Hey everyone, here is a bit of an update on what we’ve been up to lately…
Since my last post, the weather here has been a bit crazy… there were about 3 weeks in March, where for 15 minutes, it would snow really hard, and then for 30 minutes, it was perfectly bright and sunny. It was cold enough to snow, but not cold enough to stick. This was the first time I had seen snow fall in ireland, so of course I video taped it…
That’s the view out our back window. After that, I went to take Keeley outside, and found the snow is QUITE different here than I’m used to back home. Here, they’re like little pellets…
I liked this photo that one of the local restaurants I follow on Facebook here in Dublin posted..
Same street, exactly one week apart…
However, the past week has been VERY sunny, which has been nice. We had SUCH little sun in March, that I actually started to get angry about the weather. But, I got invited to this event sponsored by Yelp (the website that does reviews for restaurants and stores). We went to a nail salon called Tropical Popical, and they were offering free manicures and drinks as long as you wrote a review about them. It was a nice way to get out of the apartment in the dreary rain and at least PRETEND we were somewhere tropical. So my neighbor and I went.
My tropical drink and tropical popical!
But that wasn’t enough, so Toby and planned our next vacation, YAY!!! We’re going to do a cruise along the turkish coast and greek isles. But it’s not like on a big cruise boat, it’s on these little boats called Gullets. Each boat has 6 cabins people can rent out, and you go around for a week. We’re doing it as an anniversary celebration. Crazy to think we will have already been married for 2 years!! Here are some photos from the company’s website…
The boat we’d be on
Photo of Marmaris, the first beach town we’d be leaving from
beds on the boat to lay out as the gullet sails to the next destination
table where everyone on the boat eats lunch and dinner together – apparently the boating staff also cooks traditional food for everyone on board
Bedroom on the boat
Gorgeous old Mosque in the cities of one of the beach side towns we’d be visiting
I’m so excited, I cannot wait! I’m also in the process of planning my next trip home, but I don’t know the dates yet. It’ll likely be before our trip to Turkey.
The other thing that has been a bit crazy here lately, is our water… So, because it was so cold and snowy for so long, the freeze caused the water pipes at the water treatment plant to crack when the water froze, so a lot of water has been leaking. Because of this, the water levels are really low, and they’ve started rationing the water. This all started on the Thursday before easter. We were out Thursday evening with some of Toby’s work friends, and it was towards the end of the night, so I went to the bar of the pub we were at, and asked for some water. The woman said, “Sorry, we don’t have any. I can give you pink lemonade?” So I was like, what do you mean you can’t give me water? You just pour it out of the tap! That’s when she told me the water had been shut off to the building. This was before I knew about the water rationing. So, because the water had been turned off, that meant the toilets didn’t flush, and you couldn’t wash your hands… EW!
So, I looked it up the next day, and that’s when they said they would be turning the water off from 9pm – 9am each night to try to save up water, and so they could repair the water the water pipes. Well, on Sunday and Monday evening, they turned the water off at 7 PM!!! Aparantly they thought they’d try to see if they could get away with that, and all the people living in Dublin, and all the restaurants basically said, “you can’t do that.” Especially the businesses because they were losing customers… you can’t exactly stay open if you can’t wash dishes and employees/cooks cannot wash their hands. Anyway… that was a week ago, and we still have water restrictions every night 😦 The crazy part is that when all that snowing was happening, half the city actually had flooding! So one we we had snow and flooding, and this week we have sun and water rations… I don’t know what’s happening anymore… ha ha.
On another random weird note, I don’t know if you remember that a few weeks ago I explained how here in Ireland, because this country is so catholic, it is ILLEGAL to sell alcohol on Good Friday. That means that legally, that Thursday before, all the restaurants and pubs have to close at midnight. Well, Friday everyone has off work because Good Friday is a national holiday here, so everyone obviously goes out on Thursday night. Well, I learned about, and experienced my first “lock-in” as they call it here. So what happens is (and I didn’t even know this was happening at the time till I looked my clock), at midnight, the barman of the pub goes up and locks all the doors to the building. Then, he put up this sign…
So, technically, they can still serve you alcohol after midnight, because they are closed… and because they’re “closed” the cops can’t come in to see if the pub is still serving alcohol. The reason they can get away with that here, is because when a shop is closed for the night in Ireland, they have metal or wood covers that cover the actual door. So here is a photo of a pub when it is opened, and when it is closed…
pub when closed (notice on the far left and far right of the building, how there are wooden doors that are shut)
The same pub when open (plus yes… a paint job). Notice that those same doors open into an entry way, and THEN you go through doors to enter the pub)
So, you literally CANNOT see inside when the pub is “closed up.” I thought was nuts that this actually happens here! But then again, I’m really surprised that it is still illegal to sell alcohol on Good Friday here.
Just one more cute little photo I thought I’d show before I leave you with another “my month in Instagram”. I finally caught a photo of how the mail men deliver the mail here:
Mail… Bike?
I don’t know why, but I think it’s so cute that they deliver mail on bikes!! Anyway… Hope everyone else had a great march! Here is my month in Instagram Photos:
From Cornfields to Celts 