ireland day 1

so here's the play by play on the ireland trip. my flight left los angeles at 730am on tuesday the 10th. brendan was willing to give me a ride but not to wake up to do it, so we comprimised and he dropped me off around 3am before going to bed. so i hung out at the airport for a while waiting for the news desk to open so i could read the latest issue of "us". i flew to boston first and the in flight movie was "because of winn dixie", which i did not watch. in fact, amazingly i slept the whole flight. next up was a four hour wait in the boston airport. but it was a weird corner of the airport with virtually no restaurants or newspaper shops and wireless internet access that you had to pay for. so i sat around and did a lot of nothing. the boston to shannon flight had two movies, "ocean's twelve" and "about a boy". i tried to sleep as much as possible but i was sitting next to two american frat jerks planning out their european backpacking tour and it wasn't happening. so i watched "about a boy" which is amazing.

i got in to shannon at 740am wednesday (ireland is 8 hours ahead of la) and my uncle was waiting for me. i hadn't seen him in 12 years and so there was an awkward talk between us for the 20 minute ride back to his house. he's pretty afluent and his house is huge, so i put my stuff away and decided to walk into town. i wandered around limerick for most of the day, checking out the downtown and anything else i could accidentally find. i took some pictures of stuff that i thought looked "ireland-ish" like this

limerick isn't as happening of a city as i had hoped, but it was cool to walk around. i got back to the house at around 3pm and took a brief nap. at least brief was the idea. it turned into a 5 hour nap and i woke up wide awake. which turned out to be a good thing. my cousin was home now and i started getting reacquainted with him. his name is ryan, he's 21 and he plays professional rugby and is 6 foot 7. he is the youngest of 4 brothers and my other cousin shane happens to own a pub called "the precinct". so at 9pm we headed there. i started slow. my cousins anthony and shane were already there and i hung out with them along with ryan and his girlfriend rebekha, pictured below.

the slow pace wouldn't last long though, because apparently limerick bars close at midnight. so in the next two hours i had 4 pints of guinness, which i later learned to be a half gallon. taking what you already know about me and the fact that guinness is much more potent over there, you can get an idea of what started going on. but the night was far from over. we all walked over to a club called "icon" which can stay open till 2am. we got there and ryan started shoving drinks into my hand. somehow i had switched to jack and cokes without remembering saying so. rebekha took me onto the dance floor and told me that limerick boys don't dance. i was careful how close i got though, what with the 6 foot 7 rugby playing boyfriend looking on. family or not, i'm not pissing him off. i think by the time 2am rolled around i had had 3 jack and cokes to mix around with the half gallon of guinness in my stomach. my vision started looking a lot like this picture.

surely i could be shown some mercy and taken back to bed. no. we went back to shane's pub where he illegally served us all more alcohol. i did a shot of vodka with everyone and had one more jack and coke. ryan tended bar and refused to take no for an answer. i collapsed at 330 on a stool in the back of the bar. i was woken up what seemed like a minute later by ryan and we left. the sun was rising when we stepped outside and got a cab back to his house. i was still drunk and all i could think about was that i had to wake up in two hours to go get aaron from the airport. it was not going to be pretty. but really, could i have asked for a more irish start to this irish vacation?