The Hostel

Yes, this is the view of our Hostel (Dublin International Youth Hostel) and the place that Nate and I currently call home.  It's really rather a charming building and was previously a Nun Convent back in the day (1800's I believe). Anyway, it's hard to see it from this view but the entire Hostel is four buildings all connected, including the Church that you can barely see with the cross at the top of it.  The church is where the Harry Potter tables are at and all the stain-glass windows that are all on Facebook, and which I can't actually find right now. 

This blog is going to focus on life at the Hostel so that you understand what a day in the life of a Hostelite is like.  For instance, this morning I got up around 7:30, changed my clothes into work clothes (jeans and a dirty tank top, and a bright orange apron with the Hostel logo on the back), and put on my tennis shoes (called 'runners' over here).  I opened my door and bumped into Oscar who was debating if he should knock on my door to wake me up or if he could find some female who would walk in and make sure I was awake, because I'm in a female dorm and males aren't allowed inside without female permission.  I had asked him last night to wake me up if he didn't see me by a quarter to eight this morning because I had to work. He worked the night shift and gets off at eight so we usually have breakfast together before I have to work.   We headed up one flight of stairs to the 200's (my room is in the 100's) and found my way through two different security doors with my awesome key card. All the way to the west is the Church Restaurant where breakfast is served from 7:00am to 10:30am.  I didn't have enough time for breakfast so Oscar and I just had a cup of coffee and then I went to wait for Neus, the weekend Housekeeping manager AKA Crazy Spanish Lady (occasionally Crazy Spanish Be-atch). 

The thing about Neus (pronounced, Nay-owz) is that she can be funny and easy going, but when she gets her crazy Spanish on she is a violent thunderstorm of incoherent language.  Since there are many Spanish speakers in housekeeping, Nate and I are in the dark a fair amount of time and have to search for interpreters from one of the better English speaking Spanish people. Below is an example of what Neus does to her victims:

The guy she is strangling is Atsuro, a 40-something Japanese guy who is part of housekeeping. His English is fairly limited but he came to Dublin (along with probably 90% of everyone here) for the express reason to learn English.  Why Dublin  you may ask?  No idea, something about it being cheap and full of Irish.  Anyway, Atsuro only understands what I am guessing to be between 3 and 10% of any given conversation.  The Spanish boys like to make fun of him when they get the chance because he can't keep up with them (cause he like us doesn't understand Spanish) but he is very sweet and he and I always greet each other.  One night I was hanging out in the Games Room on the computer and he was in there writing song lyrics in English.  I asked if I could read them over and he handed his paper to me.  It was an Irish ballad he was writing about older men who lost their jobs at a factory and now couldn't face going home to tell their wives.  It was actually very sad.  Anyway, I never would have expected it from this random Japanese guy, but you never know what people are like.  He and I also like to discuss sushi, and apparently Atsuro is a big fan of raw (and alive) oyster with a little bit of lemon juice. Interesting taste. 

Some more interesting Housekeeping Crew are these two girls, Sandra and Yoon Jung. Sandra is from Spain and has a definite Spanish accent, which was surprising because I'm used to the brown skin that comes with the Spanish accent, not here though.  The Spanish speakers are a bunch of whities lol. Anyway, Sandra was one of the first people to train me in Housekeeping and is quite funny and sweet, but has an unexpected silliness that strikes out, usually by swearing at us when we least expect it lol. She's one of those people who seems so innocent that she probably doesn't even know swear words, but then she will be like 'Fook you!' and we have to laugh at her.  Yoon Jung is similar.  She's from South Korea and is here to learn English.  At first I thought she was one of the easy going nice Asian girls, but something upsets her and WHAM! You're in for it.  Don't let her sweet smile fool you, she can be scary, but it's almost funny to watch...almost.

They've moved my bedroom to a staff room now that's downstairs and my roomies are both Sandra and Yoon Jung and a new Spain Spanish girl -Sylvia. They are fun and are room is pretty cool, though they complain that I'm not around enough cause I'm always running off to different parts of Ireland and taking pictures lol.  Anyway, we get along really well, Yoon Jung, despite her youthful appearance is actually 28 and we tease her that once she hits 40 she will get all wrinkly and look 80 because she looks so young right now.  She mothers us all in this weird 'be shure tow clean up woom' way of hers.  Syliva is 17 and the newbie and we all like to tease her whenever we can because she's still rather young and innocent and somewhat idealistic. Nate and I have told her we were going to attempt to corrupt her but she said she's from Spain and if it didn't happen there it definitely won't happen in Dublin, which she's probably right about.

I'll have to add some more pics later, it's taking like 20 minutes per photo and I keep falling alseep.  Anyway, we clean bathrooms and then rooms for about five hours everyday, and mess around talking to people and hearing their life stories.  Nate's going to try to do a few vlogs on Facebook later, if it will let us upload them.  Have fun!

Phoenix Park

`           Phoenix Park is an Urban Park in Dublin, lying 2–4 km west of the city centre, north of the River Liffey. Its 16 km perimeter wall encloses 707 hectares (1,750 acres), one of the largest walled city parks in Europe. It includes large areas of grassland and tree-lined avenues, and since the seventeenth century has been home to a herd of wild Fallow deer. The English name comes from the Irish fionn uisce meaning "clear water".


Now that I have officially stolen the details of Phoenix Park from Wikipedia, I thought it would be good to add my own details.  


Again Oscar and I were kicking around wondering what to do and he suggested we visit Phoenix Park. Of course I have never heard of it but it's about a fifteen minute walk from the Hostel so we headed over there. It was getting dark but we took some really beautiful Lamp-Post pictures (most my FB lamppost pics are from that night at Phoenix Park)

Luckily Oscar is very patient with my obsession with capturing the perfect moment with the camera so it took me a couple hours to get all the pictures we took.  Ever since I read Chronicles of Narnia I can't help but adore lamp-posts so it fulfilled my need to take dozens of pictures of them. Plus, we waited for cars to pass by and light up the street so everything looked 'Lovely' (it's said with a British accent by the way lol). 


Anyway, we ended up visiting the park again when it was light out, and we go there occasionally because it's so big and beautiful. I still haven't made it the whole way through.  When we finally took our bikes it rained something terrible and we forced to return home, soaked to the bone. 

There have been some absolutely stunning days there though, and we were able to some really Irish green photos, as shown above.  I love how the water reflects so well. The park has many different creatures, including Swans.  I swear everywhere I go in Ireland there is either a swan or a pigeon poking about. I posted most of my swan pictures on Facebook, but there was no gate by the pond so we kept our distance to avoid Swan-rage, which can happen if a swan suspects you of having food but you aren't willing to pass it along (actually I'm totally joking here, the swans are all very well mannered). 

So, among the green hills, well-kept hedges and calming fowl we enjoyed our hang out at the park, as you can tell by the pictures below. 

Nate really wanted to take his shoes off.  The grass was very nice, so I don't blame him. 

I think Nate is dancing in the background and Oscar is about to light up his cigarette lol, it was kinda a random moment on camera. 

I'm not exactly sure what Nate is doing, except hiding from us behind leaves, and no, he wasn't drunk lol (except on Irish Awesomeness). 

Oh, and I found a squirrel there.  Cute isn't it? :P

Back In Town

Forgive me for lacking chronology, I couldn't find the pictures I was looking for until now.  I should probably go into some character back story lol.

So, the first day in Dublin we are exhausted and dying, make our way to the Dublin International Hostel. I'm sitting in the main room working on my comp, look over at this guy in reception and think 'Holy shit, that guy looks like Daniel Craig.' I end up striking a conversation with him and he tells me he's from Latvia (WTF?). so next time I catch him heading out I google Latvia and ask him to show me whereabouts he emerged. He's kinda quiet and shy and has this fairly thick (what I would define as Russian, but he very much emphasizes is not) accent. Nate's there and we start asking him about where to go in Dublin. This is a summarized version of our conversation with him.

Us: 'So, is the Dublin castle pretty cool?'
Oscar: 'I von't know, I never been zare'
Us: 'What about this museum?'
Oscar: 'Noo, I never been there izer'
Us: 'That place with the cool Oscar Wilde Statue?'
Oscar: 'Vhat?'
Us: 'Dude, have you been anywhere?'
Oscar: 'No villy. Zo, I have been to Holt'.
Nate and I look at each other, definitely never heard of 'Holt'.
Us: 'So, what do you do for fun here in Dublin? Do you get drunk, hang out at the pub?'
Oscar: No, I vusually just stay at the hostel and vix sings. Holt iz really nice though.'
Us: 'So, you probably haven't lived here for very long then?'
Oscar: 'Fiv years.'
Nate: 'Holy shit, man you need to get out more.'
From there we told him we were planning to go up towards Belfast via cycle and if he knew anywhere cool to stay, and he suggested Rush, which upon googling looked good and the visit to Rush insued.  Fast forward three days.  We show back up in Dublin, with our extremely heavy-laden bikes, walking up the road to the hostel and there is Oscar on the steps happily smoking his cigarette.  I think all three of our faces looked surprised.
'I did not zink I vood see you guys again.'  No kidding.  I didn't think I'd be wandering back to the Hostel again (grrr...) were the internal monologue thoughts of Naomi. Nate was smiling 'We missed sleeping in beds.'

Since it's only 11 am, we find out Oscar isn't working that day and we tell him he has to hang out with us because he is obviously so Dublin-deprived despite living here for five years. Plus, Nate wants Guinness. First stop, Temple Bar, which Oscar luckily does know where it is and Nate drinks his first Guinness.  I tried it and it was DISGUSTING, yuck...ew.  

Oscar heads us over to Trinity College, which he had also been before. He took these cool pics, thus we are in most of them lol.

Then just around the walk to Merrian Square.  I'll only post a few because Blogspot takes forever to download pics and most are on my facebook already. Merrian Square is this rather large and lovely park with statues all over it, including the Oscar Wilde statue. Pretty much if you see statue pics on my FB they were taken in Merrian Square. 

Then we just walked pretty much the entirety of town.  It took like 9 hours lol. We left around noon and when we got back it was getting dark so it was 9 or 10ish.  Here are some of the especially cool things we saw around town.

Awesome huh? So yeah, that was our first day back and our more organized introduction to the city. We determined Dublin wasn't really that bad, though we kinda wished we had cycled instead of walked lol. That was also the emergence of Oscar joining our threesome :P Poor sheltered Latvian.

Blessington Park

Blessington Park was introduced to me within just a couple of days of being here. One of the guys who works reception at the hostel has become friends with Nate and I and we tend to hang out a lot.  His name is Oscar and he's from Latvia,  a country I had never actually heard of before, but it's between Germany and Russia, observe the map below:

Anyway, he decided to drag me over there last friday, I think Nate was napping lol, and it was an unexpected surprise.  First off he told me it was like a block away, and I was thinking 'that's crazy, this whole area is just buildings as far as I can see.  I would have noticed a park tucked away somewhere.' 'It's vonly like tuv minutes' (that's with his accent). Yeah, sure.  Anyway, it really was like two minutes away, and it was AMAZING.  Observe the photos below lol. I'll make a note that I started taking pics with my camera, but they weren't coming out as well, so Oscar let me use his, which are most of the pictures I'm posting.  I think they came out very lovely.

I love the quaintness of Dublin, this trash can is just an example:

Oh I forgot it's a 'rubbish bin' not trash can. :P  The park also had these lovely little seats:

And birds:

a cat that wouldn't let me touch it:

And more plants and flowers:

I love the raindrops on this one:

So if you are in the area, definitely stop by. It is well worth it. (I took this one a couple days later, but it says everything I want to say about the park:

Where Have We Been?

So, everyone is probably wondering what happened to those crazy fatties who ran off to Europe? Last we posted we were wandering the streets of Rush gazing lovingly into the ocean and camping, that was nearly two weeks ago so I thought I would update everyone.

First Question: Where are we?

Answer: In Dublin

oh look, there's a picture right now of some building in Dublin.

Anyway, so how did we end up in the insane and much dreaded Dublin?  Well, we were in Rush and we decided we would head south to Dublin on our way toward Rosslare which would get us a ferry to France, yay!

Once we got to Dublin though we realized a few things.  Camping sucks.  Nate has openly admitted his fat rolls find it highly uncomfortable and he emerges irritable whenever we camp, too bad we planned a two and a half month camping trip ha ha. Along with camping, cycling with massive amounts of camping gear REALLY sucks, especially in a big city, particularly when people drive on the wrong side of the road and pedestrians and cyclists alike have a limited concept of what a red light means.

What this all adds up to?  The morning after we returned to Dublin we get in one of our many small arguments. Nate wants to go back to the first hostel we stayed at (Dublin International) get a job there and have free room and board.  They had listings all over the place that you could get free lodging for a week if you worked for 20 hours.  Kicking around Dublin for an extra week or two to save approximately 210 euro ($315) isn't such a bad idea. Along with it we get free internet, beds, free breakfast (probably at least $90) and the chance to get our barrings.

Nate was selling it, but I wasn't particularly keen on the plan.  The point of coming to Europe was to travel everywhere and see everything, I didn't want to be chained down to a job, especially after I talked to the manager and they said they could hire us, but only if we worked for a month minimum.  The huge advantage to that is that for a month we wouldn't have to pay for lodging, internet or breakfast and we would have a base to come and go from if we wanted to still travel around, and we could go by bus which would save us time and we would probably see more things in the end. Jonathan, the boss, said if we wanted to go to Paris we could set it up with him and he would schedule us to have our three days off a week all in a row, so six days off. Staying here for a month would save us about 960 Euro, which is around $1440. All in all it sounded like a good plan. We would be saving about twice as much money and we could go places via bus, which means we would see more highlights than lowlights, unlike if we were cycling. I didn't want to give up cycling and camping both of which I love, but as long as I kept on it we could cycle to places closer and really get entrenched in the Dubliness of it all. 

  This also meant we get to hang out in the hostel a lot lol.

So we took the job.  We are now inmates at the Hostel.

The courtyard where I drink tea almost everyday.

Roving Water

Rush took us a couple hours to find.  The sidewalk was getting pretty narrow for our baggage.  Quite often we find people laughing at us hysterically.  Everyone is so small and thin it seems fairly unbelievable to them that we would need all that stuff on our bikes. Oh well, we would probably laugh at them if they came to our world.  The culture is very different and very active.  Everyone is quite thin except for the occasional matronly lady and all are about walking or riding.  Not overly cheery, but friendly once they get past laughing.
The Irish Sea is lovely and beautiful with the grey-blue of the sky meeting the grey-green of the sea.  The waves seem to roll steadily by, not in a rush, but definitely with some plans in mind. Families and couples are always walking the shore and I feel I can't get enough of it.  As the waves roll in they always bring a brand new treasure trove, broken shells wrapped in dark seaweed or rocks with strange patterns and colors.  Something about it whispers home to me.  Maybe its because Ireland has been dreamed about for so long.  Ireland - the original home of the O'Keefes, where we get our great longing for the sea and the desperate need for green or maybe its the attitude of the people - quaint and small we seem to have an inferiority complex that makes us the most severe know-it-alls.  Whatever it is, it seems you can't deny what is in the blood, you can only adapt to different situations and these people have adapted marvelously.  Maybe thats what the sea teaches us, the ability to adapt anew everyday, but still stay true to what we are and what we're meant to accomplish. Either way, I feel alive most when I'm on the shore, listening to the waves and watching the sea foam gather itself together and rush upon the sand like a white lady coming out of the sea.  I want to sit like this forever, watching the strong waves as they reclaim the land.

Dublin is Crazy!

June 4th, Waking Up in Rush:


So happy to be out of Dublin.  The days have mixed together so much, its hard to keep track of them.  The first day in Dublin was horrendous - 5 am in an airport with hardly anyone around and my laptop wouldn't get power through the adapter :( I didn't remember the address to the campsite we were supposed to go to.  We decided to get the bikes out of their boxes and put them together to get out of the airport. We spent the next seven hours completely exhausted between riding our bikes and having no sleep.  The jet-lag was crazy. I twas as though we had flown into the future and everyone else's time was behind us.  This was fairly true because we were seven hours ahead of everyone at home.
Being only semi-conscious and after wandering the streets for a couple of hours (and attempting to ride our bikes but being on the wrong side of the road) we decided we either had to access the internet or find a camp area.  I knew in there wasn't camping in town but there should have been an easily accessible local internet cafe (Rick Steves said so! lol). Of course everyone we asked had no idea what we were talking about (either their accents were too thick or we just weren't making sense or both lol ) Around 3pm Dublin (and after setting up a tent in a local park and being told we had to take it down for our own safety) we found ourselves looking at the door of a hostel in the middle of City Centre, Dublin. Dublin International Hostel for 17 euros each  we could stay and use Wi-Fi for free and have free breakfast.  We were so tired from having about four hours of sleep in three days that we barely found the energy to drag all our shit up three flights of extensive stairs. We found our bed numbers , put sheets on them and collapsed for about 7 hours.  Rick would have been horrified because I totally forgot to lock everything up in my locker, but I was pretty out of it.
I woke up and took a shower around 10 pm Dublin time (3pm at home) and found Nate downstairs. From there we got online and ate some vending machine food (2 euros - $3) which was our first food for the day, we hadn't even remembered to eat we had been wandering around so much. We ended up using the internet til about 1am and then went back to bed and slept for another 5 hours lol.
Next morning we were up and around doing laundry and getting breakfast as well as talking to this guy named Oscar from Latvia (I thought he was cute, but Nate disagreed, obviously we do not have the same taste in men lol) Latvia btw is between Germany and Russia and I never knew it existed until that day.  He told us Rush was a cute beach village that was on the way to Belfast.  We had been asking about it because it had a campsite available.  I added him to Google chat so we could stay in touch ;)
check out was at eleven so we headed out slightly more prepared but knowing we were in desperate need of panniers (of course dad was right again :P).  Trying to find a bike shop and ones who address I actually had was nearly impossible as every Irish man woman or child seemed to have a different idea of where it was located.  "Go down to the right, than turn left and than right again"
"It's two lefts and then you see a park and take another right"
"Bicycles? A shop? I haven't heard of any around here."
One man who helped us beyond measure was on a bicycle himself and rode to O'Connell Street (the heart of Dublin)
"It's all in the attitude" he told us when we were too scared to ride directly on the streets between all the traffic.  Luckily, Dubliners (and Irish in general) are used to the random cyclist roving in and out of the lanes and they have learned to dodge them pretty well. His name was Kierran and he said to say hi to his people in Cork.
"Yes, there are many O'Keefes down there, many, many." He laughed.
I always thought I was feisty and full of gumption, but the Irish - they have plenty of attitude especially when it comes to crossing roads.  I'm sure I witnessed more traffic violations in our two days in Dublin than I have the whole rest of my life.  Traffic lights are more of guidelines really.  A red light only reminds you to look, but if the cars have a red light it doesn't matter what color yours is you can still go.  Dubliners in cars are used to dodging pedestrians and cyclists. I'm so glad I was on a bike, I'm sure I would have hit someone if I had been driving a car, never expecting them to pop out of a red light.  The Garda or police here don't care in the least, jaywalking is a concept no one has ever heard of.  It's the same in Rush, pedestrians can go when they like, just don't get hit lol.