Ireland

Since I haven't updated my blog in several months (3), I must be catching a mild case of the Brent Lewis. But it might not be a horrible thing.. maybe I'll catch some of his amazingness too and maybe even land a full-time photojournalist position right out of college! Yes, I'm being a suck-up, after-all he did post some very helpful information about summer internship opportunities and I was close for a few of them. Luckily, I didn't get one. Since I'm off enjoying myself in London and spending all of my money to travel around Europe (see below for example) I doubt I could afford to live away from home any longer than I already will be. I'll talk more about this and my plans for when I get back home in another post.

The second country I have ever visited was Ireland. I'm 1/4 Irish, from my dads side, so it was pretty fun to have a 25% sense of pride to visit the one quarter of my homeland. I probably only drank a fourth of Guinness of what a real Irishman should drink. And yes, Guinness in Ireland is better than Guinness in London so I am very concerned how it will compare to the Chicago version.

The first day of my tour of Ireland was spent in Dublin and we went to a pub that this one band called the Merry Ploughboys plays at regularly. They were a lot of fun and picked out people in the audience to participate, thankfully I was never chosen but especially thankful for not getting chosen for the Irish dancing part.

The next day we went to Killarney where I walked over a mile to try to get a picture of the sunset mountains in the background. Unfortunately the sun set to the side of the mountains but it still made for a nice picture with one tree.

I have to set the scene a little bit for this funny story, this was a group tour and it was booked by so many people they had 2 coach buses full of people and each bus staggered behind or ahead of the other so the tours didn't overlap. We stopped for a photo op at this nice little valley and everyone just went straight to the edge of the road like lemmings, but because things didn't line up perfectly I walked about just far enough along the road that the driver didn't see me anymore. I got the picture I wanted and then I went back to my bus.. but it wasn't there. Luckily the other bus was just loading up so I hopped on. I told the driver that Patrick (my driver) left me and he just burst out laughing. I'm sure it is in the informal coach bus driver laws to not leave anyone behind and since I was safe and I could use my phone, I thought it was pretty funny too. It turns out everyone on my bus was freaking out, which I got a kick out of.

I'll keep this one short, there isn't much to say about it anyway. But the best part of the trip was standing at the edge of the 700 ft tall Cliffs of Moher. It took me 4 different times at different places along the cliff to finally do it, I was just too scared. It was the scariest thing I have ever done and I would have regretted not doing it. When I took pictures from that spot, I held my camera out as far away as I could and didn't even look through the viewfinder, getting disoriented like that could have killed me.

Very soon, expect another post about my trip to Scotland which started less than 24 hours after returning to London from Ireland. I'm much happier with my pictures from Scotland.

Also, baby sheep.

This is me standing at the edge of The Cliffs of Moher

The overhand at the top center is where I was standing for the above picture

This is the picture I wanted to take that got me left behind, oops!

I was seated in the back, so I waited until their last few songs to go up in front, you can kind of see how little space there was between the seats in the foreground.

I took this one while I was searching for the mountains, there was still minor flooding from some heavy rains the previous week.

Look at that tree. This was difficult to take though since I had to position myself awkwardly to make sure all the branches of the trees I was shooting through didn't get in my way.

Inside Christ Church Cathedral, kind of reminded me of Dumbledore's lectern.

Castle in the way? No problem! Later the bus driver stopped the bus directly behind someone who was teeing off and once the golfer turned around we all waved. Imagine being that golfer and seeing an entire coach bus full of people waving..

I want a dog like this so I can herd GWC's out of my way.

The dogs did not like being near loud noises at all, if the camera on my shoulder touched the fence, they would run away. They have very sensitive hearing, the shepherd spoke a command extremely softly with the dog over 150 feet away..

Look at them cows!

I leave you with these. I'm sure your mouth is watering and you can't wait to have some nice lamb for dinner.