City Living

The apartment that i live in happens to be smack dab in the middle of Limerick, which is great for us not having a car. We are conveniently close to the grocery store, bank, post office and basically anything we want or need.

Its actually one of the oldest areas around, I think. I need to brush up more on my Limerick history, but based on the fact that I'm across the street from Aurthur's Quay (which i think I misspelled) it has to be old. The Quay is in Angela's Ashes but completely different than how its portrayed in the book. Its a mini-shopping center full of generic shops, a weird food court on the top level and a Tesco which I am in several times a week.

I always wanted to live in the city, thinking how glamorous it must be to live in one of those anonymous apartment buildings and can people watch from the comfort of my own sofa. Well there are definitely some perks and most definitely drawbacks.

The street I live on has several pubs/nightclubs- 6 to be correct. This is awesome to meet up with people and go out for a few drinks- just feet away from bed when I want to go home, except for the fact that we really don't go out much at all. What it really means living so close to all those pubs is noise.

Every night at least one pub has something going on- for instance, tonight Friday, at least 3 will have live bands. We can hear them all- each bad cover and wish that they would sync up for one song so you don't have to hear bad versions of coldplay and U2 at the same time. It's fairly amusing most times and down right irritating at others. For instance the other night both James and I were soundly asleep and then at around 3:30 in the morning some drunk asshole starts singing "I'm a Barbie girl" at the top of his lungs right beneath our window. Really?? I'm a barbie girl? one can only hope he had a really bad hangover in the morning. every night you can tell what time it is by how loud the people are. With out fail at 2:30 in the morning you will hear the staggering drunken masses making their way to the taxi ranks after the pub has kicked them all out.

We've seem some really interesting things, like for instance James saw a woman hit a man over the head with a bottle and looked at him in horror while he was laid out and then hopped in a car and sped off. The guy got up with out a word and just stumbled down the street. hmm. Or you over hear snippets of amusing drunk talk. About 15 minutes ago I heard three guys arguing over how many times they saw some girls boobs. apparently the more times you saw her boobs determined how good your night was. must have been some good boobs.

I didn't think I would ever get used to all the noise, but you do eventually. I don't think I've had a solid night's sleep though- at least once during the night someone is loud enough to wake me up! It's true about the Irish, they love to sing when they get drunk- mostly old sad songs like St. Patricks Battalion and several others which I have no clue what they are about. But then you get the occasional bad 90's pop, like Mr. barbie girl. I asked James why they love to sing and he has no clue, hes the last person to sing when hes drunk- hes the kind of person that goes all quiet and slinks off to bed when hes had too much haha.

The perks of living in the city centre make up for all of the hassle. The castle (the one in my banner picture) is about a 5 minute walk from here. Although its not the safest area of the city to go to its very pretty and nice to be able to head up there whenever I want. I can go out and entertain myself for hours, there are about 10 cafes within a 2 minute walk from here, the market is just down the street, all and all its nice being central to all of these things. I haven't really taken too much advantage of all that the city has to offer and I need to! Summer is drawing to a close and I have a feeling that this sunshine we are getting wont be back for a while once its gone.