I don’t think I got a full chance to experience Glasgow, even though what I saw wasn’t that desirable.  I lost my debit card some where along the line in Ireland, so money was tight.  It is a pretty decent city however.  All the major shops, bars and restaurants are kind of in one area, so it is easy to get things done.  I gather there are a lot of rough neighbourhoods, but I never seemed to see any conflict.  Some strange guy on the street did approach me for money for food though.  He looked normal enough from a distance, but when he got close, he seemed to act strange, a little tweaked perhaps, probably on the drugs I imagine.  There was definitely some cool things to see in Glasgow and I enjoyed my stay but like I said in a pervious post, I don’t feel a need to go back.  I think I’ve done everything I want to do there.

I’m not the biggest fan of Belfast.  It just isn’t as fun as other places I’ve been to in Ireland.  Most places I’ve been to seems the action is all centralized to an area or a street and Belfast, it seems like the pubs are really spread out.  There is a lot of history here being in Northern Ireland.  All sorts of “Peace walls”, murals, monuments, Titanic history stuff, etc.  It has just suffered from the war of independence, not horribly, but it seems it didn’t really progress too much during that time so the city seems kind of old and dirty.  I think if you give it a decade or two it will catch up and clean up.  Lots of interesting facts, just doesn’t seem that fun to sight see.

However, it seems there are more passionate about soccer, I mean football, here than the rest of Ireland was.  I see so many people dressed up and painted up for the match today, it is pretty intense.  Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time to miss it in the rest of Ireland.  They don’t seem to be as wild and destructive as protrayed in movies, but it is just 7pm, I think give them some time and a few pints and they will fighting people for wearing the wrong colour in no time.

This is probably the nicest place I’ve been in Ireland so far.  There is a lot to do in the area: Killarney National park is in walking distance and it is 20,000some arces.  There are many lakes, waterfalls, mountains in the area.  You can do the Gap of Dunloe tour or the Ring of Kerry tour.  I’m sure you could hike there for weeks any see all the trails.

Killarney is a nice little town just by itself as well.  I was surprised with how incredibly busy it gets on the weekend though.  I went out to few pubs for some live music.  See a band that was incredibly horrible.  The Sunbeams was their name and the poster said they would start at 8pm and they didn’t take the stage until 10:30pm.  From going to 3 different shows, I gather it is common for bands to start later than advertised, but the others only started some where between 30 minutes to 1 hour late.  2 and half hours late for a shitty band is hardly worth the wait.  Most of the bar cleared out before they even started and shortly after they began to play, I’d say half of the people who remained left.  I think the band actually made the bar lose their business.  Not the mention the staff at the bar was kind of rude and wouldn’t clean off  our table until I asked.  And when I did ask if they could clean it off, they got angry and said “They’d get to it in a minute”.  It was sort of ridiculous how they went about doing it to.  Taking one plate off at a time, and walking 5 feet away to the bar and setting it down.  Then leaving into the kitchen for a few minutes, without any plates for some reason, and returning to take one more plate off and repeating the process until they finally finished.

I don’t want to convey that all bars are like this in Killarney or Ireland for that matter.  I have been in a least 1 pub every day I’ve been in Ireland I think, and this by far was the worst service I got.  The others were great and incredibly friendly as most of Ireland seems to be.

The county of Cork has a lot to do, but just not Cork City.  You will find yourself leaving the town everyday to do things.  It is a good central location for going to places like Blarney and Kinsale though, which is relatively cheap to get to on the bus.  I didn’t do too much in Cork other than go to Blarney, which I highly recommend.  There is not only the Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone, but there is a whole bunch of walking you do in the area around the castle with a bunch of small little sights and the scenery is incredibly nice.

There was a creepy guy in my room at the hostel.  There was this girl from Boston in my room who was talking about finding the “craic” (this basically means good time) in Cork.  However, creepy guy thought she meant “crack”, as in the variant of cocaine.  So he went off talking about where to get hook ups in Ireland for drugs.  Talking about how some 12 year old kids sell hash and pot in Dublin and so on.  I just pretended to care and listened and didn’t ask questions so the subject would change.  This guy hated Ireland for some reason but was planning on living in Cork to work.  I think he should have just went back to New Zealand and stopped smelling so bad.

I am very happy to be in the English speaking part of the world.  It is just so easy to ask for direction and get around here.  It also helps that the Irish seem to be friendly and helpful.

I went on a tour of the Guinness Storeroom today.  It was cool I thought.  It gave basic information about brewing beer which I already knew, but there are a lot of cool facts about Guinness I didn’t know.  I ended up going with a couple people who didn’t like Guinness, so I’m not sure why they went.  Anyway, you get a free pint of Guinness at the end of the tour.  So I got 3 pints due to the others not wanting theirs.  I’d recommend the tour if you are in Dublin.  Buy your tickets online if you do, you get to skip the line and you get a discount.  The online purchase line only had 3 people in it; where as, the regular line probably had 100+.

Today is my only full day in Dublin, and I didn’t do much but walk around the downtown area and Temple Bar.  I seen some live Irish music, which is always cool.  I’m told Dublin isn’t a place to spend a lot of time in Ireland and I agree thus far.  It doesn’t seem like there is much to do here and it is more costly than the rest of Ireland.  I wouldn’t spend more than 2 days here.