Guys, I'm super bummed, because yet again, I lost a giant post that I had written, and now I'm still behind on writing after thinking that I got it all caught up on the bus today... Grrr.
7/26/15
I have detoxified from my college education enough to finally sit down to write about The Missing Day. For anyone who has been anxiously checking this site to find out about this Slea Head day, your year of waiting has finally come to an end! Huzzah!
We began with breakfast in the hotel, and as I recall, the ladies got to sleep in and have breakfast second. I had the pancakes and chocolate sauce, but it's very likely this was the morning I had eggs and bacon just to have the slab of ham.
The Slea Head drive is comparable to the Ring of Kerry driving tour, if you're acquainted with it, but Gabriel wanted to remind us that while the Ring of Kerry tour is very highly publicized, the Slea Head drive has nearly the same sights, but is much, much less commonly known. We stopped often, and it was one of the only days when it actually drizzled. It was grey skies, and cool enough at the coast for a cardigan.
Nearly all of the incredible beach side photos I have are from this drive around the Dingle area. We passed over a little bridge that was tucked into a very tight hairpin bend in the road, hugging the edge of a cliff. I remember it particularly because it seemed entirely unlikely that our massive bus had the turning radius for this kind of hairpin turn. Another bus, coming the opposite direction, had the good sense to pull over and hold still while we were making our way around.
The little bridge was funny because the water happened to run over the top of the cobblestones, rather than underneath, with the hillside. Gabriel said that this was a unique Irish bridge, because only in Ireland can there be an upside down bridge. He also said that on a previous trip, only one girl didn't understand what the joke was, and he wasn't going to comment on the girl's hair color at all *wink*.
My Facebook profile picture has been one from the Slea Head drive, and I can't get over how beautiful it was.
We stopped at one beach that was a little below the cliff, and we hiked down to it. It was a small inlet beach with soft yellow sand, but it was only a small strip of sand surrounded by high grey cliffs. On one side, the rocks were at a low incline, which we could climb on. I was the only girl to climb up, and I sat around on the top and tried not to get too close to the breaking waves. Leta is fond of group pictures, and we were all corralled off of the rock face to assemble for a picture. I made it off the rocks with only some sand in my sneakers, but most of the boys put at least one foot in the ocean. A smaller huddle of kids all got their ankles swiped by an incoming wave, and that was about the time we all trooped back up the hill to the bus.
At the top of the cliff was an ice cream and waffle cone van, and Toto got some ice cream, as Toto is wont to do. Back into the bus, and further along the drive, we found a beautiful peninsula to climb, and at the base of it was a monolith of a stone. Gabriel told us that it is rumored to be a fertility stone, and that women for generations have climbed out to the peninsula to rub their rear ends on the stone. Despite protestations at first, we eventually all assembled to put our butts against the rock. We also attempted to create a W out of our group in a field of purple flowers that we found, but it was nearly impossible to get everyone into straight lines, not least of which because the "purple flowers" were some kind of horrid and sharp scrub brush, and everyone was getting tiny ankle scratches. Dale at one point had to tote Emy on his back over the brush to her spot because she was wearing sandals.
We ended our drive at a small museum in time for a video about the Connemara. The Connemara is the area to the north, through which we would be entering to get to Galway, and is the area that has always been the most impoverished in Ireland. The potato blight was worst here, where the land was already rocky, difficult to till, and poor in nutrients. Most if not all of the Irish who were kept in serfdom by the English were from the Connemara, and were unlikely to move out of Ireland because they could never collect the funds necessary to go to America. It was a very backward community, by English standards, where Irish Gaelic was still spoken, old fashioned medical remedies still practiced, and most likely, the place where the leprechauns are still roaming around.
The video was at least half in Irish, and what was in English was in the thickest brogue imaginable, so that there were subtitles for the whole movie. The video was about the small island communities along the coast, and about the eventual evacuation of these communities. The standards of living were increasing around the country, and it was no longer feasible for the communities to sustain themselves, as many of their young people were leaving the island and never coming back. The islands were evacuated in the, I'm gonna say 80's, based on the quality of the video and the clothing of the interviewer. It's hard to say with the Irish though, because from my experience with them, they can't tell what year it is for clothing anyway. (No judgement, Irish, the Canadians don't know either...)
We had lunch at this museum as well, and I feel like I ate the fish and chips we were recommended, but then again, I hate fish and chips, so perhaps I had something made of beef. Either seems equally likely. I remember having lunch with some of the girls who were not Lauren, and we had a decent conversation about dating and boys and stuff that girls talk about.
On the way out, I didn't have enough money, but I quickly looked at the books (surprise!). I seriously considered one called "Little Feckers" about people who had royally fecked up Ireland. I should probably look to see if that is available online... Anyway, I thought Lauren was still with me, and I went to show her the book, and instead there was a stranger woman there, but she was thoroughly amused, by both the book and my case of mistaken identity.
The sun came out later in the afternoon, and as we finished the loop, we stopped at a ruined church. Gabriel took us out to the church to walk around, and explained the ancient Irish character system that wrote using horizontal and diagonal lines intersecting the long vertical line along which the words were written. The system was used by the Gaels in Ireland, so most of the sounds are the same, except the TH sound, which is why the dialect of Irish spoken along the west coast is sans TH and so much thicker than in the Pale.
After our language lesson, we congregated in the church to pass through the eye of the needle. According to legend, the eye of the needle is a gap in the church wall, and it is an indicator of whether one will pass through this life and into heaven. Gabriel said that he has been shocked by who can -- and who can't -- pass through the eye. He squeezed through, and then told us he didn't want to watch us all pass through, in case one of us didn't make it.
When we got back to the city (haha, town) of Dingle, we were dropped off along the wharf, and Gabriel took the bus back to his house. I forget whether I mentioned this elsewhere, but Gabriel is from Co. Kerry, and while we were in Dingle, he could take the bus home and sleep at home with his wife and kids. We all went our separate ways, and since Dingle is such an absurdly small town, travelling in pairs seemed silly. To remedy the lack of money problem I experienced earlier in the day, I first went to the bank and got some cash out.
Then I went in search of John Foxy's, the bar that is a hardware store by day. I walked in to the bar, which was on the corner of two actual streets. It was very dim inside, and smelled strongly of years and years of smoking indoors. Two people were already clinging to the bar with their Guinness, and an extremely handsome Irish barkeep, who's actual name was actually Patrick, was by the taps. I asked him if it was already too late in the day for the place to be a hardware store, and he laughed and came around the bar.
Patrick came around the bar where the taps were, and stepped instead behind an opposite bar, because that was the signal that he was now ready to talk about tools not brews. Behind him, where one would normally keep bottles of whiskey, there was a giant, dusty, heaping stack of shelves full of various bits and bobs of hardware type things. I explained to him my entire tragic tale about the camera and Blarney castle, and inquired after a set of jeweler's screwdrivers. He rummaged obediently, and found me a tiny set, and I asked what he wanted for them, and he said, I don't know, how's two euro. This was a fabulous price, since I had gotten money out in part to pay for the set of jeweler's screwdrivers, so I was delighted with this, and gave him a coin. I told him I would be back for a drink that night, and said good bye to him and the people at the bar, and sadly I never went back, and that is the beginning and end of my love story with Patrick of John Foxy's.
I was in the neighborhood, walking back from the bar with my precious cargo in tow, ready to go dig into my camera to see if I could fix it, when I passed the local Kerry library. I stood outside for a few minutes, and eventually my love of libraries overcame me, and I went inside. After poking around a bit, and finding it to be much like the Covington library was before they remodeled it (which was the library I grew up with and that I was quite fond of before they made it enormous), which was delightful. I asked one of the librarians, a woman, about getting a book in Irish, or Irish and English, and she pointed out some adult language books, and the kid books where you name all the parts of the body and clothing, and things like that.
I also asked her about a library card. She was a demure librarian -- as nearly all of them are -- with soft brown hair and an equally soft accent. At first she didn't seem to know what to make of my request. Eventually I got it out of her that I wanted a library card mostly as a novelty from the trip, not to use, since I would be leaving the county and the country very shortly. A male librarian seemed much more excited about my request, and was so terribly excited that a tourist would ever think to come to a local library at all. We talked for a while about how they should start hosting readings of Irish poetry at the library, for tourists to come watch, and he seemed very excited with the idea. I paid 2 euro for the library card, which will be good forever, and gets me access to the Kerry library online, where I can find free Irish language courses. I checked out a book about going to America, written entirely in Irish, in the hopes that Gabriel might have time to read some of it to me.
Dinner was at a very nice restaurant not far from the library, and as we do for many of our meals, we filled the entire restaurant and had our own special menu. There were appetizers, and entrees, and optional desserts, and after my bruschetta, I hardly touched my ravioli. Tonight was also a night when Corbin decided to advance his case, by sending me a shot of Jameson. The waitress told me it was from Corbin, then came again to say it wasn't actually from Corbin. I ordered some ginger ale to go with my whiskey, and the moment I had finished it, he sent me a shot of Bailey's, which I drank in one swig. By the time we were done with dinner, I was two drinks ahead of most everyone else, except the few who had had wine with dinner.
This was the night of our only lock-in in Dingle, and it's been more than long enough since I was on the trip that I can say what actually happened. I was in an exceedingly good mood, so I went with most of the crowd straight back to the house to meet in the largest of the boys' rooms to keep drinking. Some people peeled off to buy more alcohol at the market in town, and by 8 or so, we had all recollected. By the time we were all together, I'd done two shots of vodka, and was contemplating my chaser for a third. For the most part it was fairly mellow, and we found some music on an Irish radio station that wasn't entirely horrible, and talked and BSed.
Shane eventually came to me with some kind of Smirnoff proposal, which required me to take a knee and chug it in one go. I gave it a good attempt, but I only drank about half of it before all the liquid and food started to get to me. I think Leta finished the rest, similarly kneeling.
After a quick bathroom break in which I did not throw up, I returned to the party. I was incredibly confused by a blown-glass banana that I had found in a basket on the back of the toilet (with some other glass fruits), and took a thorough poll of the crowd as to whether it looked like as much of a dildo as I thought it did (it did). With Brayden and I, this quickly devolved into an interrogation about my knowledge of and experience with dildos, which was met then -- as now -- with a noncommittal answer. As I recall, at least one more shot of vodka went around, and I remember kissing at least one girl, and being asked to do a census of the men in the group on size of pecs. This I did, although honestly, I would have been happy to do the evaluation stone-cold sober. I sort of just walked up and molested people. Boys, I'm sorry, but not that sorry.
I put Emily in charge of my alcohol intake at that point, and she told me to drink some water and walk around a little. This helped, and also made me have to pee again. Now that it was getting dark, we decided to have what is colloquially known as an Italian Wedding.
If you didn't already know, or if you haven't been a frat boy recently, an Italian Wedding is when a fraternity and its sister sorority get together to have a party. As the drinking and revelry begin to escalate, a bride and groom are selected (the drunkest, presumably) and then a wedding party is chosen, as well as the father of the bride and the pastor. When all completely inebriated nuptial arrangements have been made, you assemble both houses together for the wedding.
In light of the budding romance between Corbin and I, we were ideal candidates for marriage. I was very sure that nothing more was going to happen beyond the necessary first kiss as man and wife. But all of my bridal party were extremely concerned about my other half back at home. Eventually, when it became clear that one drunk person (me) lacked the cognitive ability to overcome the logic of ten drunk people (the other girls), I gave up, and Kelly became the bride instead. Apparently, a similar argument was being waged by the boys, because Corbin did not come down the aisle when we met in the parlor for the wedding.
Tanner was to be the pastor. We came together for the wedding in the parlor, and this was a public room with antique furniture, and apparently closed circuit cameras. This is important, because just as it was getting time for us to watch people kiss each other, someone in hotel management spotted us standing on the furniture, and came in to break up the party.
I've never been to a party where the cops came, but I imagine it is much the same sensation. The wife who owned the hotel came in and turned on all the lights, and we scattered like the little shithead cockroaches that we were. I remember bolting upstairs -- I guess in case anyone came to ask where I was -- and leaping into bed and pulling up the covers. I laid there for a while, then decided I would probably do more good helping to clean up. Coming into the parlor, I had the completely drunk sensation of walking into a room that I've been in before, and having literally no idea where the fuck all the furniture came from. Someone had moved a potted plant, and there was some dirt and water on the carpet, so I ran like lightning to get a towel. I'm sure I didn't run nearly as fast as I thought I ran, but I ran, pretty fast.
Leta spent a lot of time settling the owner and his wife down, but we didn't break anything, and we all went to bed, and Leta told us to have any other lock-ins in our rooms, or just go out to drink. I remember going up to one of the girl rooms to help put some tapestry curtains back on their hangers, but after the party fizzled, we all went our separate ways to go to bed and try again tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment