Pop that cork!

We almost didn't make it down to Cork, My boyfriend's job seems to be under jeopardy at the moment, well we have known this for quite awhile, The restaurant has got quieter and quieter as the weeks go by. Theres always been something to blame it on,

for instance, the bad weather is keeping people away since they have stopped doing delivery,

last week was back to school time and parents obviously didn't have any money left.

 I want this bag

but then this weekend it got considerably worse, we saw the restaurant is up for sale on Daft.ie, and they haven't even told my boyfriend or any of the staff there Then to put the cherry on the cake, they didn't pay him this week.

Which meant Cork was more or less out of the question. :( until my Mom finally agreed to pay for half of the hotel and I used some spare cash I had in my post office account and off we went.

Off we set we got the bus from Dublin to cork, and as usual were late, and ended up getting the worst seats on the whole bus, second from the back, with an extremely noisy and drunk, rude polish man behind us, who was more of a Dub than the Dubs themselves.

We couldn't wait to get away from him and rush off the bus and head to our lovely hotel, The Gresham Metropole. very nice hotel, although a little noisy at night time, We went to Tasty Oriental for dinner. It was really good and very reasonable 35 euro for 2 people. 3 courses.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, (because of the traffic outside) and had our traditional irish breakfast.

Then headed off into the city to explore, we went to the English market, then to St. Fin Barres Cathedral, University College Cork (I have to say it is almost as big as UCD) then we went to an art gallery which my boyfriend loved, it wasn't like a traditional gallery you would see in France, it was much more contemporary.

English Market

University College Cork

St Fin Barres Cathedral

Art Gallery

We were planning to go to FItzgerald park and Mueseum, but it started lashing raining and we were starving, so we gave it a miss, but sure theres always next time.

We got on our bus at 6 and were glad to see their were no drunk polish men around. We made it back to Bray at 12 and I crashed out on the bed straight away my poor little legs were walked off me!! lol

No room at the inn!

I usually have pretty lousy luck with Hotels. For instance as much as I loved my trip to China, We did make a few foolish mistakes when traveling.... Who would of thought a foreigner ought to bring her passport with her when she is traveling around China? I suppose most foreigners who are not traveling around with their local Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend, Anyway I remember my ex boyfriend's family telling my ex boyfriend, don't let her bring her passport with her as it might get stolen... So I duly left it behind and off we went on our travels. No sooner had we got off the train in Shanghai did we realize Oops! We went into the first hotel and they said "sorry we don't accept foreigners" end of story..

Suddenly we thought hmmm this could be tricky... We got in a taxi and he drove us too our next Hotel, By the way we didn't try to get a room in any 5 or even 4 star hotels. In fact I don't even know if the ones we tried had any rating at all. We were on a low cost budget so the Ritz Carlton was out completely.

The second hotel we tried, we had a bit more luck, My boyfriend at the time started filling out the paperwork while I just stood there mute. Then they were just about to give us our room key, when they asked for my passport =.=;;;;; "Sorry we can't accept any foreigners without a passport"

We had a repeat situation at the third hotel. However by the fourth hotel we were both losing patience. So we tried a new tactic my boyfriend went into the hotel and filled out the forms while I waited outside then once he had filled them out and I saw he was on the way up to see the room... I came in and attempted to go up... and be a separate costumer... Total Fail!! We were basically forced to leave. At this stage my then boyfriend was furious! He even called the police!  We were convinced we were going to spend our first night in Shanghai on the streets lol.

The police did absolutely nothing. Then my then boyfriend called his dad, who luckily knew a guy in Shanghai who hopefully would be able to help us. But we had to sit tight and wait. We couldn't enjoy or relax all day because we had to heave around our heavy luggage bag all day until 11 at night. Also we had the stress of worrying about whether or not we were going to be able to get a hotel room. In the end his dad's friend saved the day! Hallelujah!

Anyway since then I haven't had many mishaps with hotels other than perhaps missing the included Breakfast. or Eating what we thought was the included Breakfast which actually turned out not to be included and we had to pay 17 euro for!

Anyway this week I experienced an all new mishap. The question is "How do you tell your boyfriend you may have to share a room with a male classmate at the college ball?" Obviously you don't. My college has it's annual Ball on the 3rd of March. It's supposed to be the highlight of the academic year.. and you only study in UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School:for one year so you must grab this chance when you get it..

Last week the annual Smurfit Ball was the talk of the college. Who's going? How much for a ticket? Who wants to book a hotel room? Naturally going to a College ball requires booking a hotel room because the Ball ends late and there's no way of getting home. I asked my friend Nancy whether she wants to share a room and she was all for it... Then on Monday I contacted the class rep who was organizing the discounted student rooms (60 euro) and she told me all rooms had been fully booked however Jia Qi doesn't have anyone to share with..... My boyfriend saw the message and was like "NO WAY!! are you sharing a hotel room with another guy!! Why can't I go??"

Then I went to college and thought about it... Why can't he go? then I decided of course he should go. I rang him and told him he should go. I felt really happy because me and him have never done anything all dressed up and in suits and fancy dresses. I haven t done anything like that since my (Debs) Debutant Ball at the end of secondary school.  This time it would be special and with a boyfriend.....My Debs was with some random friend I barely knew...

 Me and Daragh (2007) Debutant ball 1

Me and Daragh (2007) Debutant ball 2

But that dream came crashing down.... because of you guessed it.... Money..
Ball tickets : 70 euro per person = 140 euro
Hotel room : 89 euro
Hire a suit: possibly 100 euro
Drinks : 50 euro

As you can see it would cost a hell of a lot for both of us to go. :( I guess sometimes Cinderella can't go to the Ball....

Foolish

I can't think of a better way to describe it. Foolish The desire to do something completely wrong, When something sounds wrong, feels wrong,,,, It probably is wrong. But this morning i overrode my inner inhibitions that told me what I'm doing is wrong.... I shifted my weary ass out of bed at 8am peered out the window sure enough as clear as day... there he was parked outside in his Silver Mercedes waiting for me. I felt myself choke. with disappointment and shiver of excitement which pushed me to get up and dressed in the freezing cold and run outside and get into the Mercedes and drive off into the snow.... Yes once again the second time he drove to my house it was snowing albeit lightly this morning. I really think he brings the snow lol! 

Well as soon as i got in the car he said lets go to Powerscourt! I didn't know the directions exactly and felt a bit nervous. I thought we might get completely lost =.=;;;;; But luckily enough we were able to follow the bus trail :) although it turned out to be a bit of a circle... but he didn't get to mad at me... We arrived there at about 9.30 or so all the shops were closed.... except the cafe. Since we both hadn't had breakfast, We decided it would be best to get a bite to eat. We ordered 1 croissant, 1 scone, 1 fruit salad, 1 average salad... and we shared the pastries and i had the fruit salad. It was yummy. but expensive 16.00 luckily i didn't have to pay :) 

Then after breakfast we decided to go into the garden, But unfortunately nothing in life is free and we, well he had to pay 11 euro for 2 student tickets.... Last time i went to Powerscourt, one of my friends was working there and he let us in free :) Not lucky this time! We were the first people to enter the garden today... Personally i still think we were mental arriving so early.. Anyway both of us forgot to bring our camera so in the end we decided to take a photo with my phone (the Samsung Galaxy Europa)... surprisingly not as crappy as i was expecting.... In fact i like it a lot!

After our garden adventure we decided to head to Powerscourt waterfall. to get the full Powerscouurt feeling... The only feeling we felt after the Powerscourt waterfall was that the owners of Powerscourt must be incredibly wealthy! Everywhere you go you have to pay! another 4.50 each for the entry fee to the Powerscourt waterfall!!! Luckily the admission man was friendly and allowed us in by only paying for one ticket, You would think the first ticket we bought would include the full Powerscourt experience! So we left with a sour feeling in our mouth...

Then we had to decide what to do next I didn't particularly want to go straight back to Bray, I didn't want to run into my boyfriend as he absolutely totally dislikes all of my former male classmates especially the Chinese ones...Hes pretty much totally against me spending time bonding with them outside of the classroom. 

So i suggested we go to Glendalough i didn't think it would be too far away and i thought it would kill some time.... Anyway we didn't make it to Glendalough We drove for about 40 minutes without seeing a single signpost down all these winding country roads and finally we saw a sign post saying Glendalough was 5 miles back!! so we gave up and i ended up home at about 4.30, with a really bad headache @.@