Ireland: Accidental Haggis

Ireland planning is go!

Well, I say "go"...

What's actually happened is that after a week of me defusing stress at work by looking up glorious Ireland things in my lunch break, we've had a Skype chat, me, Claire and Gemma.

It lasted 3 hours.

We have achieved bugger all. Save that we are, of course, all rather excited and that nothing has changed in the insanity stakes - the conversation did rather descend into ridiculousness.

It went something like this:

We tried to find flights at a decent price. We succeeded at this courtesy of Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Wonderful.

Then we had to decide if we wanted to come back on the Saturday or Sunday. We settled on Saturday.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SELECT DATES

At which point I realised the dates I'd put in Skyscanner were for coming back on the Sunday and when I reset them, the times and prices we'd been considering no longer existed. Buggeration. Anyway, we solved this and settled (possibly) on some new times. So I clicked through to Ryanair to have a closer look at prices, what with extras and everything. Ugh.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ROBBING BASTARDS

So, Ryanair flights are cheap, but it's £25 if you want to take a checked in bag. Per flight. Grr. Then again, still cheaper than any of the other airlines, so can't complain.

Still, we didn't actually book any flights because Claire's going to fly from Gatwick and Gemma and I from Manchester. Which means trying to time our arrivals so no one has to wait around for too long. The flights don't match up neatly. Grr. So we settled on sorting this out next week when I'm going to be in Bournemouth with Claire and we don't need a 3-way Skype chat.

We moved on instead to discussing where we want to go and what we might want to do. This currently includes the following:

• Whale watching
• Kayaking
• Horse riding
• Skellig Michael
• Giant's Causeway
• Rathlin Island
• Blarney Castle

 ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: PINS IN THE MAP

 And then there was mention of trying to find Irish food to try. That isn't Guiness. Which resulted in a lot of poking through Wikipedia and getting grossed out by black and/or white pudding. I like black pudding. It's yummy. Claire, apparently, has eaten it accidentally. Also haggis. Hence, accidental haggis. Not sure how this works...

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: OM NOM NOM

The conversation had been making a steady descent into madness for at least an hour (accidental haggis being fairly boring by our standards) when Claire, in the middle of reminiscing about New Zealand, decided on the stupid thing we're going to do in Ireland.

See, when we were in New Zealand, Amy and Claire decided that when we got to Mount Doom (or near enough), Amy would hit me on the head with a rock and then bite Claire's finger off, a la Lord of the Rings. We couldn't initially think of a similar situation for Ireland until Claire remembered that Andrew Scott is Irish. Andrew Scott being Moriarty in BBC's Sherlock.

So now Claire's decided that she's going to shoot herself in the head (Moriarty), I'm going to throw myself off a building (Sherlock) and Gemma's going to stand at the bottom and cry over my lifeless body.

...

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MURDEROUS INTENT

...

I'm not sure I like this plan...

Now is probably a good time to mention that my dad, who's known Claire for over a decade and knows what we get like when we're together, has asked me repeatedly if Gemma knows what she's getting herself into.

Well, Dad, I don't think we've scared her off yet.

"Yet" being the operative word there.

Ah well, moving on.

We moved on to trying to find a mascot to take with us. I refuse to take a leprechaun, so this resulted in a trawl through the depths of Google in search of a national animal of some sort.

Ireland doesn't have a national animal. The closest we could get was a stag, which is some sort of unoffical thing.

So I toddled off to root through the box of Beanie Babies that live in my cupboard in search of a stag. We don't have a stag, but we do have a deer. I can't find the deer. So I settled on a goat instead, in honour of this 'ere weird photo that we found while trying to find things to do.

Something to do with Puck Fair, which is an old festival type whatnot. I have no idea why the goat is wearing a crown. I think it might be the King...

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MASCOT GET!

Soooo... all that we achieved in 3 hours of Skyping was clarifying that Claire is a bad influence on me, Gemma isn't easily scared off by said bad influence and that 2 weeks in Ireland is going to be really damn awesome.

Oh, and we found a list of Irish bands for the playlist, of which we'd heard of about a dozen. Oh dear.

In other news, I have no idea why I've been sticking ACHIVEMENT UNLOCKED all over the place. Probably been playing too much Minecraft...

3 Days To Go: "So Evil They Named It Twice"

What the title says.

ARGH! After so long in the planning, take off is just 3 days away. This time on Saturday we'll be at the airport. I will be having my usual worry about getting earache when we land. Believe me, I will start worrying about this before I even get on the plane - landing earache is painful. I will also be strongly resisting the urge to make highly inappropriate remarks about what might be in Amy's luggage within range of Security.

A soundtrack is also in progress. Mostly consisting of musicals and Howard Shore and Disney and general ridiculousness.

So, 3 days to go. Let us attempt to get Amy and Claire involved in the blog. 3 things we're most looking forward to?

Zoe:

• Hobbits
• Kiwis (the birds and the people and possibly the fruit)
• Catching up with an old friend from uni

Claire:

• Kayaking
• Whale watching
•  Sand boarding

Amy:

•  SNOW!
•  MOUNTAINS!
•  MORDOR! MORDOR! (so evil they named it twice)

Note that Claire has the only serious answers. Coming up in the ever-awesome world of this ridiculous blog: 2 days to go. Also, Beak is excited to be jetting off. Obviously.

"Are we going the right way?"

We went to Whitby today. Look how happy Amy was:

As you can see, it was gorgeously sunny and nicely warm. Managed to find our way there OK - didn't really need the sat-nav until we got into Whitby proper, so we're figuring it's going to be at its most useful when we have to drive in places like Wellington and Auckland.

We had fish and chips for lunch. Extortionately expensive fish and chips - think we get a bit complacent living in Grimsby where it's relatively cheap. Claire almost lost hers to a seagull which divebombed her head and then clobbered her with its wing when it flew away. It had the same sort of evil look as this one:

Had a nice little walk down the harbour wall. Snapped a picture of Beak the Kiwi:

It was supposed to be attacking the abbey on the clifftop, but I kinda failed with taking the photo. Ah well. Look how happy Amy is still. Then we did what we'd actually planned to do and found a Whitby sign to take a photo of. We're so myspace.

Selfie fail. Went a bit wrong on the way home, but managed to find our way - damn sat-nav got me confused. Note to self: trying to pay attention to the map and the sat-nav at the same time is not a good idea. Also almost got stuck going up a massively steep hill and we could just tell the guy in the van behind us was going "bloody women drivers".

So now we just need to get to Whitby, NZ and grab a photo of their Whitby sign. Because obviously.

Shawn the Prawn and his delicious little friends...

Our first planning session in months is underway. Well, I say underway. This is Amy and Claire doing useful stuff:

They're looking up useful things like hostels and things to do at the many, many places we're going to visit. This is what I was doing:

Because all of our planning sessions need to be soundtracked by the brilliance that is Howard Shore. And then it all just degenerated into silliness. Beak the Kiwi got a mind of her own (or rather, Claire gave up doing serious bits):

And then I found the most excellent thing ever when trying to find things to do in Taupo while Claire's throwing herself out of a plane. (Have I mentioned about Claire throwing herself out of a plane? I'm going to wait at the bottom and take pictures of her screaming). It is called the Huka Prawn Park. We are amused:

"If learning about a day in the life of Shawn the Prawn doesn't fire your imagination, dine on some of Shawn's delicious little friends in the adjacent riverside restaurant." Gotta love this Rough Guide.

And then we adjourned for lunch. Which lasted about 3 hours. Then the fun of booking began. So far we've managed to get the hostels and most of the activity/additional things booked for the first week. So the first few days look like this:

• 28th July - Arrive at Christchurch. Be jet-lag zombies.
• 29th July - Slob around Christchurch. Continue to be jet-lag zombies.
• 30th July - Catch the TranzAlpine Scenic train from Christchurch across the Southern Alps to Greymouth. Pick up the car, then do some sightseeing - up north to the Pancake Rocks and then south to spend the night at Franz Josef.
• 31st July - Trip to Fox Glacier. It will be epic. And cold, probably. Very, very cold.
• 1st August - Drive down to Queenstown. Spend the afternoon wandering around the town and admiring the cold, cold views.
• 2nd August - Take a day trip down to Milford Sound (not booked yet). Try not to squee at all the pretties.
• 3rd August - Drive east over to Dunedin. There's not a lot there, so it'll be a nice relaxed day.
• 4th August - Drive north up to Kaikoura. Various stops on the way, including the Moeraki Boulders, which are awesome. It's a 6.5 hour drive, so Amy and Claire will no doubt collapse when we get there.

My debit card doesn't know what's hit it and we've only just done the first week! All the excitement.

The (Un)official Mascot

Did anyone else have Beanie Babies as a kid? Stupid question - loads of people did. I was just one of those people who kept them all in a box in the hope that one day I'd have a use for them. So when we decided to go to New Zealand, I decided we had to have this little guy as our mascot.

Its name is Beak, it's a Kiwi and regardless of what Claire and Amy might think, it's coming to New Zealand with us. I intend to take photos of him everywhere we go, because I'm just that sad.

In other news, planning resumes tomorrow, so maybe we'll actually get round to updating this blog more often. Woo! Let the countdown to July 26th commence.