Cork
Well Friday morning I headed off and had a good training session at the gym; in preparation for the 4 days of Easter!
At about 130pm Mara and I arrived at Liverpool Street station to catch the train out to Stansted… we had it planned to meet Sarah and Emma there and get the 1340 train, and meet Kate 11 minutes later at Tottenham Hale station to head to Stansted all together! We ‘just’ made it onto the train all together after Sarah and Emma arrived a little late from their connections etc… anyhow all went well and we had a good chat on the way to the station! Once we’d checked in at Stansted, our flight was almost on time, we got caught up a little in security as Kate only took hand-luggage and one of her expensive face creams was in a 200ml bottle (oops!) but luckily the nice security guy let her go through to Boots and purchase some little 100ml containers to decant it into!
We then had a look around the small range of duty free shops, tried some free Baileys and Snow Queen 5x distilled Vodka, before buying a bottle of that and a British tin with cookies inside as Jen’s thankyou present! Mara and I grabbed a coffee each and the other girls grabbed something for lunch before we walked through to the Ryan Air departure area for more waiting… our plane literally pulled up and disembarked while we were all in line waiting to get on (quick turn around, no wonder Ryan Air planes aren’t always the cleanest!). Anyhow Sarah, Emma and Kate had priority boarding (paid the extra 2 Pound) so they saved two seats for Mara and I to join them! Mind you, for once just as it worked out, Mara and I were at the front of the ‘other passengers’ boarding line so it wasn’t too bad regardless.
Jen picked us up from the airport in two lots, and as I was in the first car to her house I got a proper bed to sleep on (haha). I’m sure next time we’ll swap around for couch duties. So, Friday being Good Friday all the pubs in Ireland were closed, and the alcohol isles in the supermarkets were blockaded off; literally NO purchasing of alcohol at all! In Ireland! Jen has stocked up the house well with food and drinks to last the weekend so we were all quite happy to all just talk and talk and catch up and drink and eat bits and pieces for dinner until the early hours of the morning (well about half one we headed to bed!).
Saturday morning I woke up first and got the tea happening and started breakfast and then Jen came down, and slowly as breaky was pretty much finished all the others came down from upstairs too! We headed for a walk into Cork, yep walked all the way, as there’s 6 of us and we didn’t think about a car only taking five people when we all planned the trip together… not to worry anyway! We enjoyed the windy and slightly chilly 40min walk into Cork as it was good preparation for the events of Saturday night! We found a Gloria Jeans in Cork! Yay! Haven’t been to once since Australia as the only other one outside of Aus I’ve seen was in Budapest and it was closed for Christmas.. anyhow we enjoyed a drink before splitting up and heading off shopping for about 3 hours. After shopping, more like window shopping, we regrouped and got the bus back to Jen’s place! We were going to go to a nice restaurant for dinner but they were all booked out (being Easter holidays!) so we stayed in watching more of the 100-episodes of Two and a Half Men (long weekend extravaganza) and then Jen, Sarah and I headed down to the famous Chipper to get fish & chips, or deep fried potato-pie (Jen and Kate!) and ate that for dinner on our return home! It was great fish & chips I must say; but to be honest I haven’t actually had any in Britain which is odd as it’s supposed to be the home of fish & chips…. maybe at Brighton beach later this year if summer comes I’ll try some then.
We got all dressed up to go out and caught a taxi into town (must better option than walking) where we headed to a bar at first and watched part of a Rugby game (six nations) and then headed to the club Rearden’s I think it’s called… wasn’t too bad but a bit like a meat-market! I think we got kind of caught up in a bucks party when we were downstairs in the pub section (older bucks party too, nothing fun and good looking unfortuantely!) and then we headed upstairs through throngs of people to get to the actual nightclub. My god I’ve never felt bass so strong before – I couldn’t believe they were allowed the massive speakers and subs that friggin huge just sitting on the floor around the dancefloor! My stomach felt a little sick as my enture body was vibrating with the bass so we moved a little further into the normal floor area to get away from it! Jen’s friend and I ended up dancing a bit cuz she’s a wild one who doesn’t go out that much, and just dances and dances when she does – anyhow she dropped a glass and picked it up so to stop her flashing her bleeding finger around the place I put a bandaid on it for her… in the morning she rang Jen asking what happened and how did she get a bandaid? Argh yep she didn’t remember any of the night!
Anyhow the club closed quite early actually at 2am so we called the taxi company, and the guy who dropped us earlier remembered us so he came and picked us up in the mini-van to drop us home! On getting home we had a cup of tea and some had toast, then it was off to sleep with glasses of water. Next morning I still woke up earliest and went down to have some breaky and put on the tea, and then the others came down and joined in with cooking breaky and we all just veged out and watched even more Two and a Half Men! From not having seen many episodes at all, I think out of the 100 made I have now seen at least 80 something…
Sunday night we headed out for dinner at Luigi Malones which was lovely – really nice food and desert – proper profiteroles yum! See why I go to gym so often? We had some more wine and cocktails and then some headed home, while Jen Sarah and I went to meet some of her family members (from Dublin) at a local pub! Sarah, Emma and Kate all had to leave EARLY Monday morning so all in all it wasn’t a late one, but definitely nice and relaxing. In fact the whole weekened was just at the right pace.
Monday morning I sort of woke up when the three girls left… but otherwise slept in a bit for once over the weekend! Jen, Mara and I eventually woke up and had a light breaky (start of detox!) and then we headed out to Blarney Castle – thanks Jen for driving us out there – which was quite interesting! The Castle grounds are just beautiful, nice and green with a real river/mote, and then we trecked up the steep stairs to the top of the castle, where Mara and I lay upsidedown to kiss the Blarney Stone and try to aquire the gift of the gab! Of course the bloody stone was the BOTTOM of the bit you have your head near whilst lying upsidedown being held from slipping too far by the front of your shirt… anyhow it was good fun and can say been there done that now! After Blarney Castle we then walked quicky around the Woolen Mills, which is now a huge Irish shopping store, then we headed into Cork for a spot of lunch. Found a nice little cafe down some little side streets! Mara and I then went to Tesco and got some dehydrated milk for our breaky at home the next morning… mmm yum.
After returning to Jen’s and watching more TV we headed to the airport just after 8pm and our flight was supposed to leave at 0930…. yeah right! It only pulled up about then to let the people off, so we boarded a bit late and got into Stansted at 11pm. We flew right over London too – if only we could have parachuted out onto our house! So we arrived Stansted at 11pm, and then because it was last night of Easter holidays the airport was busy and we got kept AN HOUR in the passageways of Stansted so that there weren’t too many people lining up at Customs…. I was SO pissed off, as typical bad organisational skills meant that after the hour wait, when we were allowed upstairs to the customs lounge, as we had flown in from Ireland we didn’t bloody well need to line up! Ireland passengers are just allowed to flash theor boarding card to a security member and leave to get baggage! ARGH! So we were kept waiting for nothing, as no one from our plane added to the customs lines anyway! So… grabbed our bags and headed down to the bus which drops us in Stratford (near home), and we’d missed the 11:20 and 11:40 and thought we’d get onto the 00:20 BUT they had already been overbooking all evening (as we found out happened to Bryce our mate we met up with at the airport bus waiting lounge…) so Mara and I bought tickets for the 00:55 bus! SO! From 11pm until 1pm at Stansted…. not happy! We finally got into the house bang on 2:00am – oh what fun!
Despite Ryan Air being annoying and giving us a bad ending, the Easter weekend away was excellent and a nice break away from London. Us 6 girls are planning the next reunion for 7 June in Epsom for the Derby Day races and hopefully there’ll be sunshine in Britain by then!
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lijadana
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