First things first, we got the hostel shower to spit out hot water this morning, which was awesome. And we had a full fry for breakfast, with, as the owner of the hostel put it, "Coffee for the Americans!" Apparently Bill Clinton was known to have been useless at the peace talks before his coffee. Also awesome. And then we hit the road.
So, you say, the easiest drive of the vacation so far was this morning, right? Must have been all peaches and cream, right? Wrong. Took a left at a Y-intersection in Clonbur, drove for a half hour, came out at the right side of the Y. In Clonbur. In my defense, the signs were all in Gaelic.
We are staying at quite possibly the coolest hostel ever opened by man. It's in an old monastery, with giant windows, but all the walls and doors are painted wild colors, and it's full of very random...stuff. Animal skulls, random pictures painted by former guests, a very broken-down piano, a less-broken down organ, fast free wifi everywhere (including my bed), a really painfully adorable puppy, and 3 kittens.. Tomorrow morning there promises to be scones and porridge for breakfast. We're staying two nights, and I'm pleased as punch. It's also full of interesting people; the first one we met was a certified California hippie.
W started by hiking up Diamond Hill. This is Diamond Hill:
Misnamed, but beautiful. We're both either sunburned or windburned now, though. I'll go with windburned, since getting sunburned in Ireland is a little embarrassing. Here is a picture to prove that we made it to the top:
6.7 kilometers, and straight up for the up part, I'll have you know. I'm worried my quads are going to feel like jello tomorrow.
Dinner was at a restaurant downtown with seriously the biggest portions I've ever seen in my life, and then to the pub across the street to watch US-Ghana. We met a couple other Americans there, along with the New Zealand girl with whom we had dinner; they're all at our hostel. The Americans are PhD students in Archaeology; evidently they come to Ireland every summer to excavate. Cool job, huh? It's sad about the game, but watching Emily (the girlscout) and Jerry (the owner of the pub, maybe?) argue about how to properly fold a US flag (he had lent us his US flag, which he had had his brother in Boston send to him after 9/11) was pretty awesome.
It's 10:50 pm, and it's not dark out yet. Ah, the North. Bed now, though. I promised Emily I'd go to mass tomorrow morning, after all.
*A bellwether is a sheep in a herd that all the other sheep follow, and we don't know why, and, importantly, the bellwether does not know that he is the bellwether. This is bad because if the bellwether is stupid and walks off a cliff, all the other sheep do too. Emily taught me that. This is a sheep, of which there were many today, most up on the side of the mountain (in a "How did they get there?" kind of way):
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