Global Gauthier's: ireland.

If we thought we were light travellers before, we had become even more minimalist over the course of 10 seconds! We got off the plane in sandals with our little daypacks and found Paul, a good friend we'd met in Vietnam 4 months ago! We travelled with Paul and Dee (his girlfriend) for 2 weeks through Vietnam and Laos and became really good friends in that time. We were super excited to see them again!

He picked us up in our less-than-cordial mood and we made our way towards Tipperary from Dublin, laughing and remembering all the great times in

Vietnam, and catching up on life in recent months. Pretty soon, we'd (mostly) forgotten about our lack of everything!

On the way, we stopped in Kilkenny and visited the kilkenny Castle and tried some great breaded sausage as well as ice cream!

Paul took us back to Thurles afterwards and we stopped a couple thrift stores and clothing stores to buy a few necessities like pants, shirts, shoes, etc. It was extremely fortunate to have Paul there to tour us around and take us to all of the good stores to cheap clothing and other stuff we needed to replace! This included a quick stop at the local plumbing store to find parts to build Milessa new headweights :) that was fun to explain to them what we were building.

For lunch, we tried some Black Pudding- it was Paul's favourite! When Dee came home we made pizza for supper and had a great visit with them

Black Pudding.

both!

The next morning Paul, Milessa and I went out to hike up the Devil's Bit and got to hear some great Irish lore and legends! We then saw the Rock of Cashel and explored the 100s of years old ruins of Hore Abbey.

Ireland is full of magical places and the Fairy Bush is one of them! We really can't know if it was magic or simply an optical illusion, but basically you go to this specific place on a specific road and

park your car. Then, even though it feels like your facing downhill, you start rolling backwards up the hill! Great fun!

We drove up to a massive waterfall from there very similar to the terrain and things we saw in New Zealand.

Ireland also loves it's deep-fried anything, so we tried some deep-fried Mars Bar and deep-fried mashed potato with ham and cheese, wow they were good! We'd gain major weight if we lived in a place with good food like that.

Both us and Paul and Dee had taken the same

cooking classes in Cambodia (at different times) so we made some Cambodian curry for dinner and had loads of fun reminiscing about our crazy Asian adventures.

The next day all 4 of us took off for the Cliffs of Mohor (or the Cliffs of Insanity, as they are more well-known if that helps some of you, or the big cliffs from Harry Potter as well). But first, I treated them to Tim Horton's coffee! Who would have guessed Ireland would have Tim Horton's at a gas station!

At the cliffs there is no official entrance fee, you simply pay person to park a car. But that's stupid, so Milessa, Dee and I jumped out just before the

parking lot while Paul parked, But the lady was wise to our trick and charged him for 4 people! He decided to play dumb and simply blurted out "what other people?"... "the ones that just got out of your car,"... "Oh them! Ya they're not with me, don't know them." So it went on for a few minutes until the lady conceded and hilariously only charged him for 1 person!

Finally we got to see the cliffs and admire the 200+ meter sheer drop-off into the Atlantic Ocean. No rails were around, so when you walked up to it and looked over, one slip meant a loooooong time

Can you believe no railings!

to say goodbye!

We then drove until Paul found the right and true Fish n' Chips shop- again, we'd be so unhealthy if we lived near this kind of food.

We then drove through The Burren and saw some of the strangest most barren and rocky wasteland anywhere.

Around there we stopped to see the Dahlman as well, a single rock formation similar in style to the Stonehenge they believe to have been built over 2000 years ago.

Sunday afternoon we headed to the Thurles sporting field to watch our first Hurling match! Luckily, we arrived early and also got to watch Gaelic Football for a while (soccer that you can also run carrying the ball, kind of). Hurling was tonnes of fun to watch as it was incredibly fast paced and rough. I'm not going to describe it, but youtube a game, it was unbelievably fun to watch.

After the game we said goodbye to Paul and Dee before boarding a bus to Dublin and finding a cheap hostel for the night.

The next day we spent visiting some of the Dublin highlights like Trinity College, The Book of Kells (a 1000+ year old book), Handel Messiah's first performance place and The Christ Church among a couple others, We also spent some time going into thrift stores and camping stores finding dress

and everyday clothes, used guidebooks (Peru for only 2 Euro!), 1 new backpack to share (paper bags from Penny's only cut it for so long), and other random items we needed to replace.

In the evening we met up with Kevin, an Irish guy I'd picked up and driven to Calgary with Joe and Shaun while he hitched across Canada and then Mexico 5 years ago. He had told us we could stay with him for the night in his flat with 4 others!

But first, he took us to a little local Irish Pub where a bunch of musicians met every week to have

impromptu jam sessions with guitars, fiddles, violas, violins, ukuleles, accordions and banjos. Listening to them play classic Irish music for a couple hours was such a great experience and one of the more memorable so far!

The next morning we took an early bus to the airport for our flight to London on very little sleep!