Day 6: Boarding the ship.

Today's the day! We board the Disney Magic for 14 days of fun and relaxation. I am so excited! We all slept so good last night. Really every night we've slept good, but last night was like one of those nights where you go to sleep & then it feels like it's morning 2 minutes later. We've really been blessed and have had zero problems with jet lag. I'm sure that was due to us getting up so crazy early at home the week before leaving and also forcing ourselves to sleep on the plane. 

I'm still here...

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't blogged. Things were CRAZY the last two
days! This is my first chance to even touch my computer since Saturday
night I think it was. It's 6:30am here in Gibraltar. Well, we haven't
actually docked in Gibraltar yet, but soon we will. I have a tour in
an hour, but I wanted to take a chance to assure you that I am in fact
still alive and that my blog is continuing.
The last two days were incredibly busy! I will be back to my regular
blogging schedule tomorrow. There will be some differences though. I
am now on the ship. I have Internet, however it is very slow, and at
times there is a possibility that we won't have access at all, as it's
by satellite.
Also, You will notice that the look of this post is somewhat
different. The wonderful cruise lines block blog websites or put time
limits for visits to blog sites per day to help keep the internet
access faster for everyone. This means the best way for me to post is
by e-mail. I probably won't even try to log into my actual blog which
means I cant edit it & make it all "pretty"- The super anal,
perfectionist in me is screaming as I write this! It's probably best
though, as it may take forever AND I'll go broke in the process! I'm
paying 50 cents per minute for internet. If I stick to e-mail I have a
program on my mac that is similar to Outlook, where I can log on the
the internet, get all my new e-mail, log off, read & reply to all my
new e-mails, write new ones, log back on & then send them. This
process only takes about 2-4 minutes of internet time. Works for me!
I will still be able to see all your comments on the blog. So keep
them coming! I love hearing from you guys! Ooookay. I'm sitting on my
bed typing this and all of the sudden my closet door just slid closed.
Freaky. I don't feel the ship moving at all, so I had forgotten I was
on a moving ship. For a second I thought my closet door came to life!
Anyway.
I will still be trying to post some of my pictures. It may be hard,
but I'm hoping that while in port, after my tours I'll head back off
the ship to use internet at the port that's usually free or MUCH
cheaper.
Between today & tomorrow I'll be writing up my posts of the days I've
missed, so don't you worry- you're not gonna miss a thing.
Finally I wanted to respond to some of the previous comments.
Aunt Cathy. Love you guys too! My parents send their love! Yeah, my
mom's not a fan of my pictures but I think their great! Hahaha.
Dawn- The weather in Dublin was nice. It wasn't too cold. The high
each day was around 61 but it was the wind that made it COLD. On the
day we went to that estate & to see the old ruins we were having 60
mph winds that was making it feel much colder- especially when we were
up in the mountains. We actually had great weather for Ireland, never
saw real rain- more of a mist with the sun still out.
For anyone else I missed. Thank you all for reading. I hope you are
enjoying reading the blog. I am enjoying writing it. I'm trying to
take in every second & taking time each day to write this forces me to
really remember it all.
Love you all & talk to you soon- PROMISE!
Lisa

Day 5: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain... sounds insane.

I’m back again after a VERY long day. Brace for impact... this is going to be a doozy. So we started the day at a refreshing 2am. We got up and got ready pretty quick. We were out waiting for our cab by 3:10am. He had e-mailed me back after missing our pickup saying that he’d be at our hotel by 3:15am to take us to the airport. We waited. And waited. He did it again! So my dad goes out on the street at 3:25am to wave down a taxi, but not just a taxi, but a taxi van to handle our luggage. While my dad is doing that my mom is calling the MIA driver to say forget it. He answers the phone and says he’s 5 minutes away, by this time we are loading a new taxi. He says he’s not late and that he was supposed to be there at 3:30am. Not what you said in your e-mail buddy. So my mom tells him forget it and we head out. We got to the airport on time and check-in went pretty smooth. We actually had to wait for the employees to get there to check us in. After that we headed to security where we had the most laid back security experience ever. I’m telling you, the Irish are the coolest people on the planet. After security we walked 10 miles to our gate. I half expected people to be standing along the sides of us cheering us on & handing us cups of water as we passed by. I think that’s the farthest I’ve ever walked in my life. The terminal was really cool except they made you walk forever and then just for the fun of it... to get on the plane you had to walk down three flights of stair, with your carry-on, walk outside in the frigid morning air and then back up another set of stairs to get on the plane. If we weren’t already exhausted from the early wake up call, we were done in by the time we got on the plane. We had a baby sitting in front of us but she was really good, so that wasn’t a problem. The problem, however, was those lousy French. After today, they’re going back to Freedom Fries- in my vocabulary at least. We’re all ready to taxi from the gate and then... *ding* “This is your captain speaking. Due to the French air traffic controller strikes we are not allowed to fly in French airspace. Due to this ......(inaudible)....... 15 - 20 minutes.” Excusez-moi?? “Due to this we will be delayed here for an hour and fifteen to twenty minutes.”  Oh, but it gets better. After waiting over an hour to take off, we then have to fly around the French's precious airspace causing us an even longer flight! I was so mad! Don’t know if you’ve been up on the news, but there is a hurricane named Lisa out there. Just saying. Once we finally landed we walked right through customs & then onto baggage claim where we picked up our luggage. While we were there we watched an older lady have an anxiety attack that turned into a full on seizure. Her name was Mary and it was just about the saddest thing I have ever had to watch... other than the Yankee vs. Phillies world series last year. I know, how could I joke, but I have to- it was just too sad. After that we headed out with our luggage to meet our tour guide who was picking us up and taking us on a 4 hour tour of Barcelona and then dropping us off at our hotel. Now that was a sight! Remember the pic of our 9 bags. I was told at booking that we’d have a minivan. Not so much. He showed up in a Toyota 5 passenger car! That was a site to see. Due to the overload, he took us to our hotel first & then on our tour. We had the trunk full, 4 bags on the passenger seat and then another in the foot well where my legs should have been, forcing me to sit Indian style (criss-cross apple sauce, for the politically correct who get offended easy) the whole way. It was embarrassing but oh so funny. Just take a second to picture myself & my parents squeezed in the back seat of a small car, now add 9 suitcases, a small backpack & a driver. Priceless. Now we had just left Ireland & basically had seen almost no rain... we land in Barcelona, pouring on & off all day. Due to the rain & lack of sleep there are no pictures with my dslr or any of us. There are quite a bunch of the architecture here from a famous architect, Gaudi. Weird stuff if you ask me. Kinda like an adult’s Dr. Seuss. They’re really proud of it & it us breathtaking, just not in the “oh how beautiful” way, more like in the “what drugs was he on” type of way. As you can see I’m not a real big fan of Barcelona. I don’t know. I guess really it didn’t stand a chance after Ireland. It’s just a big, busy, dirty city to me. When I say dirty, I don’t mean like litter or anything. It’s hard to explain. I guess you could say grungy? I don’t know. I’m glad I’m here & got to see it, but I don’t need to come back to Spain... or at least not to Barcelona. After our tour we went back to the hotel and laid down for a bit before heading to dinner. We had probably the best meal of the trip tonight. It was so good! It was all kinds of tapas, pailla, rabbit, veal stew, chicken, flan, deep fried bananas, etc. So good! After dinner we got to see a Flamenco show. WOW! That was so cool. I took video but I don’t think I’ll be able to post it until I got home. Search “Tablao Flamenco Cordobes” on youtube or go to their website if you’d like to get an idea. It was the most amazing dancing, singing & guitar playing you could ever imagine. And the lead male dancer... let’s just say I’d visit Barcelona again after that. Wow. Even my dad commented about him after the show. I bought the dvd so maybe when I get home I’ll be able to post some of it. I don’t know how well my sound will be on my camera, since they served all-you-can-drink sangria, so needless to say we had a rowdy group! It was still an amazing experience though- drunk woman screaming like 14 year olds with Bieber Fever and all. Don’t even ask how I know about that. And can I just ask, what the heck does that little twerp know about love??? What is 10?  I digress. After the show, we walked out to pouring rain. Luckily I had brought my dad an umbrella & my mom & I our rain coats. We had about a 20 minute walk in the pouring rain back to our hotel. I almost face planted about 4 times, since I was in very slick bottomed flip flops, so it was quite the experience! Hoping my jeans dry by tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning we move into the Disney Magic cruise ship- our home away from home for the next 14 days!! 

Talk to you guys soon!

Don’t forget to check out my pics... use the link at the top. 

Day 4: Last day in Ireland.

Today was the final day in Ireland. I was so disappointed. I love it here. I want to come back and visit both Ireland and Scotland next time. I never thought I would love it so much. You learn something new everyday. Another thing I learned while here is that I don’t like their “baked beans” that they serve with breakfast. Today we had the full Irish breakfast. It was good. It was eggs, sausage, white & black pudding (sausage), mushrooms, a type of ham, toast and “baked beans”. I was worried about the black and white pudding when apparently I should have been worried about the beans. I’ve never met a bean I didn’t like and they looked so good. About halfway through my meal I took a big bite of the beans. The beans were made in Guinness. Guess what I found out I don’t like... Guinness. Holy night that stuff is terrible! I’d rather lick the floor! After I took a bite of that my stomach flipped and that was it. I was done. I had another bite of toast to try and get rid of the taste... didn’t help. It’s like vinegar, it lingers. Ugh! They drink that stuff?? Voluntarily? And they PAY for it??? I was very happy to hear later on in the day that our Irish bus driver hates the stuff too. I didn’t feel like a total tourist now. 

After breakfast we had a little bit of time to walk around before boarding the hop-on-hop-off bus. We headed into a grocery store to have a look around. That was neat. We bought some bottles water, snacks & tic-tacs. After our little shopping trip we headed to the bus. Bus stop #1 starts at our hotel- talk about convenient. We rode the bus about halfway around to get to one of the most popular attractions before all the crowds. No, not to Guinness, but to the Kilmainham Gaol (jail). Wow was that cool! It’s one of the largest “jails” in Europe and it was used from the 1780s to the 1920s. So cool!! Got lots of pictures of it. It’s been used in the filming of a Julie Roberts movie (forgot the name), the Tudors- many times & a music video for U2, among others.  We had an hour long tour and because we were a smaller group and the first of the morning, we got to go in an off limits room- the room where they carried out the hangings. Very cool, but morbid. There were some sad moments. Like they have on record the youngest girl to be sentenced to time in that jail, doing hard labor, she was seven years old and she was in for stealing a coat because she was cold. The youngest boy to serve time in the jail, and had to do hard labor while inside, was a five year old boy & he was arrested for stealing a chain!!!! Five years old! Can you imagine. I never want to hear anything about these poor kids and all the homework they get! And I never want to hear about parents that don’t punish them ‘cause they don’t want to hurt their feelings! I digress.

After that totally cool, but sad experience we got back on the bus and then visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then Christ’s Church- the oldest building in Dublin & it was was built by Vikings! We even got to go down under the church to the crypts. Very cool! They had artifacts down there, like a book from the 1400s and lots of other gold cups and things like that. I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of the artifacts, but I did get some before going near that stuff. Oh, many movies & TV shows were filmed there and they even had costumes from the Tudors which also films there quite often. Jonathan Reese Myers??? Yes, please! Also next door to Christ Church is a Viking Museum. LOTS of information and I think we lost my dad for a good hour while in there. It was cool though. We learned a lot about the Vikings, including the fact that surprisingly they actually weren’t all bad and they were the ones who first found America. Sorry Columbus... this was not your day in the sun after all. But it’s ok because they also found and “started up” Dublin. (Look... it’s been a long day. I know what I’m trying to say but all that is coming out is “started up” so yes, the Vikings started up Dublin.) They also found the full skeleton remains of a Viking Woman. So cool. 

After our Viking overload we headed to the Temple Bar area of town to have dinner. We ate at one of the most popular restaurants in Dublin, Gallagher’s Boxty House. The food was amazing! Their meat is like no other meat. We tried the beef stew... OMG! If it’s possible for meat to melt in your mouth... it did! We also tried corned beef & cabbage, lamb shank and can anyone guess what I got??? A burger! This burger put 5 Napkin Burger’s size to shame! It was so good. They’re known for their meat & now I know why! We also tried their boxty trio. Basically the three different ways they serve potatoes. Really good! And then what wouldn’t be a Irish dinner without bread & butter pudding?! So good! 

After dinner we headed back towards our hotel stopping to shop along the way. After shopping, we packed up & are in bed. The cab is meeting us outside our hotel at 3:15am! Ouch. We fly to Barcelona tomorrow morning. You guys will be waking up by the time we are In Barcelona & just finishing up with our tour! Barcelona is 6 hours ahead of NY.

Real quick before I go. I have all of the Ireland pictures up on the site. I am so sorry for the mess they are. I’m using my dslr & my point-and-shoot and they’re not taking well to the time change. Due to this my pictures are in no order at all. I tried to get them at least grouped together the best I could, but for whatever reason, the internet here is terribly slow when dealing with pictures. Maybe I’ll get them in better shape tomorrow night in Barcelona. 

My final thoughts on Ireland is it’s amazing! I can’t wait to get back. I didn’t even scratch the surface of all the the things to see. If anyone asks me if I think they should visit Ireland, the answer is YES! The country is beautiful and so are the people. They are the most friendly, funny people I’ve ever met. Talking to them feels like talking to family. It’s just great here & I can’t wait to get back!

Talk to you guys soon! 

Night!