Maggie and I got up at 5:15am and had breakfast at our house and then met our friend Jenna at the hotel sign (our common meeting point) It was a strug to get there in the dark with all of our stuff but we finally made it there, and we were lucky enough to see a taxi right by us so we didn't have to call one. We took the taxi to the Granada bus station and ate again before the 7am bus to Malaga. We always either have to go to Malaga (2 hours by bus) or Madrid (5 hours by bus) to travel out of the country because sadly, Granada is not an international airport. We got to Malaga early before our 12pm flight, so what to do, but eat again! So we had starbucks at the airport and I had a fail like always ordering an iced coffee with milk since it's never on the menu and I always end up speaking spanglish.
We finally arrived in IRELAND! As we walked off the plane Jenna yelled, "Smell that Irish air!" and we all cracked up. Then we were so excited because we saw american-like food at the airport and we chowed down on chicken chunks and potato wedges... It was grand! they even had snapple, I almost died from happiness. Afterwards we got on a 3 hour bus to travel from Dublin to Galway.
Thus begins the Strug:
Here's some background information: We were all planning to stay with Jenna's mother's friend's friend who is a retired fillipino pastor and had access to a castle. Two things we soon found out... he's not Filipino and lives in a regular house.
We waited around in the bus station and after 30 minutes of not being able to find the pastor, Jenna was panicking and calling her mom, when the lady at the information booth (who had been helping us use the telephone) came over and said, is one of you Jenna? A man over there is holding a sign that said Jenna. So we ran over to the man (who wasn't Filipino and definitely wasn't late we just weren't looking for someone like him) and realized it was PADDY! our full irish tourguide and host for the next couple of days, who lives in a rented house haha but it was still just as nice as a castle because we felt at home.
So we packed our stuff in Paddy's car and he put the donuts Jenna had bought them in the trunk with our stuff (and they ended up staying there all weekend, we think he just forgot) and I crammed myself in the back seat which hadn't been cleaned out and I had to avoid sitting on screws. It made for a very entertaining ride home. We dropped our stuff back at Paddy's house (he insisted that he lift everything, he was such a sweetheart!) and he dropped us off on the beach where we walked around for a while and then ate dinner at a random place where I had jalapeño poppers and a corona for dinner haha. Of course that made for another interesting experience since we got a waiter who's first day was that day. Jenna was very unhappy because the sign said they served breakfast all day, but apparently it meant until 5pm.
We tried to call Paddy to come and pick us up, but since we weren't in Spain our phones wouldn't work, so Jenna being the great extrovert that she is, just asked a random guy walking along to use his phone and we got ahold of Paddy! Meanwhile some creepy young girl who appeared to be on drugs was staring at us and asking for a lighter. Gotta love the strug life!
Paddy picked us up and then insisted that we have some wine with him so we did and listened to his old stories before we went to bed in beds that had heated sheets! It was wonderful.
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