Baaaaack!

I got back from my big juicy trip on Friday and the jet lag has completely thrown me off. I fell asleep at 10 o'clock last night and woke up around 3am, read a little bit, fell back asleep and woke up again at 7 o'clock. This is not working well for me. I've been a little frazzled as Kyle and I now have to find an apartment to live in for July 1st and we both need to find jobs (or I need to pick up more hours at the restaurant I work at, time to start batting those lashes).

Let's not worry about those things and I'll tell you all about my trip. We started off in Ireland staying in a small cottage in a tiny little place called Ballinskelligs which is right on the southwest coast. The only thing in the town was a pub, which we frequented and met some pretty interesting folks. We were traveling with Kyle's mum and stepdad who also rented a car which Kyle drove like a pro on the left side of the horrifyingly bendy roads.

We took a few day trips to Kilarney, Cork and Valentia Island as well. Cork had a really nice market where we stocked up on french cured meats, some Irish cheese, olives, dried figs, anchovies in vinegar, organic cherry tomatoes and a frangipane tart, it was probably one of the best meals I had in Ireland. We visited Valentia Island twice and the second time around around we went on a hike up to an observation tower on the side of a hill. We decided to venture further and after walking though a pasture full of sheep (and sheep "debris) we ended up looking over the side of a cliff while laying on our bellies. We ended the day with some coffee and a rhubarb crumble at the nicest little cafe on the island and followed it up with dinner at a little seafood restaurant complete with screaming, ill-behaved children.

Guiness+damp+greenery = Ireland

From Ballinskelligs we drove up to Ennis were we parted ways with Kyle's parents and jumped in a train heading to Dublin. We spent a night in Dublin, had dinner at an awesome french restaurant and left the city super early the next morning and caught a plane headed to Seville, Spain.

The weather in Spain was a lot different (and in my opinion a lot better) than Ireland. We stayed in a sort of swanky hotel and as it turns out we arrived during the Seville Holy Week. The first night we were in town we saw a parade which we both thought was a funeral procession. Trying to explain it would be useless so I'm posting a video (that I found on youtube) so you have an idea of what we saw, I didn't have my camera on me so I didn't get any footage of the processions...I got lazy in Spain.



There is a band of just horns and drums in front of or behind the big sculpture that is carried along the procession path. Underneath the whole structure (a.k.a the "paso") is a team of men who carry it on their heads through town. It is kind of funny to see this huge, ornate object travelling though the streets with tons of little feet poking out the bottom. This video isn't the highest quality I could find but it has the best example of the music that we heard for two nights, I'm not sure why but whenever I would see one of these processions, and we saw 3 of them over 2 nights, I had an overwhelming urge to burst into tears.

The rest of Spain included a lot of eating and drinking. The top of our list was always Pedro Ximenez, jamon, cheese, bocarones, sangria, cruzcampo beer, olives, bread, more bread, flan, churros, espresso and anything else we could put in our mouths. I love the way the Spanish do things, they wake up early, have coffee and socialize, go to work, have siesta in the afternoon, go back to work and then eat dinner and drink after 9pm and stay up late. I'm getting hungry just thinking about all of this.

From Seville we rented a car and travelled along to Grenada and then ended up in a small town called Catell de Ferro which was right on the coast of the Mediterrainian ocean. We had a fabulous prix fixe dinner at one of the 3 restaurants in town and drank cheap wine on our patio (which I spilled all over the place, twice). From there we headed to Aguilas and then on to Murica to fly back to Shannon, Ireland and then Toronto. We were 15km away from the Murcia airport when we hit a wooded post that was in the middle of our lane on the highway and blew a tire on our rental car. Kyle changed the tire on the narrow shoulder of the highway while I watched on in horror thinking he was about to get flattened by a truck. We made it to the airport in one piece and then we found out that insurance doesn't cover flat tires....I'm still waiting for that charge on my credit card.

Now I'm jetlagged, happy to be back and I've kind of fallen in love with Toronto again, in a weird kinda way.