Okay, so thanks to the magic of couchsurfing.com, I am officially staying in Ireland totally for free! Here's a breakdown by date of where I'll be and what I'll be doing:
June 29: Arrive in Dublin. I'm staying with Ronan and his two housemates near Dublin city center for two nights while I do all my initial touristy things, and have arranged to meet up with several others who have offered to show me around. This is the fun part: meeting people and seeing Ireland with the locals!
July 1: Leave Dublin for Cork to see Blarney Castle (and the Blarney Stone, obviously). I'm going with Jenny, another Cambridge program participant, and her friend. We've given ourselves two full days to travel back and forth, with a full day to sightsee. Apparently, hitchhiking is legal and quite common in the more rural areas of Ireland, so we're going to give it a go once we get outside of Cork. I'm currently reading Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which is about a girl with a natural talent for hitchhiking, so it's pretty appealing to me, even more so that it's illegal and generally unsafe in the States. You only live once, right? If I get sliced up by a traveling serial killer, at least I'll be out in the gorgeous green hills of Ireland when I die. We are currently looking for a Couchsurfing host in Cork, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find one.
July 3: Back in Dublin, and this is the only night I don't have a host yet. I'll either extend my stay with one of my two other hosts, or I'll find someone who can put me up for a night. There are SO MANY couchsurfers in Dublin, it should be a breeze!
July 4: Staying with Mick for the rest of my time in Dublin. He's promised to do something special to help me celebrate the 4th of July, even though fireworks are probably out of the question. I'll be fine with a hot dog and a Budweiser, and will probably run into some of the many American backpackers in the city for a proper holiday!
July 7: Doing a sail-rail combo to get me from Dublin to Cambridge. It'll be an all-day journey, but a scenic and worthwhile one. Several other Cambridge students will be joining Jenny and me on the 6th, and we're traveling as a group out of Ireland. We'll take a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales, and from there take a train (or several) to get to Cambridge. The ferry takes about two hours, and the train about 6, so we'll catch some great scenery along the way and have time to chat and get to know each other before we arrive at the University. If we time everything just right, we'll arrive in Cambridge that night just in time to see the Olympic Torch passing through. This means extra tourists and crowded buses, but it's worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can't check in to Caius until after noon on the 8th, so we'll likely split the cost of a B&B or just find a hostel in the area. Pointless to try and couchsurf when you're a group of nine people.
July 8: Arrive at Gonville and Caius, already with tons of travel stories and new friends to start the semester out with a bang!
Staying with local hosts along the way will guarantee that I have Internet access to write blog posts, so expect frequent updates from Ireland. It will be rather spotty when I get to England, but I will do my best to keep on top of my updates.
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