Belfast

The rest of my time was spent hanging out and doing a little sightseeing with Catherine in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We took a tour of city hall, where she made me be that tourist and take a dumb photo sitting in the mayor's chair. We also took a little self tour of some of the murals about "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland that line Shankill Road. Alasdair, Catherine, Brittany, and I went out my last night there to a very very neat pub, The Crown Saloon, where there was all this enamel all over the walls and ceiling. We also got to sit in little booths that had a door that closed and metal plates on the sides for striking matches.The city, with its large harbor, turbulent history, and good pubs, was overall pretty interesting.

Overall, I had an absolutely AMAZING time with Brittany, Alasdair, and Catherine getting to see Ireland. I thank them very much for letting me crash in their flat! Ireland was everything I hoped for and a perfect vacation with friends I don't get to see too often.

The Antrim Coast

Tuesday I had to say goodbye to Brittany as she had to go back to work (sucker!). So her flatmate Catherine and I decided to keep the car another day and travel up to Northern Ireland's northernmost coast, the Antrim Coast, where there were supposed to be some neat geological occurrences and, naturally, more cliffs.

It was raining so we first stopped off at the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery, which is the oldest distillery. And they do all the step of manufacturing and process and packaging their

whiskey on the premises. It was a cool tour of the old distillery and to watch the workers/machines package thousands of bottles and boxes. And of course we got a nice little tasting at the end, although it was a tad early at 11 am for whiskey. I bought my brother a nice polo shirt that has their logo on it, so be on the lookout for that coming home Mom.

Stop number 2 took us to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge which connects

the mainland with some small outcroppings where fisherman have salmon nets. Of course, it was closed for

repairs. But we walked out there anyway and a suuuuuper nice workman let us come down to the bridge and go out a ways to take a photo. I love it when random

people are nice to tourists. Catherine was terrified of being on the bridge but I was loving it.

We then moved down the coast to the main attraction, The Giant's Causeway. Here was a unique rock formations that led right into the sea, the only place on earth that looks like this. It was like a bunch of different stone pillars being pushed out of the ground to different heights.

At first Catherine and I thought they looked pretty small and lame from atop the cliffs, but when we actually got down to the main part, the rocks prov

ed well worth the trip. Some of the rocks became much blacker as they were close to the sea because waves wash over them more frequently than higher ones. The cliffs behind them also served as a nice backdrop. We spent a good while climbing all over them, despite it being cold and rainy again.

Back towards the highway we stopped off at Dunluce Castle, which was built on, can you guess?, a cliff. So much so that at some point half of the kitchen and its servants fell off in

to the sea below. I couldnt understand why someone would build a whole castle right into a cliff, but I guess it was good for defense. Seemed slippery to me, but what do I know, most of it has lasted hundreds of years.

Finally, a castle that wasn't closed!

Sheep and Cliffs

Monday brought us further north, through Sligo, where we stopped at Parke's Castle, whichof course being winter, was closed. Luckily there was a cleaning guy who let us look around the courtyard a bit. Randomly, Brittany had recognized a large mountain called Binbulben from a Yeats poem and realized that he was buried in a nearby church. We took a quick look around the church and visited his grave. Pretty neat.

We drove up to Donegal, which was a super cute town, and then on some pretty treacherous roads out to the Slieve Leag

ue cliffs. These cliffs are actually taller than the Cliffs of Moher. And the clear

day made for some great photo ops. Of course my favorite part was the fact that there were sheep everywhere, right up to the cliffs' edge. I really liked the sheep. Some random guy also told us it was okay to jump over the lookout ledge and go closer to an edge, which I jumped to do (sorry Mom), but the

view below was just awesome. We were able to see to the waves crashing onto the rocks below. It was just so cool. Again, Britt and I, okay mostly me, ran around like crazy just so excited to be in such a beautiful

environment (with tons of sheep!) practically all to ourselves again. I was like a kid in a candy store. These cliffs were probably the highlight of our little roadtrip, except of course for the awe-inspiring rock formation Dolmen (see previous post). Back in Donegal I tried to find a copy of Harry Potter in Gaelic to go in my collection, but w

as unsuccessful. Brittany has assured me that she will be on the lookout.

After a late lunch in Donegal, we were back on the road headed back to Belfast!

Cliffs of Moher

Sunday took us south to the
famed Cliffs of Moher. Unfortunately, it was super rainy so we kind of had to rush and we didn't get too many good pics, but not toworry there will be more cliffs later. I don't have much to say about the Cliffs. There was a neat little visitor center, and because it was the off season and rainy, there weren't hoards of people. Britt and I ran about being cold and wet still taking in the awesome views of the cliffs below.

Close by in an area called The Burren, because of the crazy rocks all over the place, th

ere were a couple funny tourist attractions that we figured we might as well see. The first was a random cave network where once they found the remains of a bear, which haven't been in Ireland in thousands of years. Our tour guide was super funny, which always helps when you're somewhere random. 8 km away lay the best tourist attraction ever. The Poulnabarone Dolmen, a 5000 year old megalithic tomb, is apparently one of the most photographed things in Ireland. It is one rock balanced

on top of two other

rocks, supposed to be like a mini Stonehenge, only...worse. We were pretty prepared for it to be a letdown, but as we got there around sundown, it lived up to my low expectations. This thing was only about 8 feet tall, in the middle of absolute nowhere. There was no one else there so Brittany and I had loads of fun running around this thing before the sun set. It's hard to e

xpress how silly this sculpture was and how much fun it was to go out of our way to see it.

The night took us back to Galway.

Ireland / My Bday

Ireland was a crazy good time.

After a long overnight flight, a long layover at Heathrow, then another smaller flight to Belfast, I finally arrived. I met Brittany at Queens University where she works and got to see her in action, fiddling with some metal stuff in a wave tank (anything more detailed is beyond me). Then we went to her awesome flat where I met her flatmates Catherine and Alasdair, two awesome awesome Scottish folks. Side note: Alasdair has a small extra roll in the film The Eagle, which was filmed in their small hometown. I was pretty jetlagged Thursday night so we kept it low key with some take put from Thai Tanic which wins my award for best pun name. The food was superb.

I was too happy to sleep in until the early afternoon on Friday as Britt was at work all day trying to get a lot accomplished before we skipped town. Catherine and I hung out pretty much doing nothing until Brittany and Alasdair (who is Catharine's boyfriend and Brittany's coworker) came home. They were all kind enough to take me out that night to their local pub The Botanic Inn or just The Bot. The Bot was an experience. We were all in jeans while most of the local girls were in dresses and heels, completely overdressed for the laid-back pub, which ended up playing a lot of classic and country American songs. Needless to say we had tons of fun drinking and dancing, especially at the stroke of midnight which marked the start of my 24th birthday.

Brittany and I got a late morning start to our road trip, due to the previous night's outting - that's right britt, I'm calling you out - but hit the road in our backwards car. Driving on the left side of the road and the right side of the car is soooo much fun! There were a couple close call where I would drift over a line, but was just fine otherwise. We drove down towards Dublin (but didn't stop there - sorry Virg, didn't find your hat) and more south to Glendalough. I'm not sure exactly what it is (wikipedia it if you're interested) but there was a cool old cemetery and a tall tower. Britt and I got our photography on and took a nice stroll into the woods. It was a neat place to spend my bday afternoon. We then drove all the way west to Galway where, thanks to Brittany's excellent navigational skills, we did not have trouble finding our hostel. I muscled Britt to come have a birthday beer with me on the main drag filled with pubs. We had a delicious time, talking about nonsense, until these two olderguys came up and wanted to know what we were arguing about, which they thought was politics. I was just admonishing Brittany for not applying to grad schools in California. They were pretty funny, but we headed back early so we could be well rested for our day of sightseeing on Sunday.

Stop One: Boston

I left LA and headed east to the cold cold cold town of Boston to visit my friends, and made a few more friends come up for a visit. BIG thanks to Cara, Kate, their housemates, Lena, Alice, Adam, Tommy, and Ryan for one awesome weekend. Nothing too exciting other than the party I threw at Cara's house. It was like the good ole times - drinking, dancing, singing at the top of our lungs, and most importantly, never having to leave the house. A highlight was the 4-way end of the night spoon with Lena, Alice, myself, and Bo. Good times.

New Blog!

So I decided to restart a blog because I'm getting tired of writing emails, and I've found that I actually have some stuff to say about the cool places I've been in the past couple of weeks. I also had to change the name so it's more general to my overall primate antics. So, as silly as I think blogs are, here is mine (my 2nd actually), so check it out!