My photo life.: Ireland Day 22

It is feast or famine around here. I'm sitting alone, wasting time, or I am out all day and too exhausted at the end of it to actually make a proper post! I'll do my best though.

I'd like to just interject about how expensive things are here. After factoring in how crappy the dollar is doing, then adding in the currency conversion fees, then throwing in the fact that everything here is almost twice as much as it should be at home... money goes very fast.

Today we went to Ladies Day at the Races. The Races being horse races. I have never been to a horse race, so it was quite interesting. It's a week long event, but I guess Ladies Day is especially important. Everyone is supposed to dress really nice, fancy dresses for ladies and suits for the gentlemen. And also: hats. Huge, damn, hats. I was going wild taking as many photos I could of the crazy outfits and the headpieces. It was something.

You're not allowed to bring in any sort of food or drink, so everyone "smuggled" in naggins. Do you know what a naggin is? Apparently it's a measurement of drink. In America (joking, sort of), we'd call that a flask size. I think. Unless I'm completely out of the alcohol loop? I don't know. It's a flask sized bottle, so that's that. The place searches purses, but since I'm cool and wore shorts under my dress I had pockets and didn't have to worry about it. It felt very strange to order a coke with a cup of ice, then go to the bathroom and take a naggin of whisky out of my pocket and pour it into the cup. I'm going to keep the empty bottle as a souvenir.

Dave reading about the bets and odds and favorites of the various races.

I bet on two separate races. The horse names were so ridiculous. The first horse I bet on was called Miranda's Girl. No joke! It was so exciting. That horse did not win. The second one I bet on was called Lethal Weapon. That one did not win either! I spent €10 and had fun, so I don't really consider that a loss. I will also be keeping the paper thing that says what I bet on.

While at the races today I had the pleasure of getting to know Estella a lot more. She's so sweet! I will search for her on Facebook right now. Ok, added! We shared a fantastic bonding experience over waiting 45 minutes in a queue for the toilet. It was awful. She even tried to bribe a guard to let her go up another flight of stairs to use the toilet reserved for special guests. We were doing the "I'm going to go in my pants" dance pretty hard. It was funny and not funny at the same time. We later found out there was a toilet much closer to our friends with practically no line. This was not nice information to us.

My camera was passed around while we were enjoying the races, so I have some fun and random photos that other people took! This includes one of myself that I quite like that was taken by Roger, a very nice fellow if I do say so. I'm excited to go through them all and post them. I feel like I took some good photos of my new friends :) That'll have to wait until tomorrow though. After I wrap this up I'm going to sleep sleep sleep. I'm not setting an alarm either. Sleeeep.

This weekend there's going to be a slight lapse in blog posts. Just one day though, don't anybody panic. I've been invited to a rugby match that's happening in Dublin on Saturday. I guess I'll be staying until Sunday, and I won't have internet. So! I will take a photo early Saturday morning, then do a double blog post on Sunday when I return. So much to be excited about! I've never seen a rugby match before.

In other news, my legs and butt are killing me. There's been a lot of walking/standing happening the past few days. I'm sore like I've been running! I was hoping to be active while here, so wish granted I guess.