks have been emotional and mind numbing. i really needed to take a step back and look at what has been going on for the past 4 months, the friends that ive made, the jobs that ive had, the places which i visited and i still can´t believe i did it. this has been by far the most amazing experience of my life and i can only take from it and move on with my life with the knowledge and friends which i have made. everyone, from day one has made this experience completely amazing for me, even when things were rough, i somehow got through them... like that time i really had to pee on our way back from Cashel and my buddy Luke ran off the bus with me, thanks Luke! and somehow by some force of serendipity, the last few weeks came crashing down on me, so much has happened in such a short period of time, how odd. and i think ive had good closure with everyone for the most part. i had an all night goodbye party about 2 weeks ago and almost everyone that could make it made it, it was dubbed the official V's going away hen party, although no one really dressed up except for Sarah and Myou, you guys rock my socks! The party lasted until 8am although i passed out at like 4, knowing that i needed to catch a bus the next day since Drew and i were planning to go on a week backpacking trip through Ireland.... well plans changed and i went a few days later, met up with Drew on Inishmore, one of the beautiful Aran Islands off the coast of Galway smack in the Atlantic. This island was incredible, beautiful and green and a bunch of awesome Aussies working at the laid back beach front hostel. I rented a bike for half the day and just roamed around, rode to this cool fortress on the cliffs of the island and got to see some cool cows and sheep and even donkeys. The island is super small, one hotel, one supermacs, one post office, one of everything! The local guys showed us a great time and i definately recommend this place to visit! Next we headed to Achill where our plans didn´t really carry through as the weather changed quickly and camping wasn´t looking like an option. We found a hostel which I found to be a bit creepy, but they had cool mix tapes and trivial pursuit to keep us occupied. There were about 10 people on this island that we actually encountered so it was a pretty solitary visit for Drew and I, except for the 2 French surfer guys which we played poker with, they were pretty fun to hang out with. So after a half a week of hanging around trying to see some last few places to cover before heading back, Drew and I came back to Dublin. That last week it was all goodbyes, first Luke, then Zach and Drew and finaly myself, poor Steph watched all of us leave. I kind of guarded myself from accepting the fact that things are over and I am now just understanding how over it is. I really do love all my friends there and it was amazing how we parted. We spent one last weekend all together, hanging out at the Hairy Lemon then on to the Merrion Square circus, just the 5 of us.. shooting the shit and me not knowing who is singing Bloody Sunday, oh so typical! I really do love those guys, my best friends, what would I have done without you punks? I can pull a Drew and make a shout out to everyone but I am too lazy and not enough time, maybe once I get home I will make a list of all the wacky things that everyone did and how i love them for it. Then my flatmates, my lovely lovely flatmates... how i will miss that moldy shower and knacker building and all the french, italian, spanish, and japanese! i will miss coming home at 2am and seeing nico still up just starting to make his dinner! oh the glory. i do hope i see these guys again soon, and i am so extremely happy that they were my flatmates... through thick and thin, through dirty dishes, through broken computers, through war and peace, through waking me up in the middle of the night to look at the damn mirror! through bacon and ciggarettes and coffee, through trying on my clothes, through drink till we're drunk, through it all.

ahh i don´t even know what else to say because there is so much! I got to visit my job before I went and say goodbye to Sandi and Gary and Gary's mom for sure, oh Sandi!!! My really 1 and only original Dubliner, she's pure I swear! I learend so much from that girl, more than just how to send a courier! You're coming to CA!
my last night in dublin steph came to say goodbye and it was so so extremely hard and she was altready so worn out from the goodbyes, i do love that girl and i am going to see her so soon in vancouver, and hopefully bring her back to CA with me. And Erin came to say goodbye and so did Sarah and Myou and everything just sort of dwindled away, and its hard for me to collect my thoughts now because i am backpacking now.

destination 1: Portugal
I spent the first 3 nights in Porto, which was incredible.. lots of port lots of cheap food lots and lots of stairs and bakeries and scrumptuouse custard tarts, yum!
I spent last night in a creepy guesthouse in Lisbon with pictures of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus all over the walls, and now I am in a hostel for my last night here, heading over to Lagos tomorrow. I will try to keep this blog updated more as I travel. Either way, I find backpacking a lot more work than I thought it would be but I'm havign a great time and I'm meeting lots of cool cats.

So new beginnings and old endings... wait does that sound right?? I will give a proper ode to Dublin once I get home in August and to all the wonderful, amazing, I can't stop thinking about you people who were in this part of my life. I love you guys.

Kisses,
V

4 Americans + 1 French + Ford Focus = Diabolical

Kerry is my new favorite place in Ireland, and probably will be until... forever. I cannot even begin to describe how incredibly beautiful this part of the country is, but I will explain how we got there, what we did there, and how it all went down.

The us: Luke, Drew, Rachel (Drew's sister), Hubert, and myself.

The Ford: was a Focus, but we were far from focused driving on the left side of the road.

Hubert was our fearless leader at the beginning of the trip, and since he has never driven an automatic before we started off on a bumpy ride, literally.... hard to confuse the break with the nonexistent clutch. Leaving a few hours past what we aimed for, we headed off to Kerry (west), the most beautiful of beautiful in Ireland. Six hours later we arrived in Killarney, the main and biggest town in County Kerry and arrived at our hostel Neptunes, an ok hostel with lots of cool cats and some not so cool ones as well, but it suited us just fine. That night Luke and Drew made dinner for us all and we went out to some local pubs, talked to some locals, who after hearing that I am from CA assumed that i am "living off my daddy's penny." Either way, the night went down diabolically, ended up in a club/pub by our hostel with a live cover band which played all our favorites. I found Killarney to be very friendly and alive, full of tourists and locals alike. It is a very typical Irish town, with the little streets and pubs on the corners. The next day we headed off to see some pretty things. We started at Ross Castle, just a 10 minute drive from our hostel. Ross Castle is a slab of limestone situated at the shore of a lake. The view from Ross Castle is serene and relaxing. The castle was cool, we got a look inside to how the peeps lived back in the day. It is similar to a lot of the other castles that I have visited. the most stunning and in my opinion the most of the most of Kerry was the Ring of Kerry. Now, I wasn't actually sure what the "ring" was... i thought we actually go to see it, like a museum but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Ring is actually just a road which circles the Iveragh Peninsula. This road is kind of a crazy windy one. its a bit dangerous especially with the unfamiliar left hand driving and the zooming tour buses which don't have any mercy on us to even slow down. There are signs as you drive around the ring which really gave all of us the creeps, like "52 people have died driving on the ring of Kerry in the past 4 years" or pictures of cars skidding off the mountain. The view around the ring was spectacular. Mountains, lakes, beaches, green green green, lots of cows and sheep and goats. The weather was unbelievable, we lucked out so much and even got tanned! We finished off the night with home made tacos and a night at Mustang Sally's, an American style club full knackers. They were playing music i thought i would never hear again in any public place (coolio gangster's paradise is an example) we got tired of the knackers and went back to the hostel with some Aussies that were staying there as well who just happened to be at the same club. We all eventually passed out after being shushed by the hostel staff to shut up or get out. Next day we had another excursion by Ross Castle. We rented a boat from this old man in a hat, he keeps the boats in his back yard, or so it looked like it when we walked to the docks and saw lines of clothing drying. We oared out to Inisfallen Island, an uninhabited place for us to play and roam the Mesopotamian looking bricks and remains of old churches and homes. We sailed back, ate some hot dogs, played some lame miniature golf and headed back to Dublin. I loved this trip to the 90, it was completely diabolical in every sense of the word. Sadly, Rachel left the next morning, not very diabolical. gonna miss that red head.

fanny pack, or fanny pack?

they came and left. but it was a good craic. i was ms tour guide for my mom and sister in fast motion. 4 days to drink in ireland is hardly enough but we did our best. it was nice to finally get some visitors, especially ones that look like me. so i showed them around, where i live, work, drink, play and dublin became very small for me very quickly.

we started off with a viking splash tour of the city. its basically a tour for little kids, but who wants to sit on a boring sightseeing bus for adults? this tour was the best ive ever taken! we were on this boat which was also a bus that remained from WW2. they gave us viking hats and taught us how to roar. besides the 3 of us girls we were on the tour with about 15 primary school boys, i was almost in tears from laughter. the goal fo the tour was to scare the native, or Celts as we referred to them on the bus (since we were the vikings) we would creep up on people walking down the street, having a coffee, or just looking up at the sky and roar at them, sending them in bits! there were some jokes and we got to see all the highlights of the city, like bono's recording studio and stuff.

we spent the rest of the afternoon at the Guinness Storehouse, i never really had any expectations of it but it was ok, alot of information about how to make stout and the Guinness family and you receive a complimentary pint at the very end in the Gravity Bar from where you can see a 360 degree view of Dublin. The view was spectacular! The whole time my people were here I was bumping into people I know, they must of thought I was really popular but in reality, the city is just really tiny!

(view from the Gravity Bar in Dublin ---->)

We then headed off to Kilkenny, a midievil city just a few hours south of Dublin with a very typical castle..... maybe a night there was a bit much but we got away from the city for a bit. Kilkenny was nice, friendly, lots and lots of Polish people. Maybe I started noticing this alot more once my people came, just because we spoke Russian to each other, but it was unbelievable how many Polish were in this little Irish town. We ate a an excuisite restaurant in Kilkenny where even the waiters were Russian... however they did not warm up to us one bit, so typical. Back to Dublin and we cover the basics, meet my friends, eat at Rick's, drink more beer, buy some souvenirs and they are off to CA. (Kilkenny, check out the castle in the back)

So short and the family is gone. I think they only got over their jet lag by the time they were leaving already. Hope you Californians didn't freeze too much over here! (Katya and I at St. Stephens's Green)