Stacy wanted to see the sunrise on the last day with the girls. But since that was 6:15am, and I didn't want to walk the mile plus before that. I asked them to maybe come get me after they did that. So, I meet up with them at 6:45am in our game room.
Mike and Chris head out to go deep sea fishing. Reagan is tagging along with us gals for breakfast, but he's not supposed to speak. Kidding! kinda.
We head up 5th Avenue and eventually find an open place to eat breakfast. I had a decent huevos mexicanos and everyone else was meh on theirs. After that, we start to walk back to our hotel. Reagan heads up to our hammocks on our deck to chill, and Stacy, Sarah, and I go hang out at the pool. I have to find shaded areas, which proves tricky. Sarah & Stacy wanted to lay out in the sun, so we head out to the beach where I have to stay shaded and they strip down to their bikinis and lay out. I write in my journal. Oh yah, I've been writing all this for my blog in a journal I brought with me. I didn't want to deal with bringing a laptop, but I still wanted to get all this stuff down. So, I'm doing it old school. Pen and paper, y'all. Holla!
We head back to the pool for 5 minutes, then the girls decide they want to go shopping. I've already told them that this particular event is something I will not do. They decide to go anyway, and I go back to bed. Thus endeth girls' day.
Mike gets back around 2pm, and he chills for a bit, and then cleans up. We head down to our game room to check on some emails and such. Chris shows up with some freshly cooked grouper and red snapper. The red snapper was delicious, the grouper.. not so much. Very cool of him to walk that all the way over to us.
While we are sitting there, Emmie and Wilco of Holland spot us and come over and say HEY! We talk for a really long time, and eventually the rest of the gang joins us. We've already planned to do dinner with Emmie and
Wilco later, but we just ended up spending a couple or so hours chatting it up with them before too. It was a great time. This moment right here was probably my favorite of the whole trip. Just chilling, chatting it up, meeting new people, and having a bunch of beverages. I finally get a buzz too! There is something seriously weak about the beverages here or something. I've not gotten one buzz until now. It was a good buzz too.
As it starts to get later, and everyone is getting hungry, we all disburse and Emmie, Wilco, Mike and I plan to meet back at our game room at 8pm. We'll walk with them to the restaurant since they have never been. Oh yah, we were going to Yaxche again.
We get to Yaxche, and get seated upstairs. Unfortunately there was no A/C up there. We'd been used to the A/C when we go there, but not so this time. It was a bit annoying for me, cuz I was sweating so bad it was literally running down my legs like urine. And I'm 99.7% sure it wasn't actual urine. This, our last Yaxche meal was a bit disappointing. Not up to our previous visits deliciousness. But, I will always remember it for the first two meals. I will erase this one from my memories right after I type this :D
After we get done with dinner, it's about 10:45pm. Sarah and Reagan have their taxi to the airport coming at 4am, so they are off to pack. Our van meets us at 7:30am, so we decide that is the end of our night too. Emmie, Wilco, Chris & Stacy stay out to have another beverage and chat. We hug everyone buhbye. I triple-kiss the Dutch folk, cuz that's how they roll. I like it. Why don't we do stuff like that? We're such a non-touchy people. Ok, maybe it's just me that's non-touchy. Hey, I'm trying to get better about that. I let people hug me and such now more than ever. It's progress!
pineapple, canteloupe, and pastries. He drops that off and I eat while he goes out to get some vinegar for our wicked burns.
non-skinny girl and think you're going to do any shopping. Well, maybe you'll find something at Wal-Mart. Shopping is miserable for me. It actually depresses me to watch two other skinny girls check out stuff and be all giggly about it. So, sunburn or no, a Cancun trip for shopping sounds about as fun as having a sunburn.
work. It's a bit asian-y, and a lot seafood-y. We have a few diet restrictions in our group -- a vegetarian (meh, pescatarian now), a gluten-sensitive, a seafood hater, and just a generally semi-picky eater. Usually we don't have too many issues though. But this place just seemed to hit them all.
It was awesome. The only part I didn't like about all that is the part of discovering that half of the ocean's sand is now in your bathing suit. Yuck. As we head out, Mike notices that I look a bit pink. That's so not good. If I'm looking a little pink that actually means I'm going to be lobster red.
My feet are so swollen from a recent blood pressure problem and traveling, so the idea of walking makes my skin crawl, but I am hungry. So, off we go. We walk down this main touristy street - 5th Avenue - and we eventually stop at a place called 1847. Mike had Chris had Sol, but Mike's was substantially larger. Hilariously larger. I ordered a veggie burrito that had sweet corn, beans and rice in it. It was very tasty. I could eat that corn forever. We had some good chips too. They came out with six difference salsas/sauces, all of which were very different from the last. We leave there and walk further down 5th Avenue, where Chris & Stacy show us around. They've been here several times and really know their way around. My quick and dirty impression of 5th Avenue is I don't like it. It's not authentic to Mexico, it's only a huge tourist area that has been made for white consumers (mainly Americans) to feel just like they are at home. Or to get them to buy as much as possible. Sad thing is, it obviously works.

it, they had tons of flavors like watermelon, cucumber, grape, lime. Probably like 10 or more flavors. Then suddenly they stopped making all those, and only made 4 flavors - raspberry, lime, grape, peach. The other stinger is they are now "lightly sweetened". If there's one thing I most certainly cannot tolerate in my water is a sweetener. I get migraines, and so I'm very sensitive to sugar, caffeine, and hydration in general. So, when I say I got nuts with DC it's not that crazy because the caffeine can become too much. Anyhoo, I digress.
Once my FruitWater had gone and betrayed me with sweetener, I had to find other alternatives. I can't remember how long, but it wasn't terribly quick, I discovered
hangovers - drink half before bed, half when you wake) at the Whole Foods downtown I saw a bottle I hadn't seen before. It appeared to be a flavored water, so I inspect the label to see what sweetener is used or how many calories it has. And I see the most loveliest of slogans on the bottle "Drink Water, Not Sugar". I was immediately in love, so I wanted to buy everything they had. Mike, being the more sane of us, told me to just get a couple in case it tasted like complete ass. He's wise, that one. So, after we get home and I get one chilled enough (beverages have to be damn cold for me), I tried one. It was the tropical punch one. I just confirmed the love at first site thing. It was amazing. I had found me a proper replacement. It is called
name. It's water with just a slight hint of flavor. Enough to be not straight up water for my tastes. I have personally tried about 9 flavors -- Tropical Punch, Pomegranate-Tangerine, Lime, Raspberry-Lime, Peppermint, Pear, Strawberry Kiwi, and Cucumber. My least favorite was Cucumber, and not just cuz it's Cucumber. I've loved that flavor of water in the past so I was really excited to try it. For some reason to me, it tasted like plastic. I'm hoping it was maybe a bad batch or something, and I will attempt to try it again later, cuz it did seem to have some promise. I drink so much of this stuff, it's insane. I pretty much fill up a cart at Whole Foods or H.E.B., any time I buy it. People look at me funny. The last time I went to Whole Foods, the guy was kind enough to give me their case discount, and told me I should just think of buying it in cases in the future. That's a good idea. I think I'll do that from now on.
I've even gotten my brother hooked on it. I'm just evil rotten that way.
probably my worst day as far as moods go, I think. You might need to ask Mike on that. My knee was just excruciatingly painful by this point and I since we never had a bathtub in our rooms (just showers), I never got to soak it or anything to help it not hurt as much. Anyway, I have no problem admitting I was not a pleasure to be around. However, I did enjoy the Waterford Tour a lot. I never realized that every single piece of crystal that comes out of there is hand made. I thought that was just absolutely mind blowing. It also allowed me to understand their pricing a bit more too. Another thing I was thoroughly impressed with was how little they waste. I think the tour guide said their waste
percentage per year is like 2%. Every extra bit of crystal, like a messed up piece, is recycled back into crystal to be used later. On the blades that they cut with, water is sprayed on them to keep it cool, and from there the dust that is made, is sucked back into the system and sent back to be reused also. So incredibly efficient I thought. Waste not, want not, and all that. So, back to my grumpy mood. After the tour we ended up in the store, mais bien sur, and Mike was ready to let me loose and buy whatever I wanted. I could have bought an entire set of crystal that cost a ton, and would have probably been ok with it. So, what do I do, I buy absolutely nothing. Not even a christmas ornament. I was just in one of those moods where I would not have been able to actually pick something I wanted. So, yes, it did suck that I did not buy anything, however, it was probably for the best as I most likely would have purchased something that I wasn't really into. And really, when you think about it, Mike doesn't know how lucky he really was that I was in such a foul non-shopping mood. I would probably have spent a small fortune. See? You can truly find the positive in anything if you try. :D
stopped in
aaahed over the insane view. You only see these types of things in pictures. Just breathtaking. Mike wanted to do some hiking and I really couldn't because of my knee, so he went off for a bit, and I sat in the car and read/slept. He came back running. I guess we were on a time table that I wasn't really paying too much attention to. So, we left quickly and zoomed fast fast towards Dublin. We dropped off the car, talked to some other folks who did our same B&B deal, and got on the plane without having to wait too too long.
I remember it being very colorful. We ended up stopping in Doolin for lunch. There were a lot of people packed into this tiny town of population 200. We walked into a couple shops there before we went to grab something to eat. We had the best fish & chips in a pub here. The Guinness wasn't half bad either. Man, my mouth is watering now. After we finished eating it was time to start looking for some place to stay. We had one in mind we wanted, and drove over there to see if there were any vacancies. Unfortunately, other people must have had this idea too, but much earlier than us, because they were full. But, the lady pointed us to across the street to a B&B her cousin or niece owns. We went there and sure enough, we got a room. This place was very nice, but nothing beat the view we had here.
I think it might have been this cozy place and the stellar view where I first got the feeling of "I could live in this town". Mmmmmm, just give me a moment. Even the thought of it just sends me back there. Gorgeous, cozy, no stress. Mmmmm. OK. Back to the business at hand. We dropped off our stuff there, rested for a sec, freshened up, and then headed out to the Cliffs of Moher. Since Mike had been there in October, they had changed the tourists area just a wee bit. The visitors center is now built into the side of the cliffs. Very unobtrusive. Inside was a gift shop, a cafe, and a self-paced tour called "The Atlantic Edge".
The self-paced tour did cost an additional fee, and while I would not say that the tour is necessary, Mike brought up a good point and said it does help fund them. The cliffs themselves were just amazing. Literally, breathtaking. We then headed over to The Burren. An area that is completely limestone rock. We walked out to the shore and had a blast trying to take pictures of the waves as they crashed up. Afterwards we went searching for some place to get a meal. This would continue to be our dilemma while in Ireland. Generally we eat late as it is. However, with the sun setting at 10pm, our sense of time was just whacked. We would generally be trying to find a place to eat after 9pm. Everything closes at 9pm. We always did find places, but geeeeeeez, what a hassle. In Doolin,
we found a place called Doolin Cafe. It was run by an Italian girl and a South African guy. The guy was the cook and the girl was the waitress. I had a steak dish and mike had a spinach and goat cheese risotta. We both loved our meals. We talked with the owners a bit afterwards and they sounded like some very cool interesting people. They had just taken over the restaurant 6 months ago. I hope they do well!
we arrived in Waterville to eat at The Smuggler's Inn. It's located near the entrance of a famous golf course and literally just a stone's throw from the ocean. On the outside it just looked like a typical brick pub building. However, upon entering, we quickly discovered that our t-shirts and scuzzy jeans might be a tad bit underdressed. But, we needed to eat, and it wasn't too busy, so we soldiered on. You couldn't ask for a more gorgeous view while you're eating. Just spectacular. I had a cod & scampi dish and Mike feasted on halibut. Both were very good dishes, but I think I liked Mike's just a tad bit more. The service was excellent here and the people were super friendly. Afterwards we ordered an irish coffee, and a bailey's coffee. While waiting for that, Mike headed out to the patio area. After paying and getting our coffees I headed out to sit with him out there. It was chilly, but so relaxing and enjoyable, and with out coffees it took the chilly edge off.
hill/mountain, I was looking out to the ocean and could see the top of one of the skelligs peaking out of the low clouds/fog. Mike walked in a different direction to get some pictures, and I stayed up there just in complete awe -- while wearing a "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirt. You may think this is an odd bit of information. Why would you care what I was wearing? Well, I'm getting there, so hush. While standing there in my gorgeous shirt, a girl came up from behind me and said "So, you're from Austin?", I confirmed, and then she told me she and her two friends just graduated from Texas A&M. Seriously small world. Especially if you consider that I may live in Austin, but I'm an Aggie through and through :D We continue on and see some insane views.