The Burren: Land of Stone
I like leaving my car with a view.
The B&B I stayed at last night had a scale in the bathroom. I was very curious to see what I've done to myself in the past couple months between Commencement activities and this whole Ireland thing. I got on. Then got off and spent the next minute doing the difficult mental math required to convery kilos to pounds. Listen, multiplying something by 2.2 is hard if you haven't done much math without a calculator in the past 4 years. Turns out, I've lost a good bit of weight. That doesn't mean I'm wasting away. I'm pretty sure it can be attributed to muscle atrophy. While my buns might be as tight as ever from the hiking I've been doing, the rest has start to get a little soft. And let's say I wanted to gain weight. I flat out don't make enough money to cover a diet like that. Looking on the bright side...I've got nothing. I'm gonna go eat fried food and have a Guinness.
Today, I went to some caves. It was a tourist trap. Another stone thing made by aliens was over-touristed. I kind of laughed when I saw tons of tourists from all over Europe converging on this tiny stone structure in the middle of nowhere to then later disperse and reconvene at the next famous stone that leans a certain way and looks a little like Queen Elizabeth if you squint.
Tonight is a championship hurling match for a tournament that's been going on. If you're not keen on what hurling is...do some research. The primary sports of Ireland are: hurling, Gaelic football, soccer, rugby, golf. I think all of these sports are far older than baseball, basketball, or American football. 3 of the 5 are also rougher than the popular American sports. Excellent. I think I'd like to try my hand at hurling some time.
I don't have too much to say here, but I did want to point out something about the food. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but whatever. You can stop reading any time you want. I can't stop writing. It's like a cancer (the most overused inappropriate analogy these days--which makes it less biting and thus more appropriate?). Anyway, Irish cuisine cannot even attempt to match anything coming from the States or France or Italy. However, it bests British food. That's not a big feat. The problem is that the standard fare is bland here. They don't use any spices. That can be a good thing, though. The ingredients are all very fresh and always 100% Irish. Good fresh fish and meat and veggies and bread.
I need to do work. I'm sitting in Lisdoonvarna, which is famous for its annual matchmaking fair. Too bad it's not going on right now. I could use me a big 40 year-old Irish lady.
The beard gives me a few years, no?
Day: 22
Guinness: 31
1 comment:
hey bro, i second the idea for avoiding the matchmaking fair... that could be rather daunting if you got snagged by a lady 4x your size! oh, also so sad you didn't see any more giant slugs :(. one more thing: i'm so impressed that you actually got pics of the burren flowers. i have that perfume "iris" and i have been wondering what flowers those crazy irish were raving about when we didn't see any! hehe, it was probably because we were too busy trying to help dad stay on the left side of the road!
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