independence day

today may be the 5th, but yesterday was July 4, or as some people refer to it, independence day. you may or may not know this, but apparently this is a holiday limited to americans. color me surprised to learn that there's not much fuss made here in ireland. not to worry. in honorary celebration, dad and i had a little cook out. he remembered that he had some little disposable grill in some closet somewhere so we decided the thing to do was have a good ol' fashioned american cookout. here's what transpired.


here you can see me diligently monitering our fine steak burgers we picked up from the butcher in town.


welcome to flavor country boys.

actually, much like forth of july celebrations of yore, the food didnt' work out. the grill never really became hot enough to cook the burgers through, and when i finished them on a pan inside, they smell so much like lighter fluid i didn't want to touch them. luckily we had a few others that hadn't been tainted by the mini-disposable-grill. all in all though, minus bud light in icy coolers, we had beans and salad, a good overall cookout. happy 4th of july!



On another note, in the morning we went to galway which i really enjoyed actually. it's a major city still, but less the metropolis that dublin is, and thus as markus put it "retaining more of an irish feeling". we intend on traveling to the aran islands next week, which if you haven't heard of, click here!

otherwise, it's rainy here. suspiciously so. and i know i'm supposed to expect rain being in ireland 'n all, but according to the locals even, this is too much. dad of course is immune to it all and claims this is normal, but i've seen the sun for about 15 or 20 minutes in 4 or 5 days or more. and to put it in perspective, wimbeldon is happening right now, and they claim it's the rainiest wimbeldon they've had in 25 years. yikes. rain rain go away, come again some other day.






anyway, here's more photos



you won't see many sheep on the beachs of ocean city

this was a street performer in galway. a photo doesn't do him justice, it was really really good.



this is the river in galway. i forget the name, i'll get back to that. but nice.