Valentine’s Day was exhausting, but great. Bonnie and I headed to Pheonix Park, where we picnic’d, admired the monstrous obelisk, and generally enjoyed the clear skies and green grass. Pheonix Park is very, very large, very lovely, and apparently (according to our Let’s Go! guide) not a place to be once the sun goes down. I’m guessing vampires.
In the evening, Bonnie and I hit up a stand-up comedy set on campus, followed by a late dinner, cooked by me: vegetable korma with peas and carrots, spinach, basmati rice and naan bread. It made for a delicious end to a lovely day.
This past weekend, we headed west to Galway, an up-and-coming European city known for its youthful, transient population, who come expecting to stay for a weekend, and wind up living there for a month. It’s smaller than Dublin (everything is), and full of interesting shops. We went pub-crawling Friday night after a tasty dinner, and walked 30 minutes to a cinema for a midnight showing of Jarhead. Great movie, but the walk back to the hostel at 2:30am was not my cup of tea. On the plus side, we now know what it’s like to be the last two people in the theatre.
We spent Saturday exploring the city, checking out sites like the Medieval wall which is now part of an indoor shopping centre, and the Saturday open-air market, where I purchased an adorable (and practical!) new change purse. A walk along the water gave us wonderful views of the ocean, with Galway’s rocky coastline, and hundreds of swans around the harbor. The evening consisted of more pub-crawling, with a late-night brownie dessert (I’ll admit, I had two).
Sunday was full of buses. We dedicated the entire day to a bus tour through Connemara, a rocky, grassy, mountainous region just north-west of Galway. While certainly not the most active point in our weekend, the bus tour allowed us access to a lot of sites we would’ve otherwise been unable to see on foot. Sites included old houses with thatched rooves, hundreds of sheep, gorgeous mountains and lakes, and the Kylemore Abbey. We opted out of the photo-op with a replica of the house where scenes from a John Wayne were filmed.
The bus tour run from 10am to around 5. We caught a 6:30 bus back to City Centre, Dublin, getting in around 10pm, and then caught the 10 bus back to campus. Like I said, a bussy day. But I discovered that long bus-rides are good for two things: 1) doing class readings you otherwise wouldn’t have the attention span to do, and 2) taking four pages of game design notes.
James and I have a lot to talk about in the coming weeks. I think I finally figured out the mechanics for sqube‘s “main” mode of play, and I figured out a compromise for the design of our second game that will hopefully improve the strategy as well. I am excited.
He let us touch one.
Sunday was a lazy one. We headed into the city around 4:30 with my laptop, in a desperate attempt to find internet access that would grant precious use of FTP clients and Second Life. After trying several different coffee shops, two café’s, and a McDonald’s, we gave up and met some friends at a sushi place… which apparently had free wifi. Hence, Bonnie was able to cavort around Second Life for a short while, and I was able to upload WordPress’s config files, and finally start this blog like I’ve been meaning to do for the past week. Thanks, aya!