Princess for a night! Or two...

Hello lads and lassies,

It's official - I have slept in a castle.

We left Dublin on Monday, after having visit the rather extraordinary zoo. They had all kinds of cool stuff, and by stuff I mean animals... like Zebras and Giraffes and Puppies. The puppies were not so fantastic, what with I live with three, but still the rest was cool. And the zoo itself is HUGE!!

But onto more important things. On monday, we got on a bus and came to Kilkenny, a rather small town about two hours away from Dublin. Before heading off to our hostel (or castle, whichever you wanna call it) we stopped by a pub for some lunch. It was fabulous! Bangers and mash, baby... and by bangers I mean sausages and mash, well, mashed potatoes. Irish food will be my undoing. So, we were just sitting around eating our meal, when this man, Joe, comes up to our table and starts talking to us. As it were, Joe was slightly inebriated (to borrow his words) and started telling us that Ray had "landed the salmon" because he was travelling with two girls. He also asked who was the queen here (I took that title, thank you very much!) and then told me I had Huskie's eyes. Right... I think he just told me I look like a dog... with light eyes. He was nuts. He finally left us alone, to go back to the bar, naturally. He tried ordering more drinks, but the bartender refused him, saying that he was too drunk. Now, the combination of drunkenness and Irish accents made it quite difficult to understand what was really going on, but after a few minutes, it became apparent that we were gonna witness a good old fashioned Irish barfight. Unfortunately, this scenario seems much too common for the bartender and he did a very good job calming everyone down and expelling the drunkards, thus avoiding a fight. Oh well, there's still time, more pubs to come...

Anyways, here in Kilkenny, we are living in a castle!!! And not only that, but the castle is haunted!!!! Oh yes, our haunted castle, which is about 8 miles outside the city centre and close to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (except a yard which houses roosters, horsies that eat out of our hands and reindeer), is absolutely gorgeous and said to be haunted by 3 ghosts... a little girl (we'll cal her Myrtle), a guard, and a third one, which everyone seems reluctant to tell us about. Must be scary. Anywho, we hung around the castle most of the evening, and at chinese food in a dungeon (quite an experience!) then we went to bed. And thats when the weird stuff started happening. First of all, let me just say that Ray is sleeping in the ladies' dormitories, thats not weird, but funny. When we were all sleeping, Ray swears he was woken up by "a ghost" throwing rocks at the castle. Heather and I choose to believe, cuz we want ghosts! So tonight, hopefully, we will be attacked by said rock-throwing ghost and then Ill write about that!

Today, we went to another castle, this one in the city center and actually used to house royal families, or something like that. We took a guided tour of the inside and were guided by a rather snooty Irish lady, but it's ok, cuz it was an interesting tour. We've spent the rest of the day walking along the gardens of the castle (castle always have the best gardens) and the streets of the city.

Tomorrow, it's off to Cork, where Im not sure what well see, but surely it'll be good! And after that, we'll go wherever the wid blows us... and by that I mean, wherever Heather decides...

Cheers!!

Steph :)