Champagne and Caviar

PUB COUNT: 24

SHOUT OUTS: this one goes to Naarah for her witty and insightful postings to our blog. Everybody else? We want to hear from you!

We arrived in the adorable and "medieval" town of Kilkenny today. It was about a 3.5 hour drive on windy and narrow roads from Galway, but a beautiful journey that went off without a hitch. We passed through some amazing countryside, had multiple castle and ruin sitings and kept the vehicle "between the hedges" as the Irish would say. Our last day in Galway was hillarious. We made a few too many pub breaks in the late afternoon and ended up turning in early, but overall a great day of shopping, pubbing and experiencing Irish life. One of the pubs we went into was established in 1649. It's really awe inspiring to me to think that I'm having a pint in a place so old that some of my favorite late poets like Wilde and Joyce may have had a pint in the very same bar.

Today we stopped off for a quick tour of the "Rock of Cashel" - an enormous and ancient castle with an incredible view of the countryside. This is run entirely by the Irish Catholic church and is packed with history.

And finally - perhaps the best part of the trip so far is our hotel room. :) Ha! After popping in and out of about 5 diff. B&B's in Kilkenny, Drake convinced me that it was really only appropriate that we stay in the fanciest, top class hotel in Kilkenny. This place has a jet bathtub (I finally was able to wash my hair after 6 days), a stairway going down to the bedroom quarters, a little breakfast nook area, bedroom slippers, and we got not only a complimentary Irish breakfasts from it, but we talked the proprietor into giving us a free dinner at this fancy-ass restr., because I made a well-timed comment about "so much for budget travelling" and I think she felt sorry for me. Drake's off right now to get a bottle of wine and the plan is to just chill out and relax and play some cards this afternoon/evening and break for a while.

We saw quite a few more dogs in Ireland (they all looked alike and they all flocked to drake like flies on poop), which only made us miss our petite ya-ya's even more. Lindsay or Katie - we cannot check email (long story - I locked myself out of my own email account and I'm imaging that Monica had to reset the password - whoops), so can one of you PLEASE just post a quick note to the blog and let us know that they are doing wonderful?? Pretty please. Or email drake's "vivacelt" account.

Last thing of note is that the weather has been fabulous!!! Seriously - a couple of snow drizzles here and there and wicked cold, but mostly blue skies and clear views of all the great things we cannot take pictures of. :) ha! oh - and we are not purchasing a new camera. They do not sell inexpensive nor disposable digital cameras in Ireland and it's already going to cost us an arm and a leg to fix our broken camera so we're just going to keep the memories in our heads and in this blog. Actually - I'm keeping a fairly detailed journal on our travels as well, including the names and dates of est. of every pub we go into - which is really all that matters, right?

That's all for now. Tomorrow we climb the Kilkenny castle, check out some cathedrals and take more bubble baths in our jacuzzi tub. :) Drake has informed me that she'll be living here in this hotel from now on. FED Ex the puppies, will ya?

They Really DO Sing!!!

Pub Count: 17

In Ireland, they really DO sing in pubs!!! Granted, it was tunes like "American Pie" and sadly not the traditional songs like "Cockles and Muscles" or "Whiskey You're the Devil", but they do shout and chant and sing and it's all just marvelous!!! I must have been a Irish wench in a past life.

So we wrapped up London and are now firmly planted in Galway, Ireland!! Our conclusions on London were as follows: fast walkers, early drinkers, sharp dressers, and few dogs. Oh - and London does pubs like Seattle does Starbucks - on every street corner and a few in between. The last day there came with just a couple of mishaps like the fact that our CAMERA BROKE!!! seriously - we are sans camera and completely in a quandry about it. Not to mention how this completely disrupts the Red Shoe Galleries!!! We will scope out a camera shop in town today and try to buy some cheap digital thing but we're totally bummed about this and we may have lost all the pics we took from the Westminister Abbey and so on in London. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but unfortunately for us the Pound and Euro is worth about a thousand American dollars!!!!

We plan on leaving Galway tomorrow morning and stopping off at some small Irish town on the way to Kilkenny for a night just to experience more of traditional small town Ireland. Galway is an exciting town with lots to offer but a thriving, new age college town over populated with roudy, drunk 18 year olds. The drinking age in the bars/pubs here is 18. If we have time today, we may hop a ferry over to the Aran Islands.

Lastly - I can't conclude without a short note on my driving skills in Ireland. We are amazing!!! Extremely talented, adaptable and technically superior. :) I (erin) drove and Drakey was the Master navigator who figured out the system on how to read the round-abouts in no time flat. The only dumb American blunder I made was the first time I attempted to turn on my signal and instead of signalling right, I blasted the windshield wipers on to full speed. Not only is the drivers seat on the opposite side but the turn signal is as well. Go figure.

The Amazing Race - here we come!

Men in Pinstriped Suits

PUB COUNT:5

So, we're here. We now realize in full effect that we are truly virgin travelers. What tipped us off? - you may ask. Perhaps we recognized it first when we left Seattle and as we walked down the strip onto the plane we noticed that there was a cart full of baggies with seat numbers on them and we thought that they were "goodie bags" meant for each traveler just to find out, after asking someone who laughed at us, that they were merely purchases from the duty free store. We really did, at least for a moment, think that we were receiving gift bags simply for providing the airline with our company for the next 9 hours, but we had been drinking so that may have been it.

Or perhaps it was when we landed at Heathrow airport (after not sleeping at all on the flight because coach seats on international flights, no matter how long they are, are the same as coach seats on domestic flights) that the toilets are not clap-operated, as Erin thought they were (a mere wave of the hand seemed to do the trick but evidently jumping about in delight and clapping also worked). When Erin came out of the toilet beaming and clapping and explained to me that the toilets were clappers, I truly did believe it but am glad that I examined the signage above the toilet that had the waving hand a little closer than she had.

It may also have been the sheer shock of encountering sinks that really only fit your hands (read: mini-sinks) or the fact that you have to actually purchase 50 pence matches when you buy cigarettes, or that you have to pay (we opted just to hop over the turnstile rather than to bow to the MAN) to take do your unmentionables!! I suppose there is a logic to having a sink that is that has what it takes to do the job and nothing more, but with separate hot and cold water taps, how is a girl suppose to wash her face at the correct warm, closer to hot, but not too hot, temperature? And seriously, I am going to pay to squat over a toilet, someone had better be standing there ready to hand me some tissue and give me a quick spritz of something special to keep me fresh-smelling, otherwise it's just not going to happen.

One thing that we has been completely foreign but we fully intend to try to incorporate into the Americas is the practice of drinking at pubs during lunch. The pubs are filled wall to wall with business people in suits during the lunchtime hours (all wearing pin-stripes for some odd, presumably English reason), with pints in their hands. They not only drain those pints faster than most I know (except for maybe L.J.), but they also don't eat. Hey, I'd take eating at my desk and working if it meant a pint of good Strongbow cider over my lunch hour. Especially if it meant that I could avoid the liver and kidney pies.

We have enjoyed every moment of our nearly 24 hours here in London, albeit bleary-eyed from a lack of sleep and waking up at 3am this morning and being out of the hotel by 6 since we were unable to get back to sleep - 18 hours of sleepless travel time does do its best to do you in. We have been to Westminster Abbey, which was truly a delight for both of us having English royalty buried alongside the likes of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dylan Thomas, and Lord Tennyson. Buckingham Palace was a bore, but we quite enjoyed the Bloody Tower at the Tower of London. The Eye of London we have been certainly eyeing but have yet not experienced due to a certain trepidation. We shall soon be leaving for Herrods and 7 floors of extreme shopping, something one ought experience in one's lifetime. The multitude of coins in the currency of this nation has been quickly mastered and we're as quick on the trigger to pull out 20 pence versus a pound as the next clueless yank, and we are becoming well versed at pulling out the camera when needed and putting it away in mere moments so as to minimize the appearance of being blatant tourists.

Tomorrow we hit the museums and the London dungeon tour, and of course, more pubs.

- Drakey

don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya

24 hours to go and watching the second hand...

We opened up an exquisite bottle of wine tonight (shout out to Fielding Hills Columbia Valley 03' Cab Franc) and toasted to an 11 year old dream.

Here's the double tall non-fat of it: we're flying into Copenhagen direct from Seattle, and then a short flight from Copenhagen to London. A friend and recent Euro-consult, Monica, let us know that the Copenhagen airport is a shopping haven so we plan on taking advantage of some 3am (Seattle time) shopping during our lay-over. We spend a couple days in London, and then we're off to Dublin where the plan is to rent a car and drive directly to Galway. I'm sure this driving bit will be a separate blog entry all on its own but let's just suffice it to say now that I (Erin Rae) will be the designated back-ass-wards driver during this trip and well... we should ALL be scared. We're going to take about 5-6 days and drive through the south of Ireland and then back up to Dublin where we will hang out for a couple of days (can't miss that Literary Pub Crawl!) before heading on to Edinburgh, Scotland. I've heard Edinburgh described as "the cutest little town on earth," so I, personally, may be most looking forward to this leg of the journey. Then from Scotland, we take a train through the countryside back to York, where hopefully we'll still have time left to stop for a night and explore this "medieval" England before we're due back in London for one last night before our journey ends. Our last evening in London will be on Drake's birthday (3rd time at 30 is a always a charm) so we plan on doing something fabulous and going out with a bang and a hangover for the long ride home.

I think we've succeeded in packing light. Kimmie came over tonight to say good bye to us (what a sweet gesture - here's your shout out Kimmie, but if you're only skimming through the blog again, I hope you miss this!) and commented on how this may be the lightest she's ever seen us pack and how she's used to us camping where we bring everything AND the kitchen sink. Who would have thunk that we'd be bringing less to Europe for 2+ weeks than a 2 day camping weekend. Ha!

The top three questions on our minds:
3) Will they have good coffee in Europe;
2) Will our electronic devices crap out on us; and,
1) Will we come back? Only time will tell.

Anyway... so that's all we've got for tonight. The next update will be from across the big pond.

Ta Ta!

First Things First

<INSERT BREASTS HERE>

6 days to blast off! Less than 1 week! Hot damn and FINALLY. I’ve realized recently that this is a huge year of “firsts” for Drake and I. Our lives have been relatively predictable, safe and honed exactly to our comfort and liking over the past 5 years, so this is a fairly colossal event for us in that we’re breaking out of the mold and packing

in a whole lot of new experiences (“firsts") in a real short period of time.

My aim is to make sure that I really pay close attention to the little details and even seemingly insignificant moments that will make up these “firsts” for us in Europe. I want to be able to take away from this trip not just the experience of a (hopefully) cool vacation but also a thoughtful account of the emotions and observations we make of our experiences there. I want to be able to tell my little nephews 40 or 50 years from now in vivid detail how hard we laughed, or how shocked or moved we were, or how stupid we felt when we first saw or heard or tasted, or experienced X…

And speaking of firsts – I thought I’d get this off my chest. Ha! Pun – well… only sort of intended. I had my ‘first’ mammogram today. Here are my exact emotions, words and thoughts on this. WHAT THE F_CK? I’d like to know who exactly invented that contraption and then I’d like to get a couple of 1-ton bricks and smash his (because it could ONLY be a man) member between them continuously while calmly saying “I know it hurts love, just stay completely still, try to relax and do not move a muscle.” Boobs (keep in mind that they ARE attached to a live human being w/ pain sensors) placed in a metal box (they had to upgrade to the jumbo size box for me “just to make sure the whole breast gets in there”) and then flattened into a pancake? Dumbest g-ddam idea anybody ever had. And those rad techs are nothing but sadists with freakishly calm voices and extra-moisturized Jergens commercial hands (best suitable for working with malleable objects).

Okay – ‘nuf said about that.

One other “first” I thought I’d mention while I’m on the subject is that in addition to Europe, I’m also adventuring out to Alaska this year in late June. Alaska! I hear it’s dark there and there are little dudes called “Eskimos” that have bad fashion, and bugs called “no-see-ums” cuz apparently you don’t ‘see um’ but they bite the crap out of you anyway. That’s just rude. I mean – at least have the guts to show your face. Cowards!.
So my dear ol’ Dad and I are headed to a small island off the coast of Sitka, Alaska with no electrixity, no in-door plummin’, and get this? NO WiFi!! Seriously. I’m terrified. My dearest friend, Carolyn, and her husband invited us and will be playing the role of poor (I use the word “poor” because they have no idea about the bitch in me that may rear its ugly head when put into an insanely primitive environment) hosts of this trip. God bless them both. Drake is opting out of this one, as out-houses and gutting fish for a week is so far out of the bounds of her comfort zone that it makes the planet Jupiter look like the guy across the hall. But I’m in. Mainly because I care less about making other people suffer than drake does - and I love a good challenge.

So tune in later next week (we plan on updating our blog about once every few days in Europe) and back in June for more stimulating reading material.