And now, ladies and germs...w/out further ado...

The final update.

So, first things first...as promised, Ireland.

Last Wed. After checking into Camden Place hostel in Dublin, we sought shelter from the needling rain in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where we wrung out our hair while listening to the choir perform its evensong. The air was warm, the atmosphere cheerless.

But much merriment was afterwards at the Duke, one of Dublin's top pub(lic house)s. There, we did a pub crawl. A literary pub crawl. Which is to say we spent the better part of three hours splashing through the slippery streets of the city centre whilst swilling Guinness (godawful stuff) and listening to two bowler-hat clad dandys regale us with a scene from Waiting for Godot and tales of Oscar Wilde's wild night out with a crusty gang of silver miners from Denver. Naturally, we were the babies of the group (everybody else was either old, Canadian, or both); but a good time...perhaps too good of a time...was had none the less. We topped off the night with a self-guided tour of Temple Bar.

The following morning, we made the six-hour journey to Dingle Town, a blustery little fishing/former potato farming village tucked cozily away on the tip of the island's westernmost peninsula, known affectionately by our Dubliner cabbie (and most of the country) as Old Ireland. Or, better yet...Olde Ireland. There, we expected to find Gaelic, sunshine and dolphins. Seriously. Dolphins.

Naturally, we found English, bitter cold, buckets of rain and terribly violent winds. Though we'd planned on seeing the stunning coast from atop two rented bicycles, we instead saw it from behing the fogged-up (and slightly cracked) window of a hired van (which means we got very wet). On the upside, we did visit a lovely old Romanesque church where I gained eternal life by squeezing through a very narrow aperture called "The Eye of the Needle." And, after a nip of afternoon tea (and cake) in a cozy little B&B and a self-guided tour of the town's merriest pubs, our spirits were lifted considerably...that is, until we made the mistake of commiserating with a plasterer from Dublin and his Finnish girlfriend, who were both very sad and very drunk. After much talk of unemployment and nuclear proliferation, we decided to call it a night.

Luckily, the sun came out the following morning, and we got to take our much awaited (and much belated) cycling excursion to the dramatically picturesque Slea Head. There's no use in attempting to describe it...but hey. That's what cameras are for.

That same day, we returned to Dublin. On our bus ride from Dingle Town to the train station in Tralee, we spotted a diminuitive Gaelic-speaking person with a wool cap and a stubbly red beard, i.e., a leprechaun. And on the train ride from Tralee to Dublin, we shared our berth with a schizophrenic American expat living in Cork who was tenaciously engaged in lecturing a simple-minded ex-serviceman named Patrick on the proper way to write Nationalistic verse. It was a long ride.

On Sunday the 2nd, we left the Emerald Isle for England. Upon returning to London, we made a beeline for the Texas Embassy near Trafalgar Square, and sought amnesty from the Continent's cuisine in a basket of chips, a heaping bowl of queso, and two margaritas. Katie was delighted to discover a Baylor flag (sic 'em) and half of Waco's names scribbled on an upstairs wall.

From there, we went to Oxford, where we were warmly received by the Rosenbaums, who are generously allowing us a room in their flat. Monday consisted of Harry Potter and slow-motion shopping. That evening, we dined with the 'Baylor in Oxford' group in the great hall at Christ Church and, after zipping through the private gardens that inspired Alice in Wonderland and watching a gang of gray-bearded cheese-heads with jingle-bells tied 'round their ankles prance around to a traditional English air, we accompanied some of our new friends to a local pub.

On Tuesday, we had another go at London, only to end up defeated and sorely deflated. We attempted to catch the changing of the royal guard at eleven, but our plans were thwarted by "a person under the [Victoria Line] train" (translation: the public transit authorities were in the act of peeling somebody off of the tracks, and so we missed our train...the British do know how to be delicate). From there, we moved on to Madame Tussaud's wax museum, only to find a five-hour wait. Our attempt to circumvent the queue by ordering and printing our tickets online fell flat; but, feeling quite clever, we went ahead and got our advance tickets for the Tower of London. Of course, there were no ticket lines at the Tower of London, but rather, only one, massively long line (the wait must've been four hours) to see the Crown Jewels. Rather than queuing up, we made our way up to Brick Lane for some fine Indian Food, which soothed our souls but hurt our hearts. The evening did, however, end on a rather good note; on our way to see Oliver! in the West End, we happened by the red carpet premier of "The Ugly Truth"...and so, Katie got to snap a few photos of Katherine Heigl's back.

Today, after a nasty confrontation with a salesman at a local music store, we (or, to be fair, I) calmed our(/my) nerves by taking a walk along the nature route that inspired C. S. Lewis to become a Christian and strolled along the Thames, where incorriagably cheerful Britons, with their crooked smiles and their river boats and their fists crammed with bread crumbs for the geese, helped restore my faith in humanity.

Well, that about does it...tomorrow, we'll (hopefully) board a plane bound for Houston. I suppose some closing remarks are in order, but, to be frank, I'm mentally kaput.

...so...

...until next time...

S. & K.

Sorry 'bout that. We got timed out.

To finish the exciting little bit about the cab ride in Rome...

...after backing over the curb and up onto the sidewalk, he defied the protestations of the caribinieri and made a sharp left, squeezing in between a deluge of opposing traffic and the broken tram car. God, it was scary.

Off to London...when we return...Dublin, and Dingle Town. Bye for now!

Top o' the mornin' to yeh.

It's been some time since our last post, and there are reasons for this...the foremost bein' the fact that we missed our flight from Rome to Dublin Intcont'l, which was scheduled to depart from the outdated, outmoded, and altogether dinosauric Ciampino airport at 10:50 on Tuesday morning. This, of course, delt a crushing blow to our morale, which, at that point, was already sinking beneath the eternal city's myriad abuses of our trust.

And I'm not out to make excuses for us, 'cause it's our own fault that we missed the flight. Having grown quite accustomed to breakfast on the terrace at Ganymedes's Palace, we decided we'd eat before boarding the commuter bus to Termini Station, from whence we planned on taking another bus to the actual airport. Yes, we had a plan; but the plan ran aground.

First off, Alessandro was a bit late laying out the spread; then, the first bus took forever to get to the station; and then, the layout of the station itself confused us to no end, so we ended up walking about aimlessly for about twenty minutes before freaking out and grabbing a cab.

The wrong cab.

This cabbie was a maniac. True...the cliche says that cabbies are agressive drivers. But this guy...this guy...this guy attempted to manouvre past the caribineri attending to a stalled out street-tram by weaving through a torrent of opposing traffic, putting the cab in reverse, cutting the wheel sharp and to the right, hopping the curb...

How we made it there alive I'll never know. But we did...and after discovering that we'd missed our flight, sulking for a good twenty minutes, bucking up and reserving seats on another plane going out the next day, and taking yet another bus back into the city, we decided to drown our undeserved sorrows in soda pop and golden-brown batter at the local Hard Rock (yes, the Hard Rock still sucks).

But enough of that. The Emerald Isle, for what it's worth, has more than met our expectations (which, I might add, were mighty high). Naturally, upon our arrival in Dublin, we set out in the general direction of our hostel with confidence only to end up lost and confused. But everybody...and I mean just about everybody...went well our of his/her way to set us on the right track. On our first bus, we met the Irish equivalent of our dear old Uncle Bob, who cackled, quoted Shakespeare, and showed us to our stop; the driver of our second bus pulled over upon realizing we'd gotten off at the wrong place and yanked us back aboard; we even got a free ride from an unusually magnanimous cabbie.

Out of time, to be continued!