Somewhere over the rainbow, skies were actually blue!

This past weekend, Gavin and I went on a trip down to the Republic of Ireland. It was by far one of the best trips I’ve taken this semester thanks to the people we met and the places we saw.

We started things out right on Thursday (Nov. 21) by taking a double decked bus to Dublin and sitting in the front on the top! We had a fabulous view for the two hour drive.

When we got to Dublin, we booked a room with Isaac’s Hostel, which was a really cool old building that used to be a wine cellar. They have the basement all set up with each little cellar as separate hang out spots; one is a library, then a computer room, a sauna, a pool table, and a tv/movie/playstation room. The main thing we did that first night however was the Guinness Factory. We hopped on Dublin’s tram system (which is an above ground subway, basically) and it was very easy and clean to use. Actually, all of the public transportation here has been awesome. But we almost missed the last entrance time to the museum at 5 o’clock as we speed walked to find the big Willy Wonka looking gate to the factory.

Obviously, we made it in time. The ticket got us into the storehouse, which was shaped like a giant pint of Guinness that would have held 14.3 million pints, but they brew more than that in 5 days! We walked quickly through the brewing process information. It was interesting, but the same basic stuff like here is the clean water we use, then the barley, then the hops, then the barrels. We also went through the tasting room where they tell you exactly what you taste and smell when you enjoy a pint of Guinness. It was a bit theatrical, but I do feel like I know a wee bit more about how to enjoy a good “pint of the black stuff.” The more interesting facts were about the history of Arthur Guinness himself and the factory.

In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for the same land the factory is on today, for an annual rent fee of £45. A little ambitious you might say, but Guinness is guaranteed to be around until the year 10759. Arthur and his wife Olivia had 21 children, but only 10 of them survived.

Guinness was one of the first in the world to provide their employees with a pension and give paid vacations. Records from 1860 show pensions being provided, and on average, salaries were 10-20% above the rest of Dublin jobs. If a man died and left a family, Guinness would pay for the burial, provide money for the family and give the wife a decent job. Free medical care was also provided for employees starting in 1870. Free dinner was served for young boys of Guinness families to encourage them to attend school. Guinness would also loan money at low interest rates for employees to buy houses, and most importantly, each male employee would receive a beer allowance of two pints of Guinness daily.

For the full story of facts on employees: http://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/docs/Employee_Welfare_At_Guinness.pdf

I can’t find the actual quote from Arthur on his employees, but even recent chairmen of the company have been quoted saying things like ‘[Guinness] always felt that it was not only the duty, but to the advantage, of the company and its shareholders, that the company should bear its part in serving this civilization and this way of life in which we all believe.’

Truer words have never been spoken, and Gavin and I were both thoroughly impressed by their humane corporation philosophies.  

On Friday our actual planned trip began. We booked a tour with Paddywagon Irish touring company meant for backpackers like ourselves. We were supposed to meet and leave at 8 a.m., but our bus had a flat tire so we waited an hour for another bus to be driven into town. Altogether, there were 6 of us on the three day tour through Galway, Killarney and Blarney, and I would say all 6 of us are pretty good friends now! There were 4 Americans: Gavin and me, Jessica from Washington D.C. studying in London, and Meagan from California working for the Scottish parliament. The other two were from Australia, close to Melbourne, named Scott and Ben, and both had been traveling around Europe independently. Because of them, I have deemed my favorite accent to be the Australian one, FYI.

We also accumulated many inside jokes and random facts along the way, which I will add in occasionally.

#1: Marc, our guide, told us not to wear seatbelts on the back roads of Ireland. It would be more fun that way.

#2: Marc told us they let the sheep go paintballing on the weekends, and that’s why they come back with paint splotches on them to work during the week.

#3: They have mussel farms in Ireland. 

 Once we got on the road, we stopped in a little village called Cong. Anybody know what it’s famous for? I didn’t, but Gavin knew that John Wayne filmed The Quiet Man with Maureen O'Hara there. They have a statue of him and everything. We walked around the old monastery they had, as well as some beautiful wooded areas. There was a restored castle back in the woods on the other side of town, but we didn’t want to pay to get in, even though the guide showed us where we could hop the fence to take a free tour. Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina have stayed there before so it must be nice. We also saw a sign on a large, green industrial fence saying not to climb it because it had been painted with anti-climb paint… Does anybody know about that, either?

We only spent about 40 minutes there before getting back on the bus and driving to Kylemore Abbey. The abbey was originally built in 1867 for a single family. Mitchell Henry built it, along with an extensive Victorian style garden for his wife (which ONLY she was allowed in), and a church. It was eventually turned into a Benedictine monastery and later boarding school for girls until 2010, and now it is being restored back to its original home state and run by the nuns. Talk about a BEAUTIFUL place. The pictures just don’t do it justice, but we were also very lucky to have sunshine throughout our entire trip! That NEVER happens in Ireland.

#4: I burned by mouth probably worse than I ever have before gulping down potato and dill soup from the abbey.

From the abbey, we made our way through some never ending, movie like scenery, with the sun shining over the mountains. We also stopped along the side of the road to look at a tree which had all of these things tied to the branches. Apparently, it’s the local car park for teenagers looking to get in the backseat with someone, and afterwards they tie something in the tree. When the tree is full they use the fence, and when the fence is full some unlucky soul takes them all down and they start over.

Our main stop for the day/night was Galway. They had a quaint Christmas market where we enjoyed the music and Christmas punch. We also walked down their main shop street with pubs and stores and enjoyed a coffee with Bailey’s Irish Cream. Dinner was fish and chips in the Skeff Bar right off of the main Eyre Square. The pub crawl for the night started there as well, but don’t worry, we didn’t get crazy. It was basically just a walk around town showing off Galway’s variety of pubs.

#5: I lost one of my favorite earrings in Galway. Gavin also wound up losing his scarf on the trip. The Aussie Ben lost his towel, and I think at least one other person lost something to the black hole of Ireland.

The next morning, we headed out to the cliffs of Moher with a few stops along the way. First we came to Dunguaire Castle. Apparently it is open part of the year, but we couldn’t go inside. It was still cool from the outside, though.

#6: If you walk counter-clockwise around the castle, they say you get your virginity back.

#7: Doctors used to/maybe still tell pregnant women to drink Guinness due to its high iron concentration.

#8: ABC stands for Another Bloody Castle/Cottage/Creek/Church. We saw so many of these places, this is how Marc said people start referring to them.

 After Dunguaire castle, we went on to another abandoned monastery called Corcomroe Abbey. It was built in 1210 and looked like it came straight out of Oblivion the video game.

#9: Marc loved his one liners, and would occasionally tell us to get back on the bus to “make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here,” or “make like a hockey player and get the puck out.” It made life a little more interesting.

#10: The small stone walls and abandoned houses that litter Ireland are called Famine walls or Famine houses. The Irish would go to work for 12 hours a day building property barriers with these stones, no mortar, and receive a penny a day or a small amount of food during the potato famine in 1845.

#11: Across the street from a famine house, we stopped at a fresh water well/spring that was filtered by the mountain it came down. The water was very cold and nice.

The next stop was a frightening photo op at the baby cliffs of Moher. No railings, just a 100 foot sheer drop down to the rocky water below. (Mother Teresa, if you are reading this it was actually just 10 feet).

 We grabbed lunch at Fitzpatrick’s Pub in the middle of nowhere. Apparently their seafood chowder is famous and has its own website. I must say it was pretty good.

Then the Cliffs of Moher! Harry Potter’s scene with the horcrux in the cave was filmed there, along with the Princess Bride. And I said we had a beautiful day before, but we also had the COOLEST rainbow I have ever seen in real life, maybe even in pictures. It came all the way from the distant horizon, straight down to the water below us and made more than a 180˚ curve. Gavin dared to sit on the edge but I was content to crawl.

 

After the cliffs, we headed out to Killarney. We stopped at a quaint pub with Christmas lights done really well. I have this nostalgic memory of it being the coziest place, but that might have just been because I was asleep on the bus and wanted to keep dreaming.

Also on the way to Kilarney, Aussie Ben looked out the window as twilight was upon us and said very animatedly, “WHAT IS THAT?!” We all turned to look out the right window and I would have sworn that a daemon was in the nearby field. I have never in my life seen something hover above the ground that way. It was two huge black blobs, floating above the grass in characteristic fog, moving very fluidly and constantly changing shape. I mean this ghost was like the size of a tractor and truly looked like a dementor, as Meagan said.

#12: Flocks of birds can sometimes look like dementors.

Once we made it alive to Killarney, we found some Chinese dinner and kicked it at the hostel for a break before we went back out to meet Marc at the Grand Hotel. It was more like a pub with a club attached to the back and rooms upstairs, but we certainly did have a grand time that night! There was live Irish music in the front room and a live, but not as good, American cover band in the back.

#13: When listening to native Irish language speakers, you find out how they pronounce ‘th’ differently. Tree means three and third turns into turd. We laughed about this for a good while. Urinal is also pronounced ur-anal. That was the one that made our abs sore the next day!

#14: Kiwi jokes were also part of Marc’s one liner repertoire. (Apparently they like to shag their sheep as well as shear them, in case you didn’t know like me). How do kiwis find sheep in tall grass? With a great big smile on their face. We also wanted to get out and pet the alpacas and horses, so Marc commented that it’s a good thing we didn’t have any kiwis because they would want to pet the sheep…

The main attraction on Sunday was the Blarney stone, which I kissed, so watch out speech circuit! How many more of you can say you kissed the same stone as Winston Churchill who became possibly the greatest orator of the 20^th century?

The other cool thing about the Blarney castle was the gardens. They didn’t have ordinary gardens, they had poison gardens! Everything in this garden had some kind of hallucinogenic or deadly trait to it. This included marijuana, ricin, wolfsbane, hemlock, poison ivy, and wormwood. The most interesting one to me, however, was the box bush, which I’m pretty sure we all have in our yards!!!

 

 

This plant was said to keep witches away from your house because witches know the number of every twig and leaf of every plant. When they get to a box bush, however, they lose their place when they count the leaves and therefore get stuck looking at the bush before they can enter your house. It is also poisonous to eat.

#15: This was our other inside joke, because we frequently say witches be flockin to ____ (fill in the blank, ex. The beach, meaning girls love the beach), and in this case we could say Witches be flockin to the box bush. We thought it was funny =D.

#16: I also got to hear an Australian use the phrase “she looked a bit dodgy” which made my life. Thank you, Ben.

#17: Being hip, meaning cool, comes from opium dens where “being on the hip” meant you were lying on your side smoking, and this was considered cool. I learned that in the poison garden.

#18: Scott and Ben made Jessica and Meagan really excited by telling them they can ride kangaroos. They seem so exotic to us, but for them they are a nuisance like deer. You can’t really ride a kangaroo, but the girls looked up kangaroo saddle anyway…

#19: We also looked up where baby corn comes from, and it is as cute as we thought it would be! Just think of an adorable little ear of corn that you have to shuck. We did this as we ate our Chinese in Killarney.

After we all kissed the stone to get the gift of gab, we made our way from county Cork back to Dublin. We stayed in Jacob’s hostel this time, which was run by the same people with Isaac’s and it was just as nice. But yet another small world story: two other Americans came into our hostel room and we started talking to them. We found out they were studying together in England for the semester, but they go to the University of Colorado Boulder. The girl, Rachel, was from Chicago originally, and when we said we were studying in Coleraine, Northern Ireland she said she knew someone else from Chicago living there.

“Oh really? Who do you know?”

“Kate Pfau.”

“WHAT?”

It was one of those moments where you’re not sure you heard them correctly because what are the odds this girl we happened to be assigned a room with in Dublin would know our other close friend we have lived with all semester?? But anyway, after we excitedly talked about Kate for a while (all good things, of course) we had a fantastic night on the town with Rachel and David and looked at Christmas lights in the city.

We ended our trip by doing some Christmas shopping in the Belfast Christmas Market and eating Kangaroo burgers in honor of our new Aussie friends. They were quite good!

#20: Northern Irish people are outrageously friendly and helpful. An older man saw us looking at a map in the Belfast train station and offered to walk us all the way through the city to our destination! The world never ceases to amaze me with its plethora of angels. 

Everybody wants to be either a cat or a bison.

Since Halloween ended and November began, several things have unfolded in Ireland. The first, and most important, has been the Assassin’s game. This game has managed to simultaneously unite and divide the internationals and it has been beautiful.

Basically, there is one person in charge (she calls herself The Godfather) whom everyone reports to via Facebook. The gist of the game is that you are assigned one person to “kill” from the pool of players. Someone else has also been assigned to “kill” you, and you have no idea who your “assassin” is. You die when your “assassin” hits you with water, whether that be from a water gun, water bottle, or full-to-the-brim bucket. See rules below:

You cannot kill your person when:

1. In class

2. In their home (if they invite you in you can, but no hiding in closets)

3. Avoid killing someone where other participants are present and can see the kill

4. NO KILLING AT ERASMUS (International) PARTIES. That's too easy, learn to stalk. 

5. Killing at a campus event- killing someone at the Chirstian Union might make you look like a dick.

6. Once you are killed you must give the name of the person you killed

7. When you are killed message the master (Kate "The Godfather" Pfau) and tell them you are dead.

Game continues until only one person is left

8. if you see your assassin approaching, you can hit them with water before they hit you. This gives you 24 hrs until your assassin can try and get you again.

SAFE ZONES:

Any University building- *grounds of Uni are okay

In the targets home unless invited in 

Erasmus Parties— you could get them on their walk over but once at the party all guns must be down

So far this game has been a lot of fun and a great contribution to the end of the semester! We started with approximately 62 people on Nov. 5^th and are now down to about 27. Apparently there have been several Judas-like betrayals, a full out 5 step duel in the middle of the main academic building, and countless water gun wars that have waged on even outside in Ireland’s nightly monsoon weather.

One of the best parts of the Assassins game was last Saturday, November 9^th. Another event I should blog about regardless, was the Ceilidh, which is traditional Irish folk dancing! (Very different from river dancing, and much more similar to a barn dance.) The International Friends program, the same one that paired me with the wonderful Nevin family, hosted this event for all of the international students. They taught us to dance with a live Irish band, complete with a fiddler, bodhran player and guitarist. They also fed us tons of cookies (which they call biscuits) and pancakes and tea afterwards, which made for a lovely evening. I know it had been a while since I talked to several of my German friends from Portrush in particular, so it was nice to have an excuse to see them.

… You may already see the problem with this event for all of the internationals… But in case you don’t, since we are all playing this game, it was very dangerous for all of us to be in the same place at the same time! I saw quite a few people packing their water guns in their coats and preparing for an all out war. Of course the event itself was a safe zone, but out on the sidewalk you better believe there were at least 10 “lives” taken that night. I survived, due to my strategy of staying with my international family until the bitter end when I hopped in the car to go home.

My time in the game came to a bitter end just yesterday, on Wednesday night. My friend Victoria, the same one I went to Sweden with, invited me over to her apartment in Portstewart to make pumpkin pancakes. This was completely inconspicuous to me since we had previously talked about making pumpkin cinnamon rolls. It goes without saying that when I showed up at her house bearing gifts of berries and chocolate chips, she capped me, right then and there. And literally, she capped me because she threw water from a bottle cap………….

After I got over the initial shock and anger of betrayal, we made some pretty fabulous pumpkin pancakes from scratch (bisquick does not exist).  Speaking of baking, Gavin (the other person I went to Sweden with) and I have been trying our best to make cookies. We have tried a few different recipes with the flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, chocolate chips, etc. and they always taste fine, but most of them have been hard as rocks! What are we doing wrong? If anyone can offer advice, we desperately need it.

In other news, I have been on two great trips recently. This past Sunday, I was a heathen and went to the old Bushmills Distillery in Bushmills, Northern Ireland instead of church… yet I say it was definitely worth it! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the distillery itself, but we had a wonderful tour guide who spoke with a clear as possible Irish accent and told us all about how they make Bushmills whiskey from only barley and yeast. Very scientific stuff they way they distill it by letting the alcohol vapor rise and whatnot. I found it very nifty, as well as the free sample they gave us at the end!

The second trip I had was just today, Nov. 14^th, with my international mum and her daughter, Charis. We went into Belfast to see Cats the musical in the Opera House! It was…. some show?! None of us knew much about the plot of the show and truthfully, we sat through the first act trying not to fall asleep. The hour and a half of the cats dancing was wonderful, however! The production was from the West End, so the set and actors were phenomenal, we just couldn’t follow the “plot.” Yet it seems the show doesn’t have much of a plot! A lady next to us from Britain explained how the show is based off of T. S. Eliot’s cat poems, and subsequently the second act made a lot more sense. I don’t regret going, however; I will NEVER turn down the opportunity to see a show. If you know me at all, you know that the theatre is one of my true passions. And to quote the Aristocats, “Everybody wants to be a cat,” and I definitely would have liked to be on that stage as a cat in the show. (Real pictures with cats soon to follow!)

Travelling to Belfast this time of season was worth it regardless of having a show to attend. Starting sometime soon, there is a massive Christmas market with crafty booths of gifts and food to buy outside of the City Hall. Endless Christmas lights line every street, and some of them are already turned on inside the shopping center at Victoria Square. It was very comforting to see that the lights in Northern Ireland are the same ones we have at home. We also ate dinner at TGIFriday’s, which was comforting due to the fact that every inch of the wall was covered in American paraphernalia. Linda kept saying I had just been drug around all day after the show and meeting her lovely son Stuart and his wife Rebecca, but on the contrary, I love just hanging out with them. It is exactly what I would be doing at home with my own family; holiday shopping trips where I don’t buy much of anything, good meals and conversation, and a drive home in a car with sleepy children and distant lights. It’s all I could have asked for in a November evening.

(Stay tuned for more information regarding upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Hopefully they will be as eventful as the Dinner for Schmucks, but one can only wait and see!)

And I can’t end this post without taking a moment to remember my friends at home in Huntington. Today marks the 43^rd anniversary of the Marshall plane crash, and also the first time in history that the Thundering Herd has played an away game on the anniversary of the accident. Every Herd member is wearing the number 75 on the side of their helmet during the game tonight against Tulsa (which I am keeping up with even though it is 3 o’clock in the morning here). It just doesn't feel right to not be at home to attend the ceremony and watch the game.

“And in this moment once a year, throughout the town, throughout the school, time stands still.”

We are Marshall.

It was a dark and stormy Halloween night...

It was a dark and stormy Halloween night in Derry-Londonderry with the Glaeser family.

Okay... so it wasn't that dark or that stormy... but it still rained a small amount about every 30 minutes when the Irish sun had to take a break from shining. Maybe it's too cold and it has to recharge more often? Yeah, I think that's how science works.

Anyway, the lovely Glaeser family came to visit me this past week! And considering that I haven't been able to Skype ANY of my family members since I have been here, it was nice to see some familiar faces. They arrived on Monday and stayed in Portrush as I recommended, since it is beautiful there on the coast. Monday night truly was dark and stormy, however, and after meeting in the Quay's Pub one house down from their B&B, we took refuge in the nice 55 Degrees North restaurant for dinner. I had a fantastic pork chop with red cabbage and mustard mashed potatoes (I think Aunt Sheila has a photo somewhere). I was bummed that they didn't get to see the fantastic view of the water from the restaurant windows, but since it was night time there was nothing visible. Still, we had a brilliant wee dinner and conversation catching up from the previous months and making plans for the next few days.

On Tuesday, I gladly skipped my classes and met up with the Glaesers in Coleraine to grab a bite to eat and show them around the neat little town diamond (city center). Uncle Arne, Gigi and I snuck through the Town Hall, saw some old tomb stones in front of St. Patrick's church, and bought pastries in a local bakery.

We then caught the 12:40 train to Derry-Londonderry and saw some gorgeous rainbows and green grass.

When we got to Derry, we HIKED up a San Francisco-like hill to get the the Tower Hotel where we were staying. We checked in our room and rested for a bit, but then set out in the town to see Halloween at it's finest. Derry is a very old walled city in Northern Ireland. Apparently they had some kind of famous "Siege of Derry" back in the 1600's or so, and these 13 apprentice boys shut the gates and 15,000 people were stuck inside the walls battling the king's army for 150 days. They ate rats and crazy stuff, but in the end they beat the king! So anyway, these walls around the city are obviously old, but they keep them up really well and it was a handy way of getting around the city by hopping on the wall occasionally. We ate lunch/dinner (linner?) at Austin's Department Store (the oldest in the world, apparently!) and had a great view of the city from the third floor.

We continued our shopping in Primark (Aunt Sheila got VERY excited). But I must admit it is a wonderful place. It's basically a European Target. We came very close to all buying onesie animal costumes, and I think we would have if we had found a giraffe for Arne... At 6 o'clock, it was already dark outside, but we made our way across the pedestrian Peace Bridge (built to symbolize the peace fought for through the Troubles, Bloody Sunday, etc.) to INFERNO. The hands down coolest thing I have been to in a while! There was a Halloween DJ playing Gatsby style music that we did the Charleston to while waiting in line to keep warm. Then they lifted this acrobat guy up who was hanging in the air by long scarves? I don't know what else to call them, but he was very good at it. (See first picture of blog...)

When we got into the actual thing, we first walked down this path all lit up with Arabian Nights lights, and on the way along, passed a girl dancing, a guy on stilts twirling fire, several crazy people in fairy-like fancy dress (or costumes as we would say), two girls in huge inflatable pyramids, a crazy old man on a wooden horse, a hoop dancer, some Luna Lovegood fairy girls, an optical fire illusion, and a whole bunch of cool stuff just set on fire.

After Inferno, Uncle Arne and I completed a lap around the city wall and saw some Halloween art displays before calling it quits for the night. There weren't as many people out as I expected there to be, but as our time went on in the city, it seemed like they just kept multiplying!

On Wednesday, we got up and ate our full Ulster Fry breakfast, complete with baked beans and white and black pudding. WARNING: DO NOT BE FOOLED. BLACK AND WHITE PUDDING IS ACTUALLY MEAT. It took us a while to figure out what it was... and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, either.

See that piece of charcoal? That is black pudding.

We continued our rainy day with buying double decker Derry bus tour tickets. However, the people working in the tourist information center didn't know a thing about tourism in Derry, so the tour tickets we bought were supposedly for 12:00 or something, but the bus driver told us he wasn't leaving again until 14:00... so we had some time to kill, and what better way to do it than with tea time!

Primrose Tea Room with Strawberry and White Chocolate Scones

When we finally got on the bus, we drove around the skinny streets in a double decker bus with a very talented driver who narrowly missed a multitude of street signs and car mirrors. 

We learned about several statues in Derry and their meanings, years the churches were built, saw the Bogside Murals to remember Bloody Sunday and simultaneously cover up IRA graffiti, and most importantly kept high and dry out of the pouring rain!

After our bus ride, we ventured back to the Free Derry side of town to look at the murals up close. We also went into the Free Derry Museum and learned more about Bloody Sunday and all of its tragedy. You should really go back and read the lyrics to U2's Bloody Sunday song...

After our depressing, yet enlightening afternoon at the museum, we had a fancy, 3 course dinner at the Tower Hotel. Apparently it was a package deal with booking a room there, but man was it good! I had phenomenal potato soup for a starter, a puff pastry with Mediterranean vegetables and goat cheese for the main course, and cheesecake for desert. YUUMMM. Gigi impressed us by eating all of her fish and then downing an entire ice cream sundae. We were all rolling out the door after that meal.

At this point, I still didn't know what I was going to be for Halloween, but the waitress suggested a mime because it is fairly easy to do if you have a striped shirt. Luckily for me, I do! So that evening, Uncle Arne and I went on a frantic search for white face paint in the Halloween/cosmetic stores in Derry. We were unsuccessful... but we got some good exercise out of it when we took the wall back to the hotel.

The next morning, I took the train back to Coleraine and they got on a bus to Dublin. It was sad to leave them, but I was glad to smile because it happened, and not cry because it was over.

SOOOOO....
ON TO HALLOWEEN!

I was a mime. I made my own version of white face paint with cold cream, baby powder and hairspray, then used mascara to paint my black mime lines. I also invested in a red bowtie and white gloves. I think it worked out pretty well! On the train ride back to Derry (Yes, I left Derry on Thursday morning and returned at 5 o'clock that evening), Jenny and Kristin (my two American flat mates) and I used large children's book pages, a belt, and duct tape to create Jenny's book fairy costume. We had some strange looks, but it was definitely a unique experience to play with books and tape on the train! Kristin was a vampire, and we found her some fangs at Tesco (the local grocery store) just before we left Coleraine.

Once in Derry, things started to get a little crazy. The only other time I've been in a city packed with so many people was probably for Barack Obama's first inauguration. They said about 50,000 people came to the tiny walled city. I'm sure there were more people than that in D.C. in 2008, but man was this Halloween party crowded! I took my friends back to Inferno and they liked it too. Mostly we just wound up wandering the city and admiring other people's costumes until 19:00 when the parade started and 20:00 when they had a HUGE fireworks show! I'm not sure it was the biggest I've ever seen, but it lasted for a good 15 minutes, and fireworks are always magical. :)

Of course the real fun started when we met up with all of the other international students and crammed our way into a local pub. Wherever we go, we always wind up taking over the entire bar, and we came pretty close to doing that in Derry, too. It was a good night of costumes, dancing, and feeling the vibes from the lost souls on All Hallows' Eve!