Last days in Ireland

Tonight will mark the first time I will spend the night in an airport. I'm flying out to Madrid tomorrow morning at 6:30 in the morning, so there's not much point in getting a hostel room.

My day of research in Cork didn't get direct results, but I did find out a fair amount about the Crowley clan. For those that are interested, they were ancestors of the MacDermots and branched out down toward the Cork area. They were known for the agressiveness (us, aggressive? No.....) and were typically hired soldiers. I can't remember the name of the family they typically fought for, but I do have it written down so if you're interested let me know and I can put it in another post. They also had a castle around the Cork area that, again, I can't remember the name of but do have it written down. There was a fairly famous Irish revolutionist name Peter O'Neil Crowley who had a statue of himself in the city center of Cork along with other famous revolutionists who died for their cause. I don't know what the direct relation we could have to him, I'd really have to get the info in the Dublin archives to be able to figure it out. However, the woman at the Cork archives told me of the current day Crowley clan website that would make it very easy to get some more detailed info if we wanted it.

I came back to Dublin for a day and walked around the east side, up to the Guinness storehouse. Due to the 15 Euro fee to take the brewery tour, I passed feeling that once you've seen three brewery tours, you've pretty much seen them all. I did have a lovely, 20-minute conversation with an Irish stranger about Dana Point and how much he loves it; it was pretty fantastic, although he knew more about the town than I did. Later that night I went on a pub crawl that claimed to give you free shots, but that was after you bought a drink, and the alcohol was sub par. Everyone in the group felt that they had been taken for suckers just a bit, but no real serious complaints.

Today I had a bit of an experience as to what it would be like to be a homeless person. Since I didn't want to pay for a room that I wasn't going to be able to sleep in, I've been walking around aimlessly finding different spots for shelter to rest my legs since I'm carrying around about thirty pounds on my back. I also found out that to ship stuff back to the US is freaking expensive, so Bailey and Mark, and Eric and Jeff, your wedding gifts are going to be late. Sorry for the delay.

I'm excited to get a bit of a change of scenery in Spain, and while the first couple of days are going to be brutal because of the change in weather conditions, hopefully I'll get accustomed quickly. I am a little nervous about my laking of Spanish speaking abilities, but I will do my best to memorize the key phrases in the back of my travel book. I'm going to have plenty of time tonight.

John