Spending the summer in Ireland....

Okay, so, I guess we can't actually call it spending the summer in Ireland...but because of the beautiful weather we had all the 'locals' kept saying 'this will be our only signs of summer'--so, I've now decided that I spend the 'whole' summer in Ireland--at least the whole summer that they had! Although the pictures below don't look very sunny, it was our ONLY non-sunny day. We spent the first day of our time together walking around Drogheda- Thomas's hometown. It was great to see all the places he grew up, where his mom lived growing up, where dad was born etc. Below is a picture of Thomas's current apartment.


We walked through lots of the cool history in the town, including graveyards, which I think was the first time Thomas realized just HOW MANY pictures I would take on this trip. I will only post a few, but believe me, I took about 20 pictures of gravesites...not sure why....

After a day walking around town, we went out to dinner with his friends Shane and Simona. The dinner was delicious and turned into a night on the town, where I experienced my first Irish pint of Blumers or "Bloomers" as I called them when ordering...only to recieve blank stares and generally having to call Thomas in for translation to the bartender.

Thomas's friend Colin met us out for the evening. One of the first things out of his mouth was 'have you seen Thomas dance?'. I replied with...'no'...and he quickly replied back with 'well, then you don't even know him!'. Please don't anyone worry, I was lucky enough to see Thomas dance later that night to Journey - Don't Stop Believing (a personal favorite)---so, I feel like I know him better now.

At my direction after dancing, we had to have a snack. I wanted 'chips' (french fries) and 'gravy'---I'd read about it in the Lonely Planet so, it seemed to make sense. Thomas appeased my request by ordering 'chips and gravy' at the 'chip shop', but when we got the front of the line to pay the man quickly replied with 'Thomas, you know we don't have gravy here.' I don't want to point out the obvious, but someone is a regular at the 'chip shop.' Below, a portrait of our delicious snack....because WHY wouldn't you take a picture of that?