Stoked

Saturday: Sunny chill

Three surfers from three different countries get together and pile up in a Ford Ka to hit the waves all the way on the opposite side of the country

We took off on Saturday at around 6am. Leaving Dublin behind --after a bit of a confunsion with directions-- and once the N4 was surrounded by fields, frost was evident on the sides of the road, on plants and... the driver said, on the asphalt! Sure enough, we were on our to the beach, where the water would be waiting for us at 9 ºC. Our surfboard bags were covered in ice...

There was a very good-looking right-hander nearby, but the tide was starting to fill in and those waves to get fatter. One of us was regular and wanted to surf the left, so we surfed here

Although none of us had a memorable session, we were all satisfied after an almost 2.5 hour-long session. Besides crashing my knee onto some rocks on my way out to the water, and cracking the nose of my board, my feet were totally frozen since the beginning of the session. Since I couldn't feel the board at all, I didn't really feel comfortable walking on it, or even moving my feet after taking the initial stance, so that wasn't fun. But otherwise, it was great to get wet.

After changing to no wind (what a pleasure!), we went to another beach to say hi to a few other members of the club, eat, and look into taking a second dip.




It was a beach break and it didn't look great. Most went back out, two of us decided to enjoy a walk to the point under the afternoon sun.


We found lots of shells and fossils

and took a few shots of a really nice break

and the sunset

Snow in Dublin

After spending New Year's in the Wicklow mountains, we've had a white beginning of the year in Dublin city too. Not only the snow, but also (or mostly) the cold temperatures caused the country to kind of paralyze for a few days. I took it as a chance to stay in town and enjoy it.

I took this below on Friday 7th... Bright and sunny work day (luckily I went home to hang my laundry on my lunch break and I got to be outdoors longer than just to walk over to the other building's café :)


Saturday 8th... snowman day. Magda and I made a snowman on Charlotte Quay:



And walked around and had a nice lunch in a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant downtown. (Thanks Magda for the couple of pix I'm borrowing here, and for a nice day together!)



At night I went to a DJ tropical session with a bunch of couchsurfers, and on the way back home I stumbled onto a snow storm (or almost).



This guy's snowman was bigger than my pile of snow, and they had a snow ball war.


The coolest thing of the night was a huge feeling of happiness, enjoying the snow like a kid, stepping on it and feeling it, making a snow pile in front of a park, observing these guys's fun fight, and capturing the beauty of every single moment through my eyes.


Sunday 9th...


In a totally different topic, I recommend this surf article online with cool shots: Searching the new cool - on DRIFT | perspective(s) in surfing

Grand Canal Dock from my room (3)

Grand Canal Dock from my room (2)

White New Year's

What a wonderful time we had out in the middle of nature, near Enniskerry!


I was meeting Federica and the rest at 7:30pm at Heuston station, and by recommendation of the bus driver, I had a pint to kill time until the meeting time.

Some great people from CouchSurfing got together last night to spend New Year's together. Two carfuls of people made it out to a hostel in Enniskerry... with no cars. Or, to be precise, with a single car, but rather than being on it, we had to push it on the slippery snow!



We finally made it, made the necessary introductions, checked in an hour after the reception's normal closing time, and headed to the kitchen to prepare our New Year's Eve meal. We were done cooking about 20 minutes before midnight XD


Some people weren't done eating their savory food when midnight arrived, but still all of us passed the year in the Catalan (or Spanish) way: eating 12 grapes to the sound of the church bell. Of course we were nowhere near a church or any kind of bell, so we democratically played the bells taking turns, one strike per person, clockwise : )

That turned out to be pretty fun, but definitely easier than in when in the old times I would do it with my family or friends: to the sound of actual bells (no delays allowed!), and eating non-modified grapes with seeds... Because seedless grapes just make it too easy ; )

We all passed the test and arrived to this new year together, so we toasted (though no champagne was found in the room). After some chatting and listening to bad quality music over bad quality radio waves, we moved to the living room, lit a fire and told shared stories, after an unsuccessful trial of tale-reading. Falling asleep on the couches one by one, we ended up moving to our beds at around 3am.

The full moon was beautiful and illuminated everything on sight (when you managed to open your eyes after falling asleep with your contact lenses in). The mountains, the trees, every single element covered in snow... it was a magical night. And, interestingly, that show of nature observed from the balcony-type of hallway to the rooms reminded me of the spectacle of the jungle near Iquitos this last summer, after a session of ayahuasca under the full moon.


Today, on the first day if the year, we got up, checked out, ate breakfast (coffee and left overs from last night and fantastic pies and pancakes freshly cooked this morning), over a long, very interesting conversation about language, culture, tradition and innovation. We then went for a stroll outside the hostel.

We had a nice time by a couple of abandoned vans and cottage totally mingled in with vegetation : )





Back to the hostel, those who hadn't stuffed themselves with pancakes an hour or two earlier, ate lunch with more left overs from last night, over a food-related conversation including Ferran Adrià and a restaurant in Berlin where all waiters and waitresses are blind and everything is dark so that you can experience food (and more) in a different way, which derived into a conversation about things you can do in a place like Berlin.

Since we decided to take off and until we made to Enniskerry, much time elapsed, for the road was in even worse condition than yesterday (totally snowed). Once in town, we headed to a cozy restaurant to enjoy a warm drink (and a guinness) and, most importantly, a very nice time and interesting conversation with a bunch of open-minded, warm-hearted people from all over : )

Bon any a tothom!

Precious ruins, Kilkenny and dolmen

My day didn't start off too well: I took a taxi to get to PaddyWagon because I was afraid I'd have to run all the way or be late. The taxi driver was undercharging me (or I thought so), so I asked him if he was sure he was giving me the right change (I had heard it cost 4 EUR but the meter said 5,85) --I think his ears couldn't believe that I wanted to pay more than what he was asking for, so I had to repeat my explanation/question again. Suddenly, he started yelling and ended up insulting me because he lost a client while we were talking. I opened the front door and gave him 2 more EUR while I said "You didn't need to talk to me like that, I just wanted to pay you more than what you wanted" and his response was "Bitch!"


I went into the office/hostel and introduced myself. They made me wait for the driver, like last week (I was early). I took my jacket off and filled up my water bottle in the bathroom downstairs. I took a few deep breaths for a few minutes, try to calm down after the scene with the taxi driver. I thought about Greg and wondered if he'd be there: since I didn't want to socialize with the whole group right then, I sat somewhere else and started playing Jewels with on my phone (Nexus One, Android). Effectively enough, he came laughing and sat next to me a minute later: he'd seen the phone we were all given last week at work.

Soon the driver came and we took off. The drive was nice, the water on the side of the road frozen. We were announced before departure, in fact, that the trip would take a route different than planned because the roads in the mountains were too slippery to drive on. The new plan sounded very interesting: visiting the ruins of a castle.


I loved the spot. You can tell on the pictures that the sun or its absence changed the views a lot, so I'm very grateful that it was sunny most of the day!



It was otherwise extremely windy at the top of the hill, but not too bad at the bottom, where the bus waited for us.



We departed, made a coffee and pee stop and made our way to Kilkenny. Before getting to the town our guide told us very interesting stuff about the most popular sports in Ireland, relating that to the fact that hurling is huge in Kilkenny. Hurling seems to be something like field hockey with flying balls. Greg said it looks very dangerous when you watch a game :-o


Kilkenny was very neat, but smaller than I had imagined it. We walked around town, to the cathedral, along the river and back around the castle. We had a nice lunch in a restaurant on the main street and an espresso in a little, super cute and calm coffeeshop in a smaller street off of the commercial area.

On the way back to Dublin we stopped at a dolmen site for a few minutes: pretty cool too :)

Since we were back quite early, I went to Graphton area. I wasn't planning on doing big (post-)Christmas shopping but rather looking for a place where I could buy threat to saw. Of course Graphton was really nice with the Christmas lights still on, people walking down the street but not crowding it and... wait, what is that music?! The sound of very lively music played with tradicional instruments hit my ears and I inevitably headed that way. I was walking toward them thinking I'd leave a tip when I noticed they had CDs for sale. I didn't need to stand there and listen to realize I wanted to buy one, so I just grabbed 10 EUR, put them in a guitar case and took my new album. I stood to hear a couple of songs (they were quite short), and moved on.

A few meters later I stopped at a scarf/hat/glove stall. I looked through many wool hats, tried one on and got it. Walked further and... I just had to go into Clarks because they still have that 50% off: I got myself a super comfortable pair of shoes (I'm sure my mom is very proud of me) for 35 EUR.

And sure enough, since I needed some pants I went into some other store and got a pair of jeans and some other pair of slightly more formal pants on sale. Finally, I walked into a health store and got nuts and tea of different kinds that will last me for a while :)

The walk back home was very nice: along the Liffey, I listened to an NPR music show that talked about different topics. Everything was interesting, and it wasn't cold. Life seemed wonderful. And then, the show lead interviewed a young female artist who basically stopped her life to take care of her dad who was dying of cancer --for seven years, till he passed awau. She took care of him and wrote music. And she said at one point: and that's what I did, I wanted to say it, I didn't want to hide it when people would ask where have you been. And a tear fell down my cheek --I felt sad when I thought about my mom.

My wonderful day in the nature, among the ruins, in a little town, near an ancient dolmen, my recent purchases, the nice walk by the river suddenly lost importance. (My eyes are watery again while I write this...) But I made myself go back to listening to the show --that woman is brave and is moving on. Just like the show, which now talks about some band that makes dance and trance music: I concentrated to listen to it and forget and leave behind any sad thoughts. I reached the Grand Canal and just before crossing the bridge, the show was over. Good timing, I'm getting home.

Check the photos of the trip