Bear and Mary's visit to the Emerald Isle

Col and I celebrated Australia day at the Woolshed in Dublin listening to Triple J, eating pies and Twisties and drinking Aussie beers. After a couple of flat tasting brews the good old Irish pub was calling and we met up with Kylie and Aram for a couple of pints before heading out to the airport to pick Bear, Mary, Nat and Will up. Halfway through our first drink with Kylie and Aram, Mary called us to pass on the sad news that Nat and Will were at the airport in London, yet, without a passport and were therefore denied to board their plane. The news came as a shock as we were very excited to see those crazy kiwis again and this time without the death of a hamster. We managed to change our car hire from a 7 seater to a normal sedan and off we took, with Bear and Mary in tow towards Thurles. In hindsight we were very lucky that we exchanged the 7 seater for a shorter vehicle. Car Hire Ireland would otherwise be missing the back half of their people mover car now. I will explain shortly...
Around midnight (Friday) we finally made it back to Thurles. We decided to stay in and ended up spending half the night on Skype speaking to Shazzy, Jo and Mark in India, Burger and Si at the Sunshine coast and Sally and Borgus in Paddington. What a fantastic technology! In an other 10 years we will have 3d images beamed into our living rooms instead of the life video feed on the computer screen. We all had a blast and are looking forward to the next skypemathon!
Saturday we went for drive to Kilkenny where we had a look at the castle and it's art gallery and tasted many Kilkenny's and Guinnesses. Mary walked into a butcher and asked for juicy Irish pork blood sausage (the Irish call this black pudding). The butcher did not know how to take that one, meanwhile, Col and Bear are looking through the shopfront window and nearly die laughing. Mary ended up with a big piece of bloody Irish sausage which we fried up for breakky the next morning. This is meant to be an Irish delicacy but we have not found one Irish person yet that actually eats this stuff. Must be an other Blarney Stone tourist rip-off thing.
After plenty of laughs we decided to head back to Thurles (the Hurling capital of Ireland - www.thurles.ie). We made it back to the car park and realised that the parking ticket went missing. After 5 minutes of searching, Col suggested to tail an other car through the gates. Mary agreed with Col, while Bear and I were unsure but did not interfere with the plan. I am still unsure how Col managed to get through this gate without crashing into the car ahead of us and without the gate splitting the car's roof into half all I remember is everyone holding their breaths while slightly ducking down. The relief was immense and I think from that point onwards we knew the night to come was ours.
We made it to 2 pubs that night, Larry's and Morrissey's. Larry's is our local and you can be assured to find some talkative Irishmen in there. It did not take longer than 5 minutes and Mary and I were circled in by some mad Irishmen. We could not understand half of what they were saying. All I can re-piece is that one guy offered to take us around Ireland in his van to show us the real Ireland with the real Irish pubs. Thanks but no thanks.
From Larry's we ventured to Morrissey's, which was our last stop. Around midnight we headed back to our little place to start skypemathon number two with India. During the course of the night our place filled up with Irish lads that we had never met before. We were more than happy to welcome everyone in and we can now proudly say that we are down with the locals. Time to move on! Enjoy the pics...

St Mary's church/ cemetry in Thurles. This Anglo-Norman church was built in the 12th century and dedicated to Mary. Go Mary!

It did not take long until the Irish madness struck Bear. Sign of an excellent weekend...


This chuck is called Ginger. He is very famous in Ireland as he is the two time champion in heavyweight fighting. After his fights he enjoys a quiet Guinness with his proud owner.

Kilkenny's skyline.


Mezbear and Col in front of the Kilkenny castle.

The Kilkenny castle.

The Kilkenny castle.

In the art gallery of the castle.

Bear's first Guinness in Ireland.

Our first Kilkenny pints that day. For some strange Irish reason, Kilkenny beer can only be purchased in Kilkenny of the tap. Real shame cause it's a very nice drop.