St. Patrick's Day... in Ireland baby!

In a completely irrational and thoroughly exciting move on Thursday, Sarah, a friend Adam, and I bought tickets to Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick's day. It was awesome.

We had a great time -- stayed with friend of Adam's from home, enjoyed some Guinness in it's homeland, ate all the things we missed from the western world (mainly sandwiches and bagels and bacon), and wandered all over Dublin. We met some really cool kids who were studying/working in Spain -- actually doing some Structural Engineering work, so I was excited to meet them. Without much of a plan, besides just to be in Ireland for the holiday, we saw a packed-to-the-brim Dublin (mainly tourists) lots of green and lots of Guinness.

We had a ton of fun, but it definitely made me appreciate Istanbul a lot -- #1: Western Europe is not for anyone lacking financially. Every time I bought something that costs more Euro in Dublin than it would Lira in Istanbul, I had to cringe. 2 Euro for a bottle of water! That is usually less than a Lira in Istanbul, so like less than 1/2 a Euro. Crazy! And #2: In Istanbul taxis practically beg to get it. If you walk to slow on the road taxis will honk at you to get in. Its less than 2 Lira to get in, and you can get quite a distance on 10 Lira during the day (remember 10 Lira = 5 Euro). In Dublin it was 6 Euro just to get IN the cab, not to mention a steadily increasing fare. Just to get back from town it cost as much as it does to get from the airport to my doorstep in Istanbul! And it took 2.5 hours to hail a cab! After fruitless attempts at flagging down the numerous empty cabs, we found the only place they were stopping was at this cab stand that had a mile long line of drunk and freezing people. Not the nicest crowd, let me tell you. And after waiting for all this time, the 5 of us hop in the cab only to be told "5 people weren't covered in his insurance." I don't even know if there is such a thing as insurance in Istanbul, but we've definitely had 6+ people in a speeding, crazy taxi before.

It was really strange to be in an English speaking country, Sarah, Adam and I all found ourselves stupidly miming every thing we wanted. The people would be like "Oh, you want this?" and halfway through the act of putting an imaginary hat on your head, you remember, ah yes, they can understand me with my words. We were really glad to find pork, and brought back a big bag of meat and cooked a big dinner last night with our friends. And we finally found medicine for Sarah's lactose-intolerance (a non-existent disease in Turkey apparently).

Overall, an amazing weekend, although we missed seeing quite a few Americans we knew that were in the city due to our lack of cell phones. It was an amazing experience and it also really made me appreciate Istanbul. It was so nice to come home to the city. Our super nice cab driver was talking to Adam (who has some Turkish background) and came up to our dorm and cooked us all Menemen, a Turkish egg/tomato/pepper dish. I love it! Only in Istanbul...

(a note on the pictures -- my camera went to Barcelona this weekend with a friend -- I didn't plan this trip remember! -- so all the pictures are from Sarah's camera. the group shot at top is (l-r back: Adam, me, Matt (we stayed in his house), Taylor, and front: Adam #2 (from Spain) and Sarah. the plane group shot is Sarah, Adam and i as we arrived in Istanbul with some Irish kids we talked to throughout the flight -- they were way cool. I love the people you meet traveling!)