Karaoke Update: The Swan Song

The day we never thought would come has come at last.

Alastair and Brock in the centre

Thursday we had to say goodbye to our favorite local hangout and primary singing venue (secondary venues include the streets and Supermacs). Grace had gotten in that day and after a short nap we headed into Blackrock with Brittany and Stacy to get some food before the main event. We went to a cute little pub across the street from The Wicked Wolf and got some traditional Irish food, including cottage pie and beef and Guinness pie.

After eating the four of us headed over to The Wicked Wolf in our finest dresses (we all had gotten a little more dressed up for our lasts night), which looked so different in the daylight and it seems like it is a nice bar to go and have a drink in even when you are not being serenaded by the one and only Brock Jones.

And it was a good night. Brock must have dedicated five songs to us, not to mention everyone else just went with the flow and dedicated their songs to us. Brock even changed some of the lyrics to give shout-outs to Chicago and Melbourne. Grace and I decided to sing "Don't Stop Believin'" and the entire Wolf Pack sang "Save Tonight," which had lyrics that described what we felt with painful accuracy (we also attempted to sing "American Pie" with less success). We got "Home" and "I've Had the Time of My Life" dedicated to us by another patron and Alastair, who is in fact auditioning for the X Factor today, was having a lot of fun serenading us with "You Are Not Alone," "You Raise Me Up," and of course "End of the Road." Laura busted out a solo of "Love Song" which was exceptional. The usual girls also sang their standard "Don't Stop Believin'" (even after Grace and I sang it) and "Don't Stop Me Now." There was also an extreme amount of dancing involved.

Laura and me belting

The one downside to our night was the fact that Mark, the raspy voice Canadian, and Stefan, the usual barkeep, were not there. I had Alastair text Mark to tell him that he had to come and say goodbye but he claimed that he was sick. I think Grace was a little surprised to see that most the friends we had made at the Wicked Wolf were old Irish men.

The X Factor

The End of the Road

And then the music stopped and it was time to bid farewell to the Wicked Wolf. We took a couple group pictures with Alastair and Brock and then said goodbye. We wished Alastair good luck on the X Factor and Brock said he was bad at goodbyes so he just said "until next time." We went up to the bar and talked with Eugene, who told us to be good girls and go home. We're going to miss them all.

And on to Supermacs and our usual worker. We all ordered the chicken tenders and laughed at the three Diet Cokes that Laura bought so that she could pull an all-nighter for her exam the next morning at 9 am.

Confessions

Here are some of the confessions I have about my time abroad. Don't judge me.

1. I brought my security blanket, affectionately known as "Red Blanky" to Dublin.
2. I have taken over 120 photos just of doors.
3. I gave myself a haircut (just a trim).
4. Laura taught me the Vegemite jingle and I frequently sing it.

Grace Has Arrived!

Grace left a rainy Chicago last night at about 10 pm after hours of delay and is now here with my in Ireland!

Because I had an exam today at noon I could not pick my little sister up from the airport for I had to enlist my great friends Laura and Stevie to do it. They even had a nice little "Grace" sign so that she knew who they were. Everything went according to plan and they three of them found each other and had lunch without me in the city centre. My Irish family and biological family has merged into one.

As I mentioned, I had a Cross-Cultural Management exam today that prevented me from meeting Gracie at the airport. I got to the exam facility and found me seat (the other day I sat in seat 2256!), pumped up on a chocolate muffin, tea, and a Coke. Although the tea and Coke got me hyped up I also had the problem of really having to go to the bathroom around halfway through the test. The other kids in the test also thought I was nuts when I kept making jazz hands to pump myself up (I attribute my ACT score to my excessive use of jazz hands during the breaks).

All the tests here have been essays and I felt confident on my essays today. You cannot leave the room for the last ten minutes of the exam and I had finished my essays and gone through them with 12 minutes left. I was then left with the choice of going through my answers more and adding little facts here and there and having to wait 10 minutes to get out of the room or just getting out of there and reuniting with my sister. Naturally, I chose Grace.

I got into the city and met up with the girls at Penney's, where they were doing some shopping. I then took Grace and we went on the short scenic tour of Dublin and then took the double decker bus back to UCD campus. Now she is napping and we are getting ready to go out to karaoke.

It's going to be a fun two weeks!

Trim

Sorry loyal followers but there have been a lack of posts due to the lack of adventures in my life. I, along with the other members of the Wolf Pack, have been busy studying for finals and haven't had time to take Ireland by storm like we usually do. We have, however, had a lot of time to introduce Laura to the trash TV that is The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Yesterday I woke up and since I don't have another final until Thursday it seemed like the right time for an adventure to Trim Castle in County Meath. I woke up at 10 am and seeing that it was a beautiful I quickly found when the next bus for Trim was leaving and started on my way, fueling myself with an apple and a Crunchie candy bar- the breakfast of champions.

I often feel like Blanche Dubois because in Ireland I really "depended on the kindness of strangers" (not because I'm crazy). I'm just so lucky that the strangers in Ireland are so nice. I asked a man at the train station to verify that I would be able to get to Trim if I got on a certain bus and the bus driver also made sure that I got on the right bus. When I had to get off not only did the bus driver tell me that this was my stop but another random girl on the bus also told me.

I got off the bus in a slightly drizzly Trim and the castle was right in front of me.

I love castles. Trim Castle is an Anglo-Norman castle built in the 12th century.

It was also used in the filming on Braveheart.

I found the entrance to the castle and signed up to do the tour (free due to my Heritage Pass) which wasn't until "half two" or 2:30, so I had about 45 minutes to wander. So wander I did.

After walking around the grounds I went up on the other side of the Boyne River and explored the Yellow Steeple. The Yellow Steeple is all that remains of an old abbey's bell tower.

I got on the tour at 2:30 with a Flemish couple and our guide, Brenda. I introduced myself as Claire and she said (like many other Irish have) "a good Irish name." She took us on an hour long tour and told me some interesting facts. Here are the highlights:

1. There is only one door to the keep in the center. The door is above the ground and a wooden staircase leads up to it. In times of crisis, the townspeople could run into the keep and then burn the stairs behind them so that so one could get to the door, and because the door was a couple meters above the ground a battering ram could not be used.
2. The spiral staircases in the keep all went clockwise. This is so that the man at the top would have the advantage. The designers of the castle figured out that 7 out of 10 people were right handed and if the staircase turned clockwise then the right-handed person coming down would be able to take a full swing, unlike the person coming up whose stroke would be impeded by the support in the center of the staircase. The spiral staircase only allow one person up at a time, another defensive advantage.
3. The moat running around the castle was where the town dumped the waste from the leper hospital. Naturally, people didn't want to jump in that moat.
4. Rain water was kept in order to have a reserve in times of trouble.
5. Brenda told me that after women give birth in Ireland they are given a Guinness to drink. Stout apparently gives you iron which is needed for breastfeeding.
6. If two people with the same last name get married they will have the cure for something (like ringworm) according to Brenda.

After the tour Brenda showed us pictures from when Mel Gibson came to film Braveheart and then I headed back to the bus stop and had a pleasant ride back to Dublin. When I got into the city I bought supplies for dinner (chicken caesar wraps) and then had dinner with my Irish family.

Venice by Night

Before dinner we had gone back to the hostel to check in and put out stuff in the room we were staying in. We talked to the kinda odd hostel worker again (who was sleeping on the couch when we returned) and he showed us the four bed female dorm that we had booked. He took us into the big girls’ room and then went to the wall where there was a padlocked door. He unlocked the padlock and we walked into a glorified closet that was supposed to be our room. We paid twenty-seven euro for this?

He left us there to unpack and make our beds and the three of us talked about how weird this was and a possible escape route (jumping out the window into the canal) should he use the padlock to lock us in the room (Stacy did ask him if the padlock would be on and he laughed saying that he would not lock us in while we were sleeping, which was only a little reassurance).

We went to dinner, which was probably the worst food that we had while being in Italy, and then tried to think of ways to avoid going back to the somewhat dirty and shady hostel. We strolled the streets of Venice for a while but it looked like things were shutting down and we were forced to go back to A Venice Fish.

When we got there we went into our little padlocked closet, which we were sharing with two other girls despite the fact that we thought we booked a four bed dorm, and tried to find the light switch but there was none to be found. Actually, we couldn’t even find a light that the switch would turn on. This was not looking good. While nervously laughing (I’m sure you’ve witnessed my nervous/scared/uncomfortable laugh before) I declared that there was no way that I was paying twenty-seven euro to sleep in a closet that didn’t even have a light and stormed off to find the rodent-like hostel worker (he had both a rat-tail and beady eyes, earning him this distinction).

I found him in the kitchen cooking for the hostel wearing a David apron. David aprons are aprons that have the front of Michangelo’s David  on them in an attempt to make the wearer look like he has David’s body. As we were walking down the streets of Florence and Rome we kept thinking to ourselves “Who would wear that tacky thing?” Now I know.

I asked him where the light for the room was and he showed me. We went back to the dorm room where Stacy and Britt were waiting and he went to the corner, pressing a switch with his foot that turned on a “floor lamp.” This “floor lamp” consisted of a broomstick with too light bulbs duct taped to it.

More nervous laughing occurred and we tried to pack for our flight back to Dublin. Brittany and I went into the common room of the hostel because we thought that more people we make the whole experience a little less scary. We met a nice boy from Canada who we talked to a little and I called my Dad to regale him with tales of me singing in a gondola, which he enjoyed.

Brittany went to bed but I stayed in the lobby so that I could use the internet. I continued to write in my journal and the rat-tailed hostel worker came up to me and asked what I was writing. I was tempted to say I was writing about him and his sexy apron but he seemed like the unpredictable type and I didn’t know how he would react. He also tried to get the other guests in the hostel to go out with him after his shift, which everyone declined. I did however meet a girl from none other than the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign! She said that I looked familiar but since she is in Psych I doubt that we had ever met before.

We survived the night but none of us slept particularly well. At one point in the night a dog started to continuously bark, which lead to a lot of screaming in Italian. A boat also came by blaring rap music, another indication that I might not be in quiet, picturesque Venice at all, just an Italian neighborhood in Queens (although I’m sure in New York cars bust out music, not boats).

Venice by Day

"Venice by day, Venice by night. 

Right where I am is terrifically right!"

The final stop on our Italian tour was amazing. We took the train in from Florence at 9:30 in order to spend as much time in the city as possible. As always, the first thing to do when arriving in a new city is to find the hostel. This hostel was A Venice Fish Hostel. Cute name, not so cute hostel. It was deja vu of our France hostel experience when we rang the bell and no one came, followed by the worker sticking his head out the window and coming to get us. Like our French hostel, we also walked into a room that was barren and looked as if under construction. This could not be good.

He took us up to the hostel and it was kinda nice. He us to a place to put our stuff because our room was not ready, so we changed there and then went out to explore Venice.

"And this is the Grand Canal. 

Its resemblance to life is not obscure. 

It is filled with the milk of human kindness, 

in spite of the fact its really a sewer. 

But don't let that spoil your moral. 

Its still a grand canal."

I was talking to my father and he agreed that the neat thing about Venice is it is the Venice you dream of. Everything is old with picturesque canal running through; it was like stepping back in time (except for the motor boats going everywhere). We window shopped on our way to the bus station where we were going to investigate how to get to the airport in the morning. Finding this out proved to be quite a feat as it took us to three separate buildings but finally we got our answer and purchased a bus ticket for tomorrow.

And what is the quintessential thing to do while in Venice? Why, take a gondola while humming selections from Nine: The Muscial of course! We found a gondola and paid a decent amount to be rowed around for about forty minutes. Our gondolier was fifth generation and you could tell that he enjoys his work. He even picked flowers for us while rowing along. Brittany asked him if he knew any songs that he could sing and he said that he did not have a good voice, would Brittany care to sing instead? She said she was in the same boat (literally) but I had a decent one. I suppose it didn't matter if I had a decent voice or not but when asked to sing I have no choice but to unleash my diva and perform. I stood up and performed my new go-to song, "On My Own" from Les Miserables, right in the middle of a canal in Venice on a gondola. Needless to say, it was an amazing once in a lifetime moment.

"And he is a gondolier.

Seeking love is the center of his life.

Though he never will go as far as wedlock.

That would really annoy his present wife."

The rest of the gondola ride was nice and peaceful, although much less epic. We saw the house Casanova lived in and went into the Grand Canal (which prompted much more Nine humming from me). It was indeed grand. Our gondolier told us that the canals are only 2 meters deep. At one point, a bridge was so low hat he essentially had to turn the gondola sideways to fit underneath.

After drifting through the canals of Venice is was time to shop! Venice is famous for its glass and Carnivale masks so we had plently of fun browsing and buying souvenirs for ourselves and people back home. Next stop was the Rialto Bridge, which is a large bridge with shops on it that crosses the Grand Canal. We had beautiful views from there and spent our time soaking it in. We even went to a small cafe on the banks of the canal and sat there for a bit.

Masks

Glass animals

Rialto Bridge

The Grand Canal

Next stop was Piazza San Marco, the biggest square in Venice. There was a giant church at one end but nothing to amazing. The worst part was there were tons of pigeons and I am not a fan. After witnessing San Marco Square we headed back to the Grand Canal area to get dinner on its banks.

Venice By Night coming up; studying is taking it out of me.

Karaoke Update

Yes, another Thursday has come (our penultimate in Dublin) and we spent it at the Wicked Wolf singing our hearts out. As always, I need to document the happenings.

• We have successfully infiltrated the local crowd. Brock bought us a round of drinks and Allister came and hugged us. The owner, Eugene, said goodbye to us as we left and encouraged us to come early next week.
• Once seated at our usual table right in the front Brock called us up to the stage to sing. We had planned on singing the classic "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (at this point I have watched the Glee version an embarrassing amount of times) but some guy stole it from us so instead we sang the karaoke standard "Don't Stop Believin'". The crowd didn't get that into it but we sounded very good. Laura and I even added some intentional harmony, unlike the unintentional harmony that usually comes from us being off key. 
• We also sang "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," a suggestion from the barkeep who has befriended us. We did not know his name until tonight. He refused to tell us it so I had to ask Eugene. Its Stefan.
• Mark, the Canadian smoker, sang his usual "Gangster's Paradise" and "Streets of Philadelphia" but added a new twist. He got up on stage, appeared to forget something, went back to his stuff and brought up a pair of sunglasses that he wore for the song. Yes, he wore sunglasses onstage while singing. I think he might have gotten embarrassed though because he took them off after about two verses.*
• Mark starting flirting with this German woman that was there and they both attempted to sing "I Got You Babe" together. It must have been the reggae version and the two of them could not get a hold of it, but that didn't stop Mark from trying to make his move onstage with everyone watching. It was extremely awkward to say the least. 
• More awkward fun came when the German woman left stage after singing with Mark and started dancing with another man.
• Even more awkwardness followed when Allister went up to sing and serenaded the German woman, who was over-served. There has been much discussion between Laura, Brittany, Stacy, and I about what happened to Allister's girlfriend, Sam, because she was here tonight but he was also blatantly flirting with another woman and we think that Sam may have cheated on Allister. This is all speculation of course.
• The girls from BU came and joined us. They also came to Supermac's with us afterwards.
• Supermac's was Supermac's. Laura remarked on how we got four chicken strips this time instead of the usual three.

Next week is our last one. We hope to monopolize the stage and have all our favorites sung by Allister and Brock. Tears will be shed.

*I read this entry aloud to Laura and she hypothesizes that he could not see the lyrics on the prompter and that is why he took his glasses off. I would not be surprised if that is the case. Considering he sings this song every week and no doubt practices throughout the week, he should really start to memorize those lyrics and it is bizarre that they are not memorized already. He just must not be cut out for the fast paced nature of show business.