Chronicles Pt. 2: Kilkenny

Good afternoon,
I am sitting in an internet cafe in Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny, somewhere in south-central Eire (pronounced eh-ra). It took me some good effort to get here. But let's regress.
I bounced out of Dublin Thursday on a bus called St. Kevin's Coaches that dropped me off at the parking lot of the Glendalough National Park, about an hour south of the capital. Glendalough is a 6th century monastery founded by St. Kevin. It is between two lakes, nestled in a deep valley. Conveniently, there is a youth hostel a two minute's walk down the road from this. That's where I stayed for two nights, chilling with a nice Donegal girl called Claire McGuire. She's now a teacher in Dublin. But still young and pretty cute. Claire and I explored the monastery, a ruined church and 33m round tower without a door. The area is covered in tombstones. Then she left and I spent the day hiking around the surrounding mountains, which afford spectacular views of the valley and the lakes. Dank.
Friday (I think it was Friday) I got up at eight and started hitchhiking to Rathdrum. It was raining but you couldn't feel it cause it was a light mist. Never seen anything like it. Anyway it took me about an hour to get a ride. I was competing with Kiera McCullough, a sweet New Zealand girl, also trying to get to Rathdrum, and also young and cute. Finally a nice Britsh couple picked me up and dropped me off in Rathdrum, a non-existent town where I got a bus to Arklow. Kiera also got a ride and made the bus so we chilled in Arklow and got lunch. Then we both went our separate ways; mine was to Waterford, where I would catch a third bus to Kilkenny. But we were running late, so Paul, the driver, who was from Kilkenny, called the station ahead and had them wait for me. I made the final bus to Kilkenny, only to wat towards Foulksrath Castle Hostel, a hostel in a 15th century Norman castle, about 15k outside of Kilkenny.
I walked a couple miles until a nice dude picked me up, except he didn't know where the castle was and dropped me off in totally the wrong place. I started out again towards the castle, and decided to cut some time by cutting through some farms. A couple of fields and barbed wire fences later I found myself on a back road surrounded by farms, without a clue as to how much further I had to go. Eventually, the nicest farmer in Ireland, Dick, saw me and offered to take to Foulksrath. I made it to the hostel at 4. What a day.
So that was yesterday. I chilled at the hostel, mooched some dinner off some Canadian chicks, then met Ollie, the hostel manager's son. He's 23, and by the evening 5 of his friends (they're all from Dublin) had joined us at the castle. So the six of them and Ben from New Hampshire and me were chilling playing pool and we decided to go for a night in town (Kilkenny). The eight of us got in a cab, got pulled over by a cop, and continued on to a club the name of which I forget. We stayed until it closed, about 2 am. The Dublin boys wanted food (you know how it is in the wee hours), so we went to Super Mac's, which was basically MacDonalds, except with a riot inside. I swear I saw more people on the Kilkenny streets at 3am then during the afternoon.
We then spent a while looking for a cab back to the hostel (in the rain) and finally made it. I got to bed around 4. I'm tired.
This morning I found three eggs in the communal fridge and decided to scramble them (who that is reading this hasn't had my dank scrambled eggs?). But when I cracked the first one I found out they were already hard-boiled. oops.
Anyway I smoothed talk my way into getting a ride into Kilkenny from a German family, checked into the Kilkenny Tourist Hostel, which does have room today, unlike yesterday, dropped off my pack, and have been wandering the town since noon. It's 2 now, or 14, as they call it.
Tomorow, it's another three buses to Cashel, in County Tipperary. I'm surprisingly on schedule.
Let's see, what else..
Kilkenny is a veritable city, with tons of shops, and tons of churches, and a castle.
The hostel manager has dreadlocks and crocks.
Hope you're all enjoying the summer!
Take it easy,
Danny