Village ladies.com.uk

[MEGALIST] SG Concerts Gigs Raves - Till Vesak Day (10 - 23 May 2024)

2024.05.09 20:17 redditduk [MEGALIST] SG Concerts Gigs Raves - Till Vesak Day (10 - 23 May 2024)

Update 17 May: Saturday in!

10 May, Fri

Sat, 11 May

 
 

Esplanade Pesta Raya Festival 11

 

Events & Parties 11

 

Club Guest Performers 11

 

12 May, Sun - Mother's Day

Esplanade - Pesta Raya Malay Festival Last

 
 

13 May, Mon

 

14 May, Tue

 

15 May, Wed

 

16 May, Thu

 

Other Arts Events

 

17 May, Fri - Start of Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA 2024)

 

Esplanade

SIFA 2024

 

Event Theme Nights

 

Club Guest Performers

 

18 May, Sat

 

Esplanade

SIFA 2024

 

Event Theme Nights

Club Guest Performer

 

Sunday... Soon

I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.05.04 14:29 No_Run2260 Around the World in Eighty Weeks - Week #49 - Samoa

Around the World in Eighty Weeks - Week #49 - Samoa
If you want film suggestions, suggestions for foreign works, suggestions on how to complete the Letterboxd world map, this post is for you.
Last year I started this project to discuss more unknown foreign films. Everyone here I imagine has heard about Parasite, Spirited Away, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Hunt, City of God. But what gems does each country's cinema have that are not as celebrated as these?
The plan is, over 80 weeks, to approach as many countries as possible, from those with a more established film industry to those that need foreign support to finance a production. During the post I suggest one or two films and in the comments you can add what you know about the country in question. I'll stick to films with less than 50k views, but you can highlight any film (or director) from that specific country in the comments.
With that said, let's go to the recommendation of the week.
Film: The Orator
Year: 2011
Director: Tusi Tamasese
Country: Samoa
https://preview.redd.it/hz2epqw3heyc1.png?width=850&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3f19d19c4e5df172eff5a7e5766f26a8b835a68
The Orator is a story about one of humanity's oldest structures: the family. Saili (Fa'afiaula Sanote), Vaaiga (Tausili Pushparaj) and Litia (Salamasina Mataia) are three individuals who face dilemmas within their family and at the same time form a family among themselves - Vaaiga is married to Saili and is Litia's mother.
The protagonist is Saili, a little man, son of the village leader - who passed away. Normally, Saili would be expected to take over his father's role, but no one trusts him to fulfill this tradition - including Saili himself. The man finds it difficult to impose himself, living in seclusion and avoiding anyone's company. Vaaiga was disowned by her family, possibly due to her pregnancy, and ended up having to move to another village. Her siblings try to mend their relationship with her and bring her home, but she remains firm that she doesn't belong there. Meanwhile, Litia has no problems with her own family, but is in a position to destroy others by having an affair with a married man.
Much of the film takes place in a state of contemplation. Instead of dictatically explaining what is happening, it lets the viewer experience it together with the characters. An example, right from the beginning of the film, is Saili's frustration with his parents' grave land being used for plantations. Right from the start, the script already introduces the protagonist's impotence, which is developed throughout the story. Another important moment to contemplate is the way Saili spends the night outside a local store, which shows how unworthy he feels to spend time with even his own family.
The Orator was the first Samoan film, with a Samoan cast and set in Samoa. So, don't expect a big budget work. It's something simple and quiet. The climax, for example, is such a simple thing as a conversation, but it is worked as if the characters were going to war - and that is the magic of the film.
The Orator is available on Tubi TV if you want to check it out. I don't believe there will be another week focused on Polynesia or the other Pacific islands. Therefore, if you want to leave your contribution regarding films from the region, you can use this post. Comments are always encouraged.
Next week: this country has a film industry so self-sufficient that it is divided into subregions. From South Asia - India.
https://preview.redd.it/nmbrz3k0ieyc1.png?width=850&format=png&auto=webp&s=a57bede94a37c8fbd7b3122803091d08097fef02
Travel Itinerary: Brazil - Iran - Indonesia - Russia - Kenya - Spain - Jamaica - Romania - Laos - Italy - Algeria - Peru - Bangladesh - Latvia - Switzerland - Mexico - Senegal - New Zealand - Iraq - Japan - Georgia - Portugal - Chile - Malaysia - Chad - Netherlands - Costa Rica - Norway - Albania - Serbia - Nigeria - Vietnam - Poland - Jordan - Palestine - Colombia - Cuba - UK - China - South Africa - DRC - Paraguay - France - Thailand - Lithuania - Croatia - Egypt - Austria - Ukraine - Iceland - Venezuela - Mauritania - Israel - Panama - Singapore - Taiwan - Samoa
submitted by No_Run2260 to Letterboxd [link] [comments]

2024.05.04 13:46 Jhonjournalist A Blind Veteran Puts Art Exhibition to Raise Money

A Blind Veteran Puts Art Exhibition to Raise Money
​

  • Ms Fuller got support from Blind Veterans UK in 2018.
  • And cash raised from the show will be given to the cause.
  • The show will happen on 4 and 5 May at Dodford Town Corridor.
A veteran who said her “reality went to pieces” when she out of nowhere lost the vast majority of her sight at work has assembled a craftsmanship show to fund-raise.

Art Exhibition of the Blind Veteran

Jennie Fuller from Daventry, Northamptonshire, lost her visual perception while serving in the Ladies’ Regal Armed Force Corps.
Ms Fuller, who likewise filled in as a cop in Northampton, presently works for Blind Veterans UK.
The presentation has been assembled by nearby specialists.
Ms Fuller said she attempted to drive herself to go on with things she was energetic about, including painting, cake enlivening, drawing, and cooking.
Learn More: https://worldmagzine.com/arts/a-blind-veteran-puts-art-exhibition-to-raise-money/

submitted by Jhonjournalist to u/Jhonjournalist [link] [comments]

2024.05.03 06:02 DropWatcher Drop Watch: May 3rd, 2024

LPs

Deluxe

EPs

Songs

Old Drop Watches

2023 and 2024 Calendar

submitted by DropWatcher to hiphopheads [link] [comments]

2024.05.01 18:16 DropWatcher Drop Watch: May 3rd, 2024

LPs

Deluxe

EPs

Songs

Old Drop Watches

2023 and 2024 Calendar

submitted by DropWatcher to DropWatch [link] [comments]

2024.04.29 22:24 Ultim8_Lifeform Respect Ryo Saeba (City Hunter)[Anime]

Ryo Saeba

My name is Ryo Saeba.
Cleaning up bugs who live in the city, that's what I do for a living.
My weapon is a Colt Python .357 Magnum.
The only thing I can't bring myself to shoot is the heart of a beautiful lady.
The hot piece of lead that shakes the muzzle is a one-hole-shot that brings down evil.
Someone who's already crossed me once is quiet the second time in Hell.
That's the way I do business.
Someone told me that blood, gun smoke, and the fragrance of roses suit me.
I am a sweeper of the city. People call me City Hunter.
Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerillas would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to his birth country of Japan, where he partnered with with ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura to form the two man group known as City Hunter. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.

Source Guide

  • City Hunter = S1E#
  • City Hunter 2 = S2E#
  • City Hunter: .357 Magnum = Mag
  • City Hunter 3 = S3E#
  • City Hunter: Bay City Wars = BCW
  • City Hunter: Million Dollar Conspiracy = MDC
  • City Hunter '91 = 91E#
  • City Hunter: Secret Service = SS
  • City Hunter: Goodbye My Sweetheart = GMS
  • City Hunter: Death of the Vicious Criminal Ryo Saeba = DVC
  • City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes = SPE

Things to Know for Potential Scaling

There are two characters that Ryo scales to in a number of different ways, Umibozu and Kaori Makimura. Rather than clutter up the thread by listing their various pieces of scaling every time, that information will instead be listed here to be referenced at the reader's convenience.
Note: Ryo's more notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Hell may be a lonely place for you for a while, but I'm going to liven it up for you soon enough.
Striking
Vs Enemies
Environmental Damage
Lifting/Throwing
People
Objects
Pushing/Pulling
Blocking
Biting
Other

Speed

Showing your true colors? Fine. If you think you can shoot me, go ahead and try. But make your first shot count. If you don't, by the time you shoot the second one you'll be in Hell.
Travel
Reactions
Melee
Aim Dodging
Projectiles
Other
Combat/Attacking
Quickdraw/Shooting
Other

Agility/Mobility

Wait for me, Kasumiiiiiiii! I've come for my promised mokkori!
General Traversal
Acrobatics
Jumping
Climbing
Hanging
Swinging
Recovery
Other

Durability

NO, NO, NO! PLEASE SAVE ME! I HAVE GREAT AMBITIONS AND GOALS TO FULFILL!
That's right! Don't die, Ryo! There's so much left for you to accomplish!
Exactly! A noble ambition to make love to all the women in the world!
Blunt
Attacks From Kaori
Other
Explosive
Falling
Electrical
Endurance
Other

Gear

You, carrying that big gun, who in the hell are you?!
There's some things in this world it's safer not to know. If you plan on a long life, make sure I never see your face again.
Firearms
Other Long Ranged Weapons
Melee Weapons
Ammo
Explosives
Mobility
Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance
Vehicles
Other

Marksmanship

Who the hell are you?
I came to deliver the bill.
Bill?
For you lives.
Stationary Targets
Target Practice
Short Distance and High Precision
Long Distance
Other
Moving Targets
Humans
Enemy Weapons/Shots
Vehicles
Ryo is Moving

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

submitted by Ultim8_Lifeform to respectthreads [link] [comments]

2024.04.26 08:14 redditduk [MEGALIST] SG Gigs Concerts Raves - May 2024: Labour Day Week (26 Apr - 9 May)

Editor’s Note 10 May: Visit the new list here - https://reddit.com/singaporemusicchat/comments/1co3y9megalist_sg_concerts_gigs_raves_till_vesak_day_10/

26 Apr, Fri

Events truncated for word limit

 
 

27 Apr, Sat

 

Events truncated for word limit

 
 

28 Apr, Sun

Events truncated for word limit

 

29 Apr, Mon - Golden Week, International Dance Day

30 Apr, Tue - International Jazz Day, International Workers' Day Eve

Events truncated for word limit

01 May, Wed - Labour Day, End of SIFAS Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society Festival

 

02 May, Thu

Some events truncated for word limit

03 May, Fri

Some Events truncated for word limit

 
 
 
 

04 May, Sat - Star Wars Day

Some events truncated for word limit

 
 
 
 

05 May, Sun - Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May)

Some events truncated for word limit

 
 

06 May, Mon

07 May, Tue

 

08 May , Wed - Music Matters Live & Creator Week

Other Arts / Musicals

09 May Thu - Esplanade's Pesta Raya (Malay Festival of Arts)

 
I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.04.26 00:48 Ultim8_Lifeform Ryo Saeba Anime Draft

Ryo Saeba

My name is Ryo Saeba.
Cleaning up bugs who live in the city, that's what I do for a living.
My weapon is a Colt Python .357 Magnum.
The only thing I can't bring myself to shoot is the heart of a beautiful lady.
The hot piece of lead that shakes the muzzle is a one-hole-shot that brings down evil.
Someone who's already crossed me once is quiet the second time in Hell.
That's the way I do business.
Someone told me that blood, gun smoke, and the fragrance of roses suit me.
I am a sweeper of the city. People call me City Hunter.
Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerilla's would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to his birth country of Japan, where he partnered with with ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura to form the two man group known as City Hunter. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.

Source Guide

  • City Hunter = S1E#
  • City Hunter 2 = S2E#
  • City Hunter: .357 Magnum = Mag
  • City Hunter 3 = S3E#
  • City Hunter: Bay City Wars = BCW
  • City Hunter: Million Dollar Conspiracy = MDC
  • City Hunter '91 = 91E#
  • City Hunter: Secret Service = SS
  • City Hunter: Goodbye My Sweetheart = GMS
  • City Hunter: Death of the Vicious Criminal Ryo Saeba = DVC
  • City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes = SPE

Things to Know for Potential Scaling

There are two characters that Ryo scales to in a number of different ways, Umibozu and Kaori Makimura. Rather than clutter up the thread by listing their various pieces of scaling every time, that information will instead be listed here to be referenced at the reader's convenience.
Note: Ryo's more notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Hell may be a lonely place for you for a while, but I'm going to liven it up for you soon enough.
Striking
Vs Enemies
Environmental Damage
Lifting/Throwing
People
Objects
Pushing/Pulling
Blocking
Biting
Other

Speed

Showing your true colors? Fine. If you think you can shoot me, go ahead and try. But make your first shot count. If you don't, by the time you shoot the second one you'll be in Hell.
Travel
Reactions
Melee
Aim Dodging
Projectiles
Other
Combat/Attacking
Quickdraw/Shooting
Other

Agility/Mobility

Wait for me, Kasumiiiiiiii! I've come for my promised mokkori!
General Traversal
Acrobatics
Jumping
Climbing
Hanging
Swinging
Recovery
Other

Durability

NO, NO, NO! PLEASE SAVE ME! I HAVE GREAT AMBITIONS AND GOALS TO FULFILL!
That's right! Don't die, Ryo! There's so much left for you to accomplish!
Exactly! A noble ambition to make love to all the women in the world!
Blunt
Attacks From Kaori
Other
Explosive
Falling
Electrical
Endurance
Other

Gear

You, carrying that big gun, who in the hell are you?!
There's some things in this world it's safer not to know. If you plan on a long life, make sure I never see your face again.
Firearms
Other Long Ranged Weapons
Melee Weapons
Ammo
Explosives
Mobility
Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance
Vehicles
Other

Marksmanship

Who the hell are you?
I came to deliver the bill.
Bill?
For you lives.
Stationary Targets
Target Practice
Short Distance and High Precision
Long Distance
Other
Moving Targets
Humans
Enemy Weapons/Shots
Vehicles
Ryo is Moving

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

submitted by Ultim8_Lifeform to u/Ultim8_Lifeform [link] [comments]

2024.04.22 17:45 BudgetTravelerHoo Full writeup of budget winter trip to Dublin/Galway/Westport

A few weeks ago, I posted a quick review of our short trip to Ireland, and the help this community. It got a lot more views and shares than I ever expected, plus a number of DMs asking for more specifics on a few things- so I decided to expand it into a full-blown travel guide.
I hope everyone enjoys this, and it can be a resource for other people who want to visit Ireland without breaking the bank. There is a version of this with pictures and links posted on the irishtourism "blog" megapost; I don't want to run afoul of the sub rules, but if you'd like to see all of the pictures associated with this, take a gander there!
My wife and I have birthdays that are within just a few days of one another, at the end of February and the beginning of March, so every year we try to eke out a weekend away with each other in celebration. Usually, we don’t travel too far away from our home in Appalachia, but this year I really wanted to do something different.
But, as a working family, we’re always on a budget. We can’t afford to break the bank on any vacation- so if we were going to make it work, it had to be as affordable as we could make it.
So I went onto Google Flights, selected the time frame we were looking to travel (Tuesday afternoon to Sunday) and looked at all flights from the three closest airports to us- Washington, DC (IAD); Richmond, VA (RIC); and Charlottesville, VA (CHO)- ranked in order of price, from lowest to highest. I didn’t particularly care where we went, as long as it was cheap.
Sadly, my initial plans to take advantage of the $68 roundtrip flight to Johnstown, Pennsylvania were quickly dashed by my wife- and with it, my lifelong dream to see the steepest vehicular inclined plane in the world. Alas. So I continued to peruse the remaining results… and was surprised to see that one of the top results was a nonstop Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, Ireland from Washington Dulles, at a stunning $360 roundtrip for a flight that can cost as much as $1000.
I was taken aback, because this was cheaper than most of the domestic flights available, and at least a hundred dollars cheaper than any of the international flight selections available at the time. And if I wanted to do something different for our birthday trip, then Ireland sure fit the bill.
Now, I recognized immediately the reason that the flight was so inexpensive: it was going to be in the end of February, far from prime weather season. A cursory glance at the usual weather for Ireland that time of year confirmed this, as it said we’d likely have rain and weather just above freezing on average for our trip.
So I booked the ticket- and we were headed to Ireland.
STAYING ON BUDGET
Now, one of the easiest things to do when you’re trying to travel on a budget is to save money on one area- like airline flights- and watch as it balloons in another. It takes some sincere patience and paying attention to keep that from happening, and even then, Murphy’s Law often makes an appearance.
My plan was:
- Keep our hotel expenses under $175USD per night, but only stay at hotels with an aggregated Google review ranking of 4.0/5 or higher
- Look for hotels that offered free breakfast and dinner, if possible, and have one meal a day somewhere decent and inexpensive to enjoy unique Irish cuisine.
- Find a route with cheap and/or free things to do in winter that wasn’t so crammed full we couldn’t enjoy ourselves.
We also packed light, and eschewed checking a bag so that we could save an enormous amount on checked bag fees. If anything, I reasoned, we could check a bag on the way back if we found a souvenir we absolutely couldn’t part with. I brought my trusty travel backpack, which I bought as a combination diaper bag/textbook receptacle when I started college in 2008, and one normal sized overhead bin bag; my wife packed similarly, and even with our warm/rain weather gear, we had no problems.
There were some things that lent themselves to making this easier in Ireland, and some that didn’t. For instance, in the Ireland and the UK, you are much more likely to find hotels that offer meals- dinner and breakfast, even if they’re not bed and breakfast hotels- than in the United States. Or, if you want to save some money, many will have what is called a “self catering” option, which basically means you can skip those meals being offered and figure out food for yourself. Also, a lot of the hotels we stayed at offered a discount if you booked directly on their site, as opposed to a hotel aggregator like Priceline, Expedia, etc.
However, while Ireland has a pretty decent public transportation system, particularly compared to the US (granted that’s a pretty low bar to clear), if you want to truly see Ireland, to give you the ability and flexibility to see what makes it great, you have to rent a car. There is simply no way around it.
This was hammered in for me when a quick search on things to do in Ireland gave me the Wild Atlantic Way. The Wild Atlantic way is a seaside road route curving along Ireland’s rugged and remote west coast; a beautiful 1600 mile route from Derry to Cork.
So finding a decently priced rental car was now on the list of musts- though that would entail driving in Ireland, which is even more of an, ahh… intriguing proposition for first time visitors than I recognized. But, first things first: I had to figure out what part of the Wild Atlantic Way that I wanted to be able to see. We’d be arriving at 5am on Wednesday and leaving at noon on Sunday; precious little time to see something that would take two weeks or more to do properly.
I wanted a flexible schedule that wasn’t too busy. For those of you in healthcare, and for anyone who’s had a baby before, you’ll probably understand the old saying: “the length of your birth plan is the same length as your c-section scar”. Attempting to plan every eventuality down to the barest minutiae rarely works out; fate and nature rarely care about convenience, and trying to cram an itinerary to the gills only makes a “vacation” into a “trip”.
My wife told me one of her musts was she wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher. So, using that as a starting point, I came up with the following plan for each of our nights there:
Galway: Famous because of Ed Sheeran’s hit song- no no, I’m only joking, please don’t ban me- Galway is a lovely city on the west coast of Ireland, easily accessible via motorway from Dublin and with a wide range of shops, pubs, and restaurants to visit and experience, as well as conveniently located near dozens of different things to do (such as the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands).
Westport: A sleepy village to the north of Galway, and in an easy day’s driving distance from Galway along the Wild Atlantic Way, allowing one to curve through Connemara National Park and the Leenaun to Louisburgh road on the way there.
Enniskillen: Initially, I’d planned on stopping in Donegal this night; again, it was an easy drive from Westport and went by a number of more things to do and see, like Downpatrick Head. However, I thought it would be interesting to see “another country”, as Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and so we scheduled a stop in Enniskillen, in the Fermanagh Lakelands.
Dublin: Finally, we wanted to spend at least one day in Dublin, and planned to drop our rental car off at the airport before continuing back into Dublin, in order to maximize the time we had on Sunday morning to sleep and enjoy ourselves before heading back home.
Once I had that itinerary in mind, it was time to nail down the details.
RENTING A CAR AND (ominous music) DRIVING IN IRELAND
First thing was first: we had to secure a rental car. After playing around with Priceline and Expedia, as well as the individual corporate sites for each rental car company based out of Dublin International Airport, I found that visiting the Ireland based website- the .ie version- I found not only cheaper and better deals, but they generally came with insurance included, which the American versions of these sites did not.
I’m going to echo the advice on driving in Ireland that you’ll find if you do even the most cursory of searches on it: get the smallest car you think you can get away with, and get an automatic transmission. I have no problem driving a manual and had initially figured on saving a few bucks this way. My first car was a 1985 Mitsubishi Montero that was pulled from a barn in Mishicot, Wisconsin. It lacked first gear entirely and had to be held in third and fifth gear. The first time I drove it, my dad took me to the bottom of the biggest hill he could find and told me to drive to the top. Even so, I’m absolutely glad I decided not to skimp on the upcharge for an automatic transmission.
Ultimately, I found a Renault Captur (the selection was for a “VW Golf or similar”) at Sixt for €109 base price for the four days we were in Ireland. To this, I added a €14/day upcharge to the insurance coverage already on the vehicle- and even this total was cheaper than the base price found on American rental websites. The €20 I would have saved on a manual absolutely wouldn’t have been worth it.
The next thing I had to do was mentally prepare to drive in Ireland. Sure, it take some mental concentration to go from driving on the right side of the road to the left. But I was initially mostly unconcerned. In the US Virgin Islands, which is a favorite getaway of my wife and I, the roads are all left-hand drive, and after a moment of orientation, I never had a problem driving there.
Let me assure you that there is no comparison to driving in the US Virgin Islands, or anywhere else in the world, to driving in Ireland. This is for two reasons: Irish drivers, and Irish roads.
First of all, I want to be explicitly clear here: the Irish people we had the good fortune to meet on our journey were incredibly friendly, warm, and welcoming. It was one of the most amazing parts of our trip. Truly, I cannot express that any more emphatically. Even when I disagreed with people- more on that later- it was all with good humor and sincere caring and generosity that I’ve found rare in this day and age.
Irish drivers, on the other hand… calling them near suicidal is, perhaps, on the barest of exaggerations. In fact, the only time I drove fastebetter than the Irish folks are when we got caught in the extremely rare Irish snowstorm (more on that later). The speed limits seem to be a mere suggestion; not quite a minimum, but damn close.
Now, that being said, I never had anyone feel aggressive at me for driving at the speed limit, though; I’d get over when I was able to let people by, and they’d pass. No fuss. So I never felt pressured to drive anything other than how I felt safe, and you shouldn’t, either.
Now, the Irish roads? Well, as my Minnesotan grandmother used to say: ooofta.
Roads in Ireland are “rated” by the letter in front of them. The “M” motorways, for instance, are the best in Ireland. They are vaguely equivalent to a US Highway than an interstate, other than around big cities like Dublin. However, as the letters go “down”, to “N” and “R”, it gets even sketchier to US equivalencies.
The roads are generally all “two lane”, in the sense that there’s a line drawn down the middle of the road, but in the United States, many of the “R” roads would absolutely be considered one-lane and you’d only find them in the hollers and hills of Appalachia or through the back of the Sierra Nevada. There is, perhaps, inches of space to the side of the lane from your car. Understand when I say “perhaps” there, I mean “under the best of circumstances”.
Not only that, but instead of a ditch or a field to one side, as you might find in America, you’ve got a stone wall that was probably built in 1287AD and looks like it would crumple your car at the slightest provocation. Either that or make you guilty of demolishing a structure that existed literally ten generations before you were even born. And that’s not even mentioning the potholes and divots in the road that, when there is the slightest rain, are able to do a pretty convincing impression of the Mariana Trench.
Research shows that the time that US Navy pilots are the most nervous or afraid isn’t when they’re literally being shot at- it’s when they’re landing back on their aircraft carriers. Driving the R477 on the way to the Cliffs of Moher made me immediately remember that story. Have you ever seen the word “aaaiiiieeeeee!” written out in comic books? Until this trip, I couldn’t really visualize how that would sound in real life. We rounded a curve to discover a box truck barreling towards us at full speed (and then some), with inches of space to spare on either side, and my wife helpfully demonstrated exactly how that exclamation sounds.
My last notes on driving in Ireland: it was immensely helpful to have perused Google Maps before we left. Google Street View lets you peruse the turns and route, and even just spending a few minutes looking through the route leaving the Dublin Airport, for instance, was well worth it.
But even more critically, I would not have been able to navigate anywhere in Ireland as readily as I was without the full-time assistance of my wife, who watched the Google Maps GPS and helped pay attention to things I might miss. Especially if it’s your first time visiting Ireland, I cannot stress enough how important it is to have that second pair of eyes enabling you to concentrate on driving.
FLYING TO IRELAND
We arrived at Washington Dulles at 2pm, three hours before our 5pm departure. Having flown from Dulles many times before, I was almost aghast to see that at 2pm, the airport was almost empty and we made it through security in about thirty-nine seconds. On reflection, I suppose that makes sense as a “lull” time of the day.
The service was good; the flight attendants were very pleasant, and we were airborne with a minimum of fuss. We were feted with food and drinks on a very reasonable schedule; a snack not long after takeoff, and a full meal within 75 minutes. I thought the food was decent for being airline food; I had been a little worried because Aer Lingus had gone viral not long before for the poor quality of their food. The snack was a standard pretzel offering, and the meal consisted of chicken and rice, a pasta salad, and a chunk of Irish soda bread and butter, with a mousse dessert and coffee or tea. I had no complaints.
THE FIRST DAY: GALWAY
Our flight was scheduled to land at 5am, and I’d also mentally prepared to not get out of the airport/customs/car rental center until 7am. Instead, thanks to the jet stream catching the plane just right, we landed at 4:30am. Then we made it through customs and to the Sixt Rental Counter, where the employees were only just opening for the day. I was fully prepared to wait until they officially opened at 5am, but instead they stopped what they were doing to get us on their way. I’ll definitely be renting from them the next time we go to Ireland.
This was a cozy car, but more than perfect for our purposes, and I had no problems with it whatsoever.
got through customs, got to the Sixt rental as soon as it opened at 4:55am, and we were out of Dublin entirely by 5:30am, taking the M4/M6 to Galway.
It was immensely helpful to have perused Google Maps before we left, to scope out the turns out of the airport. I figured we wouldn’t be early enough to miss rush hour traffic, but it turns out that we were- and by 5:30am, we were entirely outside of Dublin, on the M4/M6 headed to Galway, hours ahead of schedule. The open road was perfect for practicing my left-hand driving skills, as well. Initially, I kept edging the rumble strip on the side of the motorway because I was used to “centering” the car differently in America, but it only took a few times of doing that to figure it out, and by the end of the first day that was all over.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to have that second pair of eyes paying attention, so you can concentrate on just driving.
I drove about 5kph over the speed limit and was passed frequently; I made sure to stay in the left lane, though, and we had no problems. On the assumption that we wouldn’t leave the airport until 7am, I planned on stopping in Galway to have lunch at that point. But our GPS indicated we’d be in Galway well before 8am, so I decided to detour to Kinvarra- a little town south of Galway, on the coast and on the way to the Cliffs of Moher- for some desperately needed coffee and breakfast.
We had a lovely chat and excellent coffee/breakfast with the proprietor of Wild Beans. The caffeine was sorely needed- the flat white I had was delectable- and we stopped into the Eurospar for some soda, tea, treats, and miscellaneous things to keep in the car for our road trip.
And this is when I decided to take the R477, instead of the “faster” way, to the Cliffs of Moher from Kinvarra.
The road was in what can only charitably be described as “questionable” shape. I came across a puddle, for instance; I generally avoid puddles, even here in the United States, because you never know what they’re hiding. I had to slown down get all the way into the right lane just to hit this particular puddle by about 10–15% of its width- and almost sent my wife and I into the roof of the rental car, as the puddle had been concealing what I can only assume was once a mining borehole or meteorite crater. The “passenger seatbelt” warning blared loudly, and I was afraid I’d shredded our rental car within hours of renting it. Thankfully, everything was okay.
On the plus side, it kept me awake! Despite the barrenness and the weather, however, this was still a beautiful drive. Stopping to read that rugged terrain was the very same as my home in the hollers and hills of Appalachia- indeed, had been the very same mountain range!- was even more fascinating.
Finally, however, we got back onto more “normal” roads, through the quaint village of Doolin, eventually arriving at the Cliffs of Moher… where we could see absolutely nothing.
We parked the car, shut off the engine- and we both almost immediately passed out. Again, I’d worked 7pm-7am on the day we’d left to go to Ireland, so by this point, I’d been awake for almost two days. Ninety minutes later, I jerked awake, jostled by a particularly rough gust of wind, to discover the weather had only worsened. Thankfully, that nap was exactly what I needed to refresh myself. After a short discussion, we decided we’d have to punt seeing the Cliffs to our next visit to Ireland.
Instead, we drove to the Burren Perfumery, a lovely little family-owned shop selling perfumes, lotions, and the like. Beautiful even with the weather, we were able to find a number of reasonably priced multipacks of small perfumes and lotions to take home as gifts before we headed into Galway.
Arriving in Galway, we checked into the Skeffington Arms Hotel, which cost us €123, including a €10 fee for parking at the nearby Q Park parking garage. It was within easy walking distance of everything we wanted to do in Galway- right across from Eyre Square, close to the Spanish Arch and the city center. This was good because, although the winds we’d faced earlier at the Cliffs of Moher had mostly disappeared, the rain/sleet had continued, and it was a cold and bitter rain.
One of the first stops we made was at Xian’s Street Food. About a year ago, I’d become aware of one of Ireland’s greatest culinary innovations: the Irish Spice Bag, a fusion of Irish and Chinese cuisine consisting (per Wikipedia) of “deep-fried salt and chili chips, salt and chili chicken (usually shredded, occasionally balls/wings), red and green peppers, sliced chili peppers, fried onions, jalapenos and a variety of spices.” There are sometimes small modifications to this, but every spice bag we saw on our trip was pretty close to this. Xian’s had a small upstairs section to sit and enjoy our newfound delicacy.
After the spice bag, it was time for us to get our inaugural pint of fresh Guinness at Tigh Neachtain. This is when I learned that pouring a proper pint of Guinness requires a rest period to let the foam settle. I watched, confused, as the bartender put my pints down and left to do something else, and I stood there wondering what I’d done wrong. Nothing, except not having been blessed enough to have had a real pint of Guinness before.
After that, my wife and I decided to visit Sheridan’s, a cheesemonger about a block away. We’d opted to share small eats with one another rather than to sit down to one big meal. Could’ve eaten Irish charcuterie/cheese every meal in Ireland, honestly. It was really good. Had I known about the incoming snowstorm (foreshadowing!), I would have paid to get a day’s worth of charcuterie and barricaded ourselves at a place in the Irish mountains.
Last, but certainly not least, we decided to visit Murphy’s Ice Cream. Now, admittedly, I was a bit skeptical about this given the weather, but came to discover they also sold hot chocolate, which was so thick, rich, and warm it was almost like drinking a very thin pudding- but absolutely hit the spot. We also tried the Micil Irish Cream- an alcoholic ice cream!- which was similarly incredible.
DAY TWO: WESTPORT
In the morning, we woke up and went to Esquire’s Coffee, directly across the square from the Skeffington Arms Hotel, and enjoyed the best cup of coffee I had the entire time I was in Ireland. I also had an excellent Croque Madam, which I ordered knowing we were headed to a decent day of hiking in Connemara National Park.
We arrived, and began the hike up the Diamond Hill loop, rated one of the best hikes in all of Ireland. Both my wife and I were looking forward to the hike, which is a well maintained and rated a “Moderate” on AllTrails.com. However, as we approached the halfway point- or the turn for the “lower” loop for people only doing half the hike- it began to sleet again, hard. They say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing, and they’re not wrong. As the weather had improved at the beginning of our hike, my wife and I both had declined to suit up in our full all-weather gear, my wife leaving her rainproof hardshell in the car.
So much to our dismay, we had to turn around. Just to spite us, of course, as soon as we approached the bottom of the hill, the weather began to spite us by clearing off. Had my wife’s down softshell not been thirty pounds heavier due to the precipitation, we would have turned around and given it another go. But in Ireland, the weather giveth, and the weather taketh away.
Leaving Connemara, we took the R335 Leenaun to Louisburgh road on our way to Westport. And let me be explicitly clear here: if you are driving through this part of Ireland, you have to take this route.
Starting at Killary Fjord, and stretching through the Doolough Valley, the stark beauty is a sight to behold. The sheep sleeping in the road or on the side of the road who were unamused at our presence. My wife made me stop so she could take pictures and try to approach one. It made a noise that echoed my exact sentiments when she’d told me her plan: “Think again, lady”, and she wisely retreated.
In a more somber note, make sure to stop at the Doolough Valley Famine Memorial, to learn more about the reason that Ireland has only recently recovered from the population decline it faced in the wake of the famine in the mid-10th century.
Arriving at Westport, we checked in to the Westport Plaza Hotel. For €132 a night, we got a Queen suite overlooking the courtyard, free parking, and free full breakfast the next morning. Along with that, we decided to make use of the on-site spa, where we enjoyed an “Aroma Bath Salts Spa Bath”, which is a “blend of VOYA organic essential oils, organic lemon, lime, clove, basil & mandarin combined with bath salts.”
Staying near the center of Westport made for easy access to the entire village. While the restaurant at the hotel looked more than decent, and was actually fairly reasonably priced, we wanted to get out and about- even considering the weather- and I’m so glad we did.
The best meal of our entire trip was at the Olde Bridge Restaurant in Westport. It’s a very unassuming place, but well rated, and the reviews I read all said it was decent food at a decent price. An eclectic mix of Asian (predominantly Indian) and Irish cuisine, my wife ordered the Tikka Masala and I ordered the “Five Spice Chicken”, which appeared to be a Chinese/Thai inspired dish.
I can honestly say I’ve never had any Thai or Indian food in the United States that could compete. I’m sure it exits somewhere, but I’ve yet to find it. And the “Five Spice Chicken”- we have plenty of Five Spice flavored or accented dishes hereabout, but I’ve looked desperately at every Asian cuisine restaurant within a hundred miles of my house, and not a one seems to put them together like that. I’m now on a quest to attempt to recreate it.
We then headed to Matt Malloy’s and The Porter House Pub, both offering live music, a fire, and fantastic pints of Guinness. I asked the bartender for “something different”, and he suggested I also try a Smithwick’s, which was really good, but I don’t think anything beats a real Guinness in Ireland. We ended the night trekking back to our hotel, preparing to wake up for an early morning hike.
DAY THREE: ENNISKILLEN
Our plan was to hike the nearby Croagh Patrick. Croagh Patrick is one of the taller mountains in Ireland and is the place St. Patrick was said to have spent forty days fasting at the summit. There has apparently been a church on the summit continuously since the 5th Century AD. The views are said to be second to none, and I wanted to try and catch them at sunrise. However, it was all for naught, as overnight the entire area had been blanketed in one to three inches of snow.
Instead, I looked for other things to do. We were set to spend the night in Enniskillen, a small town in the Fermanagh Lakelands of Northern Ireland. My wife had never been to the UK, and I thought it’d be cool to, quote-unquote, “go to another country”. There were a few things to do in-between Westport and there, and after she woke up, we conferred- and decided to visit Downpatrick Head.
The included breakfast with the Westport Plaza Hotel was excellent; we each got a made to order dish and then access to their breakfast buffet; definitely enough food to be able to skip lunch if we wanted. We headed out after breakfast, thinking the overnight snowstorm had slackened. Google Maps gave us an alternate way to Downpatrick Head, and, thinking it had taken into account the weather, we headed north.
Wrong.
Despite Google’s failure to anticipate the road conditions- why, it certainly wasn’t my fault to consider them- we made it to Downpatrick Head without too much undude delay or fuss. By then, the snow had stopped falling, and apparently it had stayed warm enough near the ocean they missed out on the whole affair. What they had instead was gusts of bitterly cold wind of over 40mph.
We drove through Sligo, and then across the border and into Belleek, stopping for lunch and tea at the Lemon Tree Coffee House. We had skipped the opportunity to have afternoon tea that day- there are a number of castles in-between Galway and Donegal that aren’t too expensive relative to the kind of experience you got, but neither my wife nor I felt like €50 a person was something we wanted to splurge on, in line with our budget.
While we didn’t get a “full afternoon tea”, Lemon Tree has great lattes, and we got to have scones and cream. Irish cream isn’t the traditional clotted cream you’d get in the UK (even though we were technically about 50 feet inside the UK); it’s more of a whipped cream type experience. But on a scone with some jam? It’s still great.
The road to Enniskillen along Lough Erne was still very snow-laden, with a few trees down in the road that necessitated careful traversal, but it was beautiful all the same. It reminded me a lot of the foothills of the Blue Ridge, stretching into the Piedmont in Virginia- just with a lot more castles.
We stayed at the seemingly unassuming Belmore Court and Motel, actually the most expensive stay we had on the trip at exactly €175, at our budget limit. However, it also included free breakfast, a bottle of wine, and a two-course meal you could choose to have at a number of local restaurants. Considering the meal alone would have cost €40–50, I though the value was well worth it, and the staff was incredibly polite. I’d definitely recommend staying here if you want to stay in Enniskillen.
We had dinner at the Crowe’s Nest, which was a great choice; the meal was fantastic and the service was even better. I made an offhand comment when we got there about it being my wife’s birthday, and without any further prompting, they brought her a dessert at the end with her name written in syrup on it.
After dinner, we went out to a couple of pubs advertising live music- except the weather foiled our plans once again, as the live music had canceled. Instead, we enjoy a couple pints of Guinness next to a fire and struck up a conversation with the locals before we ended up calling it a night.
DAY FOUR: DUBLIN
The next morning started our last full day in Ireland. We woke up and availed ourselves to the complimentary breakfast. I would have been certainly with standard continental breakfast fare, but the breakfast buffet the Belmore Court offered was exceptional.
After that, we took off back to the Republic of Ireland and headed to Trim Castle. Originally, we had also wanted to stop at Newgrange, which is a prehistoric monument not far from Trim Castle, supposedly built around 3200 BC- making it older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge! But you needed to buy advance tickets, which I neglected to do. So we’ll have to save that one for next time.
Trim Castle was magnificent to behold; considering the age and engineering techniques of the time, the fact anything is still standing here is nothing short of amazing. You can read about how “it took thirty years to build the castle” online or in a book, but when you get there and see the extent of what has survived for most of a millennia after being built by hand, you instantly go “Oh. That makes perfect sense.”
Since we couldn’t go to Newgrange, we decided to just hoof it back to the Dublin Airport to return our rental car. I’d decided that there was no point in keeping a car to drive around Dublin- which turned out to be an excellent conclusion- and it saved us almost an entire day’s rental, plus whatever it would cost to park in Dublin. We took a taxi to downtown Dublin, which cost €40; there are buses for a fraction of that price, but I figured a taxi would be quicker. And it was, but not so much I’d avoid the bus to the city center the next time we’re in Ireland, which was much cheaper and very efficient.
We stayed at the Wren Urban Nest, right in the heart of downtown Dublin- in walking distance to the Book of Kells and Trinity College, the Guinness Storehouse, the Temple Bar district, and innumerous pubs and restaurants. We got a “Cosy Nest” for €161, and it was absolutely “cozy”, but not claustrophic in any way- and very well appointed and high tech. I felt like it could’ve passed for a hotel room on some Disney+ Star Wars show, with the climate and light controls and way it was laid out. I would definitely stay there again, although we lucked out for price, as they can go far higher during busier times of the year.
When we leaving the hotel in Enniskillen that morning, knowing what our schedule for the day would more accurately be, we started to book our itinerary for the day. Both the Book of Kells and the Guinness Storehouse require buying tickets in advance to visit, and I’d presumed that visiting in winter would afford us some leeway on how far in advance we’d need to buy them.
Cue the sad trombone noise, because the Book of Kells was completely sold out by the time we’d checked not long after 9am, and the Guinness Storehouse tours were worrying close to being sold out. When we got settled in our hotel, we wandered over to Trinity College to see if we could somehow still sneak a peek or find our way into a tour via a last-minute cancellation or no-show. But our hopes were sadly dashed.
Instead, with some time to kill, we decided to head over to The Temple Bar. If you look up any trips to Ireland, or particularly to Dublin, you’ll see pictures of The Temple Bar everywhere. However, every time we got near it, it was packed to the gills with people; and when I say “packed”, I mean shoulder to shoulder. We took a few pictures for posterity’s sake, and we also stopped in front of their 24-hour webcam that streams on YouTube, so our kids at home with grandma and grandpa could see us waving to them.
Instead, we stopped into PI Temple Bar, offering wood fired Neapolitan-style pizza. We each ordered their signature pizza, the Nduja (“Crushed Tomato, Fresh Basil, Healy Family Honey, Scamorza, Nduja, Grana Padano”), and discovered why it is ostensibly the best pizza in Dublin. I’ve been to Naples, and I hope to be welcomed back someday, but I’m going to risk saying this pizza was so good, it is virtually indistinguishable from the real deal.
After that, we walked to the Guinness Storehouse. From The Temple Bar, this was probably was an easy 30-minute hike. Just make sure you’ve got walking shoes on.
Now, the Guinness Storehouse is clearly a sort-of “tourist trap” place. I’d bet good money there wasn’t a single local amongst any of the tour groups visiting that day, unless they were dutifully tagging along with visitors from out of town (or, more likely, out of the country). I had pretty much sussed that out from the first time I looked at going there. However, my advice to those of you who haven’t been to Ireland before is to absolutely still go and visit it. It’s still a really cool experience; learning about the history of Guinness, how it’s brewed, what makes it different than other beers, etc, was very interesting.
For instance, I found out that the British government wanted to enact economic sanctions on Ireland during World War II, in an attempt to force them into the war on the side of the Allies. They ultimately demurred, however, because of how much their own troops loved Guinness. I’m sure that wasn’t the only consideration there, but the fact that it was a consideration at all shows how much of a cultural touchstone Guinness is, not just in Ireland but around the world.
We chose tickets that gave the opportunity to teach everyone how to pour their own pint of Guinness, which, as I mentioned earlier, is different than most other beers. The nitrogen the beer is infused with gives it it’s signature head, but also means you have to take a break when the beer gets to a pre-determined point on the Guinness pint glass. You let it settle for a minute, and then finish it off, arriving at the pint you see poured there on the right. They’ll then “certify” you with the ability to pour a pint of Guinness. Kitschy, again, but I’d say it’s still something you have to do once.
After this, we walked back towards our hotel, stopping in a few shops to scrounge for souvenirs of our trip, and decided to call it a night. The Dublin nightlife was in full swing, and we could’ve spent the night barhopping, dancing, etc. When you’re closer to 40 than 30, however, crawling into bed sounds like a lot more fun. We settled in to watch an Irish-made TV drama on RTE, and quickly fell asleep.
The next morning was a bittersweet awakening. We’d had a marvelous time on our trip to Ireland, which was only a few hours from being over. We packed our things and headed out onto the street to walk towards one of the express buses to the airport, making sure to stop at The Stage Door Cafe for breakfast. It’s a very lively place, with some R- and X-rated decor that was hilarious, and you get an almost literal ton of food for what you order.
We got to the airport at 9am for our 12pm flight, as Ireland is unique in having US Customs preclearance at the Dublin airport, which allows flights back to the US to fly into domestic terminals, allowing you to walk directly off the plane and out of the airport. However, I was told repeatedly it can take quite awhile, so we made absolutely sure to get to the airport no later than 8:59am. Thankfully, though, we were through Customs in literal minutes. I don’t know if we should attribute that to it being a Sunday morning, or that our trip was blessed with an inordinate amount of luck, but it meant we had a good two hours to hang out at the airport. I would have loved to have spent that extra time in Dublin, but I can’t complain about being able to get back home in good order.
Taking off out of Dublin, we were able to see the countryside below in a way we couldn’t arriving before sunrise. You can get the barest glimpse at the beauty of Ireland from them. The last picture is of the western coast of Ireland, passing near Ballycastle and Downpatrick Head on the way back across the Atlantic.
The flight back to the US on Aer Lingus was similarly uneventful; I thought the meals on the way back weren’t quite as good as the ones on the way to Ireland, but I truly don’t have anything to complain about.
OVERALL
It was a short trip, and we knew we would only be able to get a glimpse of Ireland- but it was well worth it.
So, what are the top takeaways from our trip?
- We managed to spend less than $200/day on “hard” costs- including lodging, the car rental, etc, costs we really couldn’t escape. However, because of our judicial choice to go for the right hotels (again, all rated 4/5 on Google Reviews or higher) and us choosing things that were free to do, this also covered most of our food and even the gas for the rental car (helped because of the small car we chose).
- If you’re going to come to Ireland in the winter- particularly in Western Ireland- be prepared for extremes from 2–3 different seasons, especially if you’re planning on doing anything outdoors. Other than our hike on Croagh Patrick, which sounds like it would’ve taken crampons and an ice pick, we could’ve done our other hikes if we had taken this fully into consideration. The snow, although unusual, wasn’t impossible for that time of year- so be willing to roll with it!
- If you want to see Ireland fully, you have to drive. But just make sure you’re prepared to drive safely in Ireland. Again, I think a full-time person helping navigate is essential for first time visitors in particular.
- While it’s important to be flexible with your itinerary, and not cram too much into one day, we missed out on doing a few things (the Book of Kells, for instance) because we waited too long to buy advance tickets. If that’s something you want to do, make sure you keep an eye on that!
- And last, but not least- if you haven’t gone to Ireland yet, make plans and go! It’s an incredible country with incredible people.
Thanks, y'all, and Slán go fóill!
submitted by BudgetTravelerHoo to irishtourism [link] [comments]

2024.04.12 13:04 redditduk [Reupload Megalist] SG Gigs, Concerts, Raves: Mid April (12 Apr - 25 Apr 2024)

26 Apr Update: https://reddit.com/singaporemusicchat/comments/1cde6nmegalist_sg_gigs_concerts_raves_may_2024_labou

12 Apr, Fri - Esplanade's A Tapestry of Sacred Music weekend

 
 

13 Apr, Sat

 

14 Apr, Sun

15 Apr, Mon

truncated for word limit

16 Apr, Tue

17 Apr, Wed - Clarke Quay St Fest

18 Apr, Thu

19 Apr, Fri

 
 
 
 

20 Apr, Sat - Uh Record Store Day

 
 
 

21 Apr, Sun

 
 

22 Apr, Mon

23 Apr, Tue

Other Events

24 Apr, Wed - Pink moon at 7:23pm

25 Apr, Thu

I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.04.09 19:59 Wooden_Taste9815 My All India Solo Road Trip 2023-24 (Completed) - Part 2

This is the 2nd and final part of my original post - a continuation from my 1st part (click here).
**\* PART 2 **\*
On a daily basis before retiring for the day, I used to jot down notes - on how my day was, including any incidents. Those notes are as below:
Stop 1 Umargam → Surat IBC Distance covered =155 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 3 PM and took the empty pothole ridden coastal road to save KMs and toll. Reached Surat at 7 Pm as expected. Stayed put at my friend's place. Had visited Surat before, just had yummy roadside food and tea at Dumas road followed by a dessert - Surat's famous Choco.
Stop 2 Surat IBC → Ahmedabad Gota Distance covered =292 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: En route from Surat to Ahmedabad, halted for some time at Baroda where I had lived many years ago Nothing much changed out there, had Vadodara's staple roadside food - sev usal, paani poori, and coal tea at my usual hangouts from yesteryears. Then proceeded to Ahmedabad. Luckily I didn't get much traffic and reached at 7.30 PM. Stayed put at my cousin's place. Had visited the place before, so just had house dinner and called it a day.

Stop 3 Ahmedabad → Diu Distance covered =376 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: Drove from Ahmedabad to Diu. Started at 9.30 AM and reached Diu at 7.15 PM. Excellent highways. Took 3 halts for tea/snacks. Checked in at my hotel and had dinner at a roadside food stall. Diu was an extended halt of 2 nights. The next day was spent on foot covering the entire Diu fort and its vicinity. Evening I went to an old local cinema within the fort and watched a blockbuster movie.

Stop 4 Diu → Dwarka-Okha Distance covered =349 State = DND Nights = 2
Notes: Left Diu at 8.45 AM and reached Okha at 7.10 PM after 3 tea halts. The highways were amazing. Did a mistake of bypassing Somnath falsely assuming that the temple entry would be crowded and would cause longer travel delays. Apparently it was a weekday and entire entry-exit wouldn't have taken more than 30 minutes. The entire journey was amazing and picturesque. Sometimes I was the only one driving on long stretches of the highway. I could see lots of windmills surrounding the area from a distance. The final 20 KMs stretch before Okha was an exception though - google maps took me on a road that was single lane and very dusty, and since it was past 6.30 pm and totally dark, it was difficult driving with oncoming traffic with upper headlights on! Finally in Okha, I checked in to a hotel right next to the train station. Then took a nice long walk and covered the entire town in 45 minutes. Everybody were closing their shops around 7.45 PM itself...by 8.30 PM the little town bore a deserted look with few groups here and there. Okha was an extended halt of 2 nights. The next day I went walking to the ferry terminal - approx. 1 KM, to take a boat to Dwarka Beth. Within an hour I was at the temple gates on that island. Entry was superfast and I finished paying my respects in about 30 minutes. Then went to Sone ki Dwarka where I had to pay some entry fees. Later I decided to walk and explore the place, and ended up on one of the most isolated clean beaches I had ever seen with blue coloured ocean. There was an abandoned temple at a small hill overlooking the sea and that’s where I spent my next couple of hours admiring the natural beauty around me before calling it a day.

Stop 5 Dwarka → Anjar-Bhuj Distance covered =375 State = GJ Nights = 2
Notes: Left Okha at 9.30 AM. Initially the roads were bad because they were creating a new highway. After exiting the Dwarka area, the roads became good with no traffic. Reached Anjar at 7 PM after 4 halts.

Stop 6 Anjar-Bhuj → Narayan Sarovar Distance covered =231 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 10 AM and after 6 tea halts reached at 3.30 PM. No traffic, very good roads, mostly single lane. After leaving my bags at my room drove to Shree Koteshwar Mahadev Mandir 5-7 minutes away. Paid my respects and experienced the most beautiful sunset from their premises. Although it was little hot when I reached Narayan Sarovar, it turned rapidly cold after sunset. The next day visited Narayan Sarovar itself and the ancient temple. A special mention about Valram Vishramdham where I stayed in their older campus. I had the opportunity to experience their free dinner at the Trust's Bhojanalay hall. It was one of the tastiest food I have had with no compromise on quality.

Stop 7 Narayan Sarovar → White Desert Distance covered =130 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 9.50 AM after having tea. En route my 1st destination - Lakhpat Fort, I took NH41 (Koteshwar Highway) which was 10 KMs shorter as compared to Google Maps recommendation. I was the only one driving on this entire stretch of the single lane highway - which was last maintained probably during pre-independence. The entire stretch had such terrible road conditions - full of gravel and stones, big potholes, that for few KMs I actually went off road and drove on the muddy fields running parallel to this highway - which for a moment gave me a breather from terrible driving conditions. I was driving at 10-20 Kmph for this entire stretch until I reached Lakhpat after noon. First went to the Lakhpat Gurudwara and paid my respects and had langar. Then I explored the abandoned village within the fort precincts, and enjoyed the view from the top of the fort walls where I could see the dried Indus river bed. After spending couple of hours, left Lakhpat and headed towards Rann. The roads were A-class and pleasant to drive. Again I was mostly alone on this stretch as well. I started seeing the white desert somewhere midway into my journey. Reached my hotel in White Desert at 4 PM. Then I went to see the White Desert after paying the entry fees. One can only drive halfway towards the main entry point of the White Desert, and then park at the free parking space. After that walking for a KM at least before the strip ends and White desert becomes accessible. There is a watchtower as well at this point which was closed to the public during my visit. From what I heard, sometime in the past, one could apparently drive all the way to this watch tower, and also climb the tower as well to get a grand view of the White Desert. I reached at the recommended time of 5 PM to enjoy the sunset. It was a sight to behold. I got to know from the locals that it had rained couple of days prior and as such the whiteness of the desert was little pale as compared to normal. Perhaps due to the rain incident, one needs to be careful while walking the desert, as sometimes the foot can sink a bit making your shoes and legs all black with gooey stuff. Walked back to the free music program near the parking lot, unfortunately they were wrapping up when I reached at 7 pm, with hardly any public out there. Then went to my hotel and had delicious Kutchi food from my hosts, and called it a day.

Stop 8 White Desert → Tharad Distance covered =285 State = GJ Nights = 1
Notes: Left Rann at 9.15 AM and after 3 tea halts reached at 7.15 PM. Experienced the Road to Heaven - unfortunately there was road widening work (on a snail pace) which took out some of the charm of driving through that patch. Nevertheless it was very scenic with waters on either side of the road as far as the eye could see. The route that I had taken was mostly very poor after that - and due to major construction of a brand new highway, the roads went from poor to off road. Still I decided to faithfully follow Google Map who at some point repeatedly asked me to take a left turn on a stretch of road where there was none! Considering the under construction highway was also curving left, I kept driving through stones for a good 3-5 KMs only to find the road blocked due to major construction. So was forced to U-turn and go back 15-20 KMs for an alternative route. Then met a person who told me that there is an unmarked diversion 3 KMs before the blockade which goes through a small village and connects to the other side of this under construction highway. So took a U-turn again and went back 15-20 KMs to that stony highway, and with the help of a local was able to finally see the entry to the village from the highway. It was a completely sandy lane with no resemblance of a road - no wonder I missed it in spite of Google maps repeatedly telling me to take that left LOL. After driving through couple of villages, I finally merged with the National Highway. Later, as i approached Tharad, the highway started becoming dusty with lots of truckers on the way. I can easily state that Tharad is one of the dustiest towns in my experience. After reaching Tharad, I faced issues in getting a hotel, since the ones I shortlisted turned out to be super expensive for a dusty town. Then did some leg work to get a reasonably priced accommodation.

Stop 9 Tharad → Jaisalmer Distance covered =339 State = GJ > RJ Nights = 1
Notes: Left dusty Tharad at 9.30 AM and after 3 tea halts reached at 7 PM. No traffic, roads were ok, the journey was uneventful. Most of the roads that I travelled through were isolated and managed by BRO (Border Roads Organisation). They passed mostly through the desert making it one of the most surreal drives. Jaisalmer was an extended halt of 4 days - spent exploring the local areas, the Fort, Khuri sand dunes, Kuldhara ghost village and Gadisar lake. My favorite thing was to have coffee on top of the fort overlooking the entire golden city of Jaisalmer.

Stop 10 Jaisalmer → Raisingh Nagar Distance covered =455 State = RJ Nights = 4
Notes: Left Rann at 9.15 AM and after 3 tea halts reached super late at 8.30 PM. The entire stretch of the highway was excellent with zero traffic - I was the only one driving. The hotel that I had shortlisted (Do Bhai da Dhaba) turned out to be just a dhaba with no rooms. Since the entire patch is an isolated area, I had to venture much further to Raisingh Nagar town for a hotel. This is a small town that becomes completely deserted after 9 PM. Thankfully my hotel had room service and provided me with yummy dinner. An incident that happened some 50 KMs before Raisingh Nagar town while cruising at 80 Kmph, the highway without warning suddenly disappeared (literally) and the road turned to massive potholes for the next 300 meters before the highway came back into existence. My car was all but in one piece and still in running condition after heading into those massive potholes at that high speed. Thank God I was wearing my seat belts, but my backpack on the passenger seat flew and hit the windshield before coming back to its seat! Sorry backpack! Apparently they had horizontally cut and removed a patch of the highway to redo the bitumen/concrete work without any diversion signposts anywhere. During daytime this patch most likely been easily noticed, but in night even with my extra powerful fog lamps, I was unable to see this coming. Upon reviewing my GoPro footage, one reason was that there was a slow moving car coming from the opposite side with high beams ON, which created a black spot of the road conditions ahead. Keeping in mind that I was driving 100s of KMs on that particular day over super smooth highways, this broken patch was completely unexpected. Surprisingly my car survived as if nothing happened; but as for me, I was indeed shaken and needed to take a breather. (NOTE: A short video footage of this incident is available on my YouTube channel)

Stop 11 Raisingh Nagar → Amritsar Distance covered =338 State = RJ > PB Nights = 1
Notes: Exited from Rajasthan. Started seeing the Punjabi influence and Punjabi locals approximately 150 KMs before Punjab border. Roads were 2 lane managed by BRO and were quite decent. Mostly I was the only one on the road for miles on end. As I approached Punjab, the roads started deteriorating and finally I could see other vehicles plying. As I crossed into Punjab there was running traffic and the roads were bad to say the least. It did improve as I further ventured towards Amritsar. There were times where Google map took me through state highways that had their routes in between the farming fields, which was an experience. As I entered Amritsar there was traffic but nothing severe. Was able to negotiate my way without any delays to my hotel. Checked in, kept my bags and went straight to Golden temple to meditate. After couple of hours went out for dinner and then back to hotel to call it a day. Amritsar was an extended halt of 2 nights. The next day was spent mostly in Golden temple. Also toured on a cycle rickshaw to roam the bylanes of Golden temple vicinity. Had langar in the afternoon and dinner at the famous Kesar da dhaba.

Stop 12 Amritsar → Ramban Distance covered =287 State = PB > JK Nights = 2
Notes: Left Amritsar at 9.30 AM and reached Ramban at 6.30 PM with 5 tea halts. I took the Udhampur bypass (skipping NH44 - Jammu). Roads were more or less pretty bad to terrible for long stretches. The entire bypass road was being renovated or widened, and as such was extremely dusty due to white cement. Fortunately, there was hardly any traffic on this entire stretch. As I crossed into Kashmir border, I noticed that at some point I lost my phone signals. It was only much later, when I reached Ramban that I realized that Prepaid Sims from outside Kashmir is blocked by the government for security reasons. Only outstation Postpaid Sims and Kashmir local Sims (Prepaid/Postpaid) will get signals. I was completely caught unaware about this fact. Even the sight of several small stalls - advertising the sale of phone sim cards on the side of the highway, did not strike me to wonder why all of a sudden I am seeing SIM card hoardings. Anyways, I decided to wait until reaching Srinagar before taking a call on getting a new local SIM. For navigation, fortunately I was safe with my mobile GPS and Google offline maps. Another thing that I noticed was the presence of military personnel with rifles at regular intervals all along NH44. To me they looked like they were just minding their own business and keeping a keen watchful eye on their surroundings. They seemed alert and on guard constantly. My salute to these heroes who stand in such freezing temperatures and never letting their guard down.

Stop 13 Ramban → Srinagar Distance covered =129 State = JK Nights = 1
Notes: Left Ramban at 11 AM and reached my hotel at Srinagar at 5.15 PM. Took 4 tea breaks in between. Surprisingly, the hotel was booked completely so went to my next backup destination. Srinagar was an extended halt of 4 days - spent by exploring the city using local bus rides, evening walks at Dal Lake, Shikhara boat rides. Temperatures were close to freezing during my stay over there, but there was no snow.

Stop 14 Srinagar → Ramban Distance covered =129 State = JK Nights = 4
Notes: Left Srinagar at 12.30 PM only to reach early at my destination Ramban at 5 PM inspite of traffic. Took two tea breaks in between.

Stop 15 Ramban → Basohli Distance covered =182 State = JK Nights = 1
Notes: From Ramban I started my journey very late on purpose - at 11.30 AM due to fewer KMs. Took 2 tea halts and reached Basohli by 5 PM. Around 25 KMs before Basohli, the roads became single lane with one of the steepest stretches consisting of several sharp hairpin bends. And within this portion, for a patch of 5 KMs the roads were broken making driving all the more difficult. Navigating sharp turns on narrow winding roads going on a steep uphill or downhill was a challenge for me with the fear of oncoming vehicles. All this was new for me - since I had never driven any kind of vehicle on slopes/ghats :) In any case I was able to learn the trick to navigate the slopes on the fly, without much difficulty. Once at Basohli, I checked in to my hotel and took a short walk to visit the historic Basholi fort which was in complete ruins and with no soul in sight. I still managed to explore its dark interiors - kinda looked haunted to me. I had to use my phone torch to go deeper inside and get greeted with bats. I did notice that this town packs up early and I could see people winding down by 8 PM.

Stop 16 Basohli → Mandi Distance covered =213 State = JK > HP Nights = 1
Notes: Started late at 10.15 AM inspite of my plans on leaving an hour early. This is what cold weather does to me - makes me lazy. If yesterday was the day of ghats (steep roads), then today more ghats. And some more. The steepest ones I had ever encountered so far - and with the shortest turning radius. There were couple of times when my overtaking manoeuvres were not up to the mark earning me bad words and agitated stares from oncoming bikers. After that I learnt to be super careful while overtaking. Overall it was a tiring day with my entire concentration on the road. Reached Mandi at 7 PM after taking 3 short tea/lunch halts. The destination (my hotel) that Google maps got me to was literally nowhere - right on the middle of a dark National highway with no hotel in sight for miles on either side. Maps can be sometimes funny - especially when it says that the hotel has arrived and all one can see instead is a bare hill on one side and a ravine on the other lol. I then drove back a short distance to Mandi downtown area and fixed myself a hotel. Then explored the small downtown area - it was pretty clean and nicely developed.

Stop 17 Mandi → Paonta Sahib Distance covered =257 State = HP Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 9.40 AM and drove in very foggy Mandi roads. The city looked like a dream in the fog. Once out of Mandi limits, the roads became proper 4 lane highways, and by the looks of it seemed brand new. On one side were hills and the other side were trenches and faraway hills making the entire driving experience surreal. However, all this ended after about 2 hours of driving. Once I entered Punjab, roads became pretty bad and it kept getting worse as I entered Haryana. Most of the places, they were widening and creating new routes for the national highway. At one point a bridge over the river collapsed few days earlier causing few KMs long standstill traffic - which I overcame using alternative routes thanks to Google. Overall it was a stressful and a tiring day of terrible roads and traffic jams. This day was also a day of state border hopping - from Himachal Pradesh to Punjab to Himachal Pradesh to Haryana to Himachal Pradesh in a single day! At Himachal Pradesh borders they collect toll - Rs 50 cash (no fast tag) each time you enter that state. At the final Himachal Pradesh border, 2 senior cops asked for a lift to Paonta Sahib and I obliged. Final stretch of my journey was full of 2 lane ghats, and I reached Paonta Sahib at 6.50 PM after taking 3 tea breaks. Checked into a hotel and then went to the Gurudwara. Had langar then went out for a walk. Everything was closed at 9.45 PM except for a Pizza shop which is where I had my 2nd dinner.

Stop 18 Paonta Sahib → Kichha Distance covered =307 State = HP > UK Nights = 1
Notes: Went to the Gurudwara at 8.45 AM and attended the Kirtan, had langar (langar is served 24 hours here) then visited the banks of river Yamuna from the side lane of the Gurudwara. The river was mostly dried up. Started my journey at 9.45 AM. Roads were OK for most part of the day. Lots of city traffic at Dehradun and Haridwar, where I missed a left turn due to a distraction leading to extra 8 KMs of driving. Final couple of hours of my journey were on 4-6 lane empty highways where I could get some speed. Reached my destination at 7.20 PM after 3 tea halts.

Stop 19 Kichha → Bahraich Distance covered =320 State = UK > UP Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 9.45 AM after breakfast. Was in Uttarakhand for some time before entering Uttar Pradesh. Entire day the highways were 2 lane but well maintained with no traffic. Every 10s of KMs I would cross a small village or a town in the middle of nowhere. Entire day there was no sunshine due to foggy conditions and the cold weather. Had kept the car heater on at mild levels at all times. Took 4 extended tea breaks and still reached early at 6.30 PM. After hotel check-in, I took a long walk within the town - lots of people on the road and malls for shopping - perhaps because it was 31st December. As for me, I was in dreamland by 11.30 PM. Happy New Year.

Stop 20 Bahraich → Bettiah Distance covered =355 State = UP > BH Nights = 1
Notes: Day started with me discovering a dent and damage to the rear bumper of my car. Strangely I couldn't recall any incident which could have caused this. Also had washed the car a day earlier and the damage wasn’t there at the time. So most likely somebody bumped into my car when it was parked at night. Or a lesser possibility is that I damaged it while taking a reverse (and I didn't noticed/felt it). Left at 9.20 AM when it was still foggy. Google Maps initially gave me an estimate of 9.5 hours of driving, but as the day progresses, the total driving time reduced to under 8 hours. First experience of such a big fluctuation in time estimation. My guess is that I was able to drive relatively faster in 2 lane roads - mainly because roads were wider and well maintained for my stint in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Did not find much traffic in UP, with the exception of bikers who had the habit of driving in the middle of the road instead of the sides. Lots of times, they would not yield even after honking. Towards the end of UP segment, road condition rapidly deteriorated. After crossing into Bihar, roads became better with even fewer traffic. Reached my destination at 7 PM after taking 5 tea halts. Unknowing to me, all truckers and buses had just announced a nationwide protest strike against the new motor laws.

Stop 21 Bettiah → Raghopur Distance covered =310 State = BH Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 10 AM on a foggy morning. Roads were completely empty throughout the day - later I realized that all heavy vehicles were on strike due to protest over the new hit and run motor laws. I found road blockades at 4 places. The 1st place I was warned and asked to turn back, and just when I did, the cops came and dispersed the mob. I was then able to pass through. 2nd instance I was able to follow couple of cars using a narrow village road and exit to the other side of the blockade. 3rd instance, I was trying to take the side road to enter a village road and the mob came running after me. That was scary! One guy started banging my car and was furious that I was still driving. I kept my cool and with a smile told him that I am not bypassing their blockade but just taking a turn. He then warned me about the dangers of the furious mob and guided me to a side road, from where I was able to take the village bylanes to the other side. And finally the last blockade was such that it was on a bridge with no bypass. The only other road was going into Nepal (less than a KM away). I decided to turn back and take a village route without Google's approval - which was a bad decision. The roads were very narrow and way too complex for Google maps to handle. The villagers were confused as to where I wanted to go and they guided me to a route which took me back to the same highway from where I wanted to escape - only to add an additional 5+ KMs to the blockade spot. By the time I reached the highway, Google maps showed that the blockade was apparently cleared (the red traffic line disappeared). This turned out to be true - as I reached the bridge there was no one. I guess I should have waited there like other private vehicles for the cops to arrive and clear the mob. Ultimately, I still managed to reach my hotel on time at 7 PM - after taking 3 long tea/lunch breaks and encountering those 4 blockades.

Stop 22 Raghopur → Dhuliyan Distance covered =340 State = BH > WB Nights = 1
Notes: Started late at 10 AM due to breakfast at the source. Had yummy roadside chole bhature (2) for 30 bucks followed by kulhad chai. Roads were 90% National Highways with mostly 4 lanes. The previous day protest-strikes seemed to be over at midnight. Luckily for me, all the trucks started on their onward journeys during the night itself, leaving not much traffic that morning. Roads were again mostly empty throughout much of Bihar. After crossing into Bengal, traffic steadily started to increase, although it was always running traffic. One surprising thing that I noticed was the presence of signals in the middle of the National Highways in Bengal. And to top it, another irritating thing I experienced were the diversionary drums placed on the middle of the National Highway every couple of KMs - for allowing the right-left traffic to cross over. The highway authorities should have created a bridge or a subway to account for such traffic - like the way it is in all other states. Completed my journey at 7 PM with only 2 tea/lunch breaks. Once I reached my hotel, i crossed over to Jharkhand to fill up my fuel tank. For some reason it was a tiring day for me - maybe due to the traffic.

Stop 23 Dhuliyan → Howrah Distance covered =287 State = WB Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 9.15 AM. Roads had lesser traffic as compared to the previous day. Although the roads were excellent, the road blocks were ever present every now and then - effectively acting as speed breakers. As the day progressed certain stretches of the roads deteriorated due to bridge construction or expansion activities on those patches. This was a cause of massive traffic jams, though at few places Google maps helped me to take an alternate city route, where the traffic was at least moving. Unfortunately, the authorities don't seem to understand that while construction is always good, they also need to take care of the existing roads running parallel to the construction points. At some places the roads were non-existent and big mud mounds were hitting the underbelly of my car. Reached Howrah at 7.10 PM after taking 3 medium-long tea breaks. Howrah was an extended halt of 3 nights - spent by exploring old Kolkata, walking its narrow bylanes, taking local bus rides, riding on couple of tram routes, and also using India's first underground metro train.

Stop 24 Howrah → Bhadrak Distance covered =308 State = WB > OD Nights = 3
Notes: I started at 10 AM. Being a Sunday, I still found traffic for 8-10 KMs before reaching the National Highway. The highways were much better without those drum obstacles that I found while entering Bengal. They were 6 lanes for the most part of today's journey, which became 4 lane as I kept going further into Odhisa state. Would have reached my hotel at 6.45 pm were it not for missing an exit and then taking a wrong turn... leading to an extra 10 KMs. Took 3 long tea breaks in between.

Stop 25 Bhadrak → Ichchapuram Distance covered =336 State = OD > AP Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 9.15 AM and after 4 tea halts reached my destination at 6.30 PM. Absolutely no traffic, very good roads, mostly 6 lane which turned to 4 lane for the final leg of my journey. Couldn't avoid few of tolls since Google map was not updated with the new toll gate locations. While still in Odhisa, had the opportunity to try fried fish at couple of halts, nicely made. I did had difficulty finding hotels serving tea. The small general stores who also sell tea are typically not good at making tea and that was the case today for me.

Stop 26 Ichchapuram → Tuni Distance covered =348 State = AP Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 9.25 AM and after 4 tea halts reached my destination at 7 PM. No traffic, extremely good roads, mostly NH 16 and having 6 lanes and sometimes 4 lanes. Plenty of roadside tea stops on the highway. Was mostly cruising at good speeds for the better part of my journey.

Stop 27 Tuni → Bapatla Distance covered =338 State = AP Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 10 AM and after 3 tea halts reached my destination at 7.10 PM. No traffic, extremely good roads, exited NH 16 at the start of the trip and the rest of the journey was mostly on NH 216 having 2 lanes. The first hotel manager saw my face and flatly refused to offer me a room citing no availability, which to me did not seem to be the case. Another 10 KMs away closer to the station, I checked few hotels which were budget yet pricey (approx. 1500) and finally got one within my budget.

Stop 28 Bapatla → Panjetty (Chennai) Distance covered =351 State = AP > TN Nights = 1
Notes: While cleaning/warming my car at 9.45 am, met a youngster who was curious about my vlogging, since he himself was planning on a road trip (mostly on his bike). Got delayed - I left at 10.40 AM and after 3 extra-long tea halts, reached my destination at 6.50 PM. No traffic, extremely good roads, exited NH 216 at the start of the trip and the rest of the journey was on NH 16 having 6 lanes. As I crossed into TN the NH became 4 lanes, and the road condition deteriorated with lots of potholes. Traffic started to increase as I reached closer to destination.

Stop 29 Panjetty → Puducherry Distance covered =192 State = TN > PY Nights = 1
Notes: Left at 10 AM and after 3 tea halts reached Pondy at 5 PM. Encountered heavy running traffic in and around Chennai as expected. Other than that it was a regular driving day. Puducherry was an extended halt of 3 nights - mostly spent walking along the lively Anna Salai road, the local tourist beach and White Town areas, and relishing the local street sea food.

Stop 30 Puducherry → Velankanni Distance covered =161 State = PY > TN Nights = 3
Notes: Left Pondy at 11 AM and after 2 tea halts + a beach halt reached my destination at 5.30 PM. There is a new highway being constructed on and off the old highway, so journey was a little slow. There were many towns in between so there was a lot of local moving traffic as well. Today there was an incident where I was trying to overtake a vehicle from the right on a multi-hump speed breaker. That was a misjudgement on my part since overtaking at dead slow speeds meant that ultimately a vehicle came from the opposite side and I had to slide in between that vehicle and overtake the vehicle on my left. Thankfully there was no accident, but it left me cursing at myself on my brain fade for a while! After checking into a hotel at my destination, went to pay my respects at The Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health. Attended a part of the last mass of the day and then was lucky enough to get prasad as part of Pongal celebrations.

Stop 31 Velankanni → Rameswaram Distance covered =279 State = TN Nights = 1
Notes: Left Velankanni at 11.30 AM and after 2 tea/lunch halts + a beach halt reached at 5.20 PM. Unlike the previous day, the roads were much better and completely empty. I was cruising at 70-80 Kmph all along. The center of Rameshwaram town where most of the hotels are located, is off-limits for 4 wheelers. So had to park my car 300 meters away from my hotel. After check-in, I went to the beach for a stroll and spent quite a while looking at the dark sea before calling it a day. I was not impressed by the cleanliness of this town, especially the temple vicinity - considering it is one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites. Everything like sidewalks, lamp posts, drains were broken, and lots of dirt all around, with plenty of litter openly dumped across that little beach. Also noticed enormous tangle of overhead wires on all roads. I wish the civic authorities could do more to improve this town. Rameswaram was an extended halt of 2 nights - the next day I went driving to Ram Setu in the middle of the ocean. Amazed to see my mobile trying to connect with Sri Lanka's cellular network. Later had home cooked seafood dinner at a village called Dhanushkodi. Interestingly, this village is still without electricity.

Stop 32 Rameswaram → Kanyakumari Distance covered =320 State = TN Nights = 2
Notes: Left Rameshwaram at 11 AM and after 2 tea/lunch halts + a beach halt reached at 8.15 PM. The roads were mostly empty. Many places the roads were broken. But closer to Kanyakumari they became better. Today there was an incident during the final leg of my journey - after my beach halt at sunset, while taking a right turn on an isolated dead street, met with a freak accident. My car hit a biker who was overtaking me from the right hand side/wrong side of the road without sounding a horn. That was his fault. At the same time I did realize my own fault as well - I failed to check behind me for any overtaking vehicles before proceeding with a turn. Also I didn't give a turn indicator - this being an isolated dead end road. The biker fell down, but he was up and running in no time along with his bike. He couldn't speak English or Hindi, so could not converse, but I did apologise to him and he seemed to be ok and moved on. For me, I was left with an upset (on myself) mind + a broken front bumper (which will now need to be completely replaced) and a small dent on the front right side panel. Initial estimate for the works from a workshop was for 5-7k. Did a temporary fix to my bumper with screws which made the dents hardly noticeable. Kanyakumari was an extended halt of 3 nights - mostly spent exploring the local tourist beach. On the next day I fell sick.

Stop 33 Kanyakumari → Fort Kochi Distance covered =307 State = TN > KL Nights = 3
Notes: I had fallen big time sick on my 1st day in Kanyakumari - very high fever invariably followed by cold and severe cough. Resorted to self-medications which kinda kept my fever under control but still was left with a drained body and headaches with cough-cold. I attributed my condition to the unique blend of heavy warm and cool winds from all 3 water bodies at the peninsula. The wind must have seeped into my system. I was contemplating on spending an extra 4th night but decided against it since I felt that going back on the road into the open would do my health some good. The journey to Fort Kochi seemed to be one of the longest duration - 9+ hours of drive. So had to force myself out of bed early on the day of the journey and started at 8.30 AM. Took 3 good tea breaks and with the traffic and bad narrow Kerala roads, I reached Kochi at 7.20 PM. Had to search around for a Hotel since the one I had shortlisted didn't have parking. As luck would have it, I got a nice little room pretty close to the tourist district and the ferry terminal - within my budget. After dropping my bags, I walked the area to explore around. Looking at the good vibes and my delicate health, I decided to extend my stay in Kochi by an extra day. The next day I went shopping for dry fruits in the neighbouring city of Ernakulam using the water metro ferry.

Stop 34 Fort Kochi → Kannur Distance covered =285 State = KL Nights = 2
Notes: Started at 8.30 AM sharp, and luckily I was onboard the ferry to Vypin with no waiting at all. The rest of the trip was similar if not worse to the previous stretch. Mostly 2 lane narrow NH 66 which at many times reduced to single lane only. And the entire stretch had heavy traffic. Work on expanding NH 66 to 4 lanes was ongoing at most of the places. Reached at 7 PM after taking 2 tea halts. Health again seemed to go bad with severe cough, so was surviving on meds the entire day.

Stop 35 Kannur → Bhatkal Distance covered =286 State = KL > KA Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 9.40 AM, and reached Bhatkal at 7 PM after taking 4 tea halts. My health was much better today thanks to change of medicine. Unlike the past many days, today's driving was less stressful after crossing into Karnataka.

Stop 36 Bhatkal → Margao Distance covered =199 State = KA > GA Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 10.30 AM, and had a major halt over at Shri Murdeshwar temple some short distance away. They charge Rs. 50 for vehicles entering the temple town - claiming it’s for entry fees and includes free parking. After paying my respects to the Gods, I took the lift (Rs. 20) all the way up to the 18th floor to see some amazing views out there. Also visited the massive Lord Shiva statue - at 123 feet it is the 2nd tallest Shiva statue in India. Then had lunch at an Udupi restaurant which was somewhat located in the middle of the sea, with a nice view of the blue waters. Resumed my journey towards Goa. Roads were excellent and devoid of traffic. Once inside Goa, there were few patches of hilly curvy roads. Reached my destination at 6 PM after taking 2 additional tea halts. Margao was an extended halt of 3 nights. The next day I had a pleasant evening watching the sunset at the local Benaulim Beach with excellent seafood and drinks on the beach itself. And on the following day, took a train to Vaso da Gama to explore the town - after watching that place in a popular Bollywood movie (Kabhi Ha Kabhi Na). Unfortunately, Vaso da Gama was a disappointment with nothing much to see. Margao, where I halted, was a much more exciting place. For dinner had one of the best seafood thali ever.

Stop 37 Margao/3 Kings → Ratnagiri Distance covered =279 State = GA > MH Nights = 3
Notes: Started at 9.30 AM, and had a major haltover at 3 KIngs Chapel some short distance away. Unfortunately, the Chapel itself was closed so could not pay my respects, but the view from the hilltop was amazing. Resumed my journey towards Ratnagiri, roads were good and devoid of traffic. There were few patches of hilly curvy roads after entering Maharashtra. On the Maharashtra side of the border, there was a check post. I was stopped and the officer checked my bags, car and also my pockets - presumably for presence of drugs. Reached my destination at 7.15 PM after taking 2 additional tea halts.

Stop 38 Ratnagiri → Poladpur Distance covered =177 State = MH Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 9.45 and reached my destination at 7.15 after 3 extra-long tea halts. Road conditions were strictly ok, but scenic at places. One side hilly ghats and on the other side the vastness of blue ocean down below made for a pleasant drive. Had an expensive ferry ride costing Rs 200 in between. Closer to destination I went on to NH66 which was proper 4 lane except for a major ghat section.

Stop 39 Poladpur → Hinjewadi Distance covered =157 State = MH Nights = 1
Notes: Started at 11.30 AM, and after 2 tea/lunch halts reached my destination at 5.45 PM. There was another ghat section before merging with a single lane road all the way to my destination. Hinjewadi was an extended halt of 3 nights spent with one of my old friend. Explored the surrounding locality and went for short drives. Most of my time was spent relaxing and unwinding down, with my tiredness catching up on me.

Stop 40 Hinjewadi → Umargam Distance covered =295 State = MH > GJ Nights = 3
Notes: Started at 10 AM and reached my final destination of my trip - HOME at 7 PM - after taking 2 long tea breaks. Roads were single lane mainly through small villages and light forest areas. I completely bypassed Mumbai and its surrounding cities to avoid traffic. And uneventful trip which ended on the right note.

********** END OF POST ***********
submitted by Wooden_Taste9815 to solotravel [link] [comments]

2024.03.29 03:22 redditduk [Megalist] SG Concerts, Gigs, Raves: Early April Easter to Hari Raya (29 Mar - 11 Apr 2024)

12 APR UPDATE: https://www.reddit.com/singaporemusicchat/comments/1c26c7k/reupload_megalist_sg_gigs_concerts_raves_mid/

29 Mar 2024, Fri - Good Friday

truncated for word limit
 

30 Mar 2024, Sat

truncated for word limit
 
 

31 Mar 2024, Sun - Easter Sunday, Singapore Poetry Month

truncated for word limit
 

01 Apr 2024, Mon

02 Apr 2024, Tue

03 Apr 2024, Wed - Bruno Mars

04 Apr 2024, Thu - Tomb-Sweeping Day(?)

05 Apr 2024, Fri

truncated for word limit
 
 
 
 

06 Apr 2024, Sat

 
 
 
 

07 Apr 2024, Sun

 
 
 

Events

Newly Open

Ramadan Bazaars

 

08 Apr 2024, Mon

09 Apr 2024, Tue - Hari Raya Eve

 

10 Apr 2024, Wed - Hari Raya Puasa (Eid al Fitr)

11 Apr 2024, Thu

 
 
I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.03.20 08:11 Aeogeus Here be Humans: Chapter 8

First Chapter/Previous Chapter
Though no one knew it, Samuel was the first to wake up the following day, and while he had not had sweet dreams like Tamara, it had been a peaceful sleep. Samuel hauled himself off his mat, folded it up and placed it in the dry room once again. Samuel had a bath and dived into the pool, another fantastic performance. After drying himself off, he put his shoes on, gathered his knife and pouch, and headed outside.
The weather was perfect as always; the sun shone brightly, and the clouds were like giant wads of cotton wool. As the gentle scent of pollen wafted around his nose, he felt wonderfully calm. Samuel closed his eyes and savoured the moment for just a while.
As the birds started chirping, Samuel was brought back to reality. Samuel moved to the vegetable patch beside the cave entrance, shaking his head slightly to eliminate the last of his drowsiness. The plants had grown bigger since yesterday, and Samuel was looking forward to some variety in his diet.
Samuel noticed the soil was quite dry, so he travelled back down the corridor and gathered a large bucket of water from the pool. Samuel carefully poured the water evenly over the young shoots, ensuring he did not crush them.
After tending to the needs of his vegetables, he started to tend to himself. He felt like oranges today for breakfast, so he set off into the woods to collect some. Samuel wondered if Tamara would come round today; he did so enjoy her visits.
“Who knows,” Samuel said to himself. Samuel talked to himself more and more recently whenever he found himself alone. Samuel might have been concerned if he could do anything about it; he was not a psychologist or psychiatrist and doubted anyone in the village was.
Samuel slapped his cheeks to make himself focus on the physical world. The walk to the orange tree was relatively uneventful, although a bird almost relieved itself on his head. The tree was where he had last left it, and so was its substantial fruit. He climbed up the branches and gathered a smaller one this morning. He was not very hungry this morning, but Samuel would not ignore the most important meal of the day.
He clambered down to one of the lower branches and then jumped to the ground. Samuel hit the ground, and a heavy shock echoed through his body, yet he landed firmly on his feet and walked back to the extension.
Samuel felt he needed to get into the habit of asking Tamara whether she would come round the next day. Samuel would wait around the extension for a while, maybe carve something new. However, he could not sit around all day waiting for her.
Then, his mind wandered back to the realisation that someone other than Tamara knew where he lived, making him somewhat nervous. Samuel rubbed his finger, took a wedge of orange, and popped it into his mouth.
“Aarush didn’t seem like a bad person. At the very least, he did not try to kill me on sight,” said Samuel, trying to console himself.
The sweet juice flowed around his tongue, and the sudden sweetness made his lips pursed.
Samuel casually strolled onward and decided to focus on his passion, biology. He looked around at the impossible forest he stood in; the species that comprised it were easy to identify: oak, beech, elm, silver birch, rowan and more than a dozen others. Every one of them was an acceptable size and colour for their type, although not one looked as though they had ever had a harsh summer.
But their uniform positioning was extraordinary; on trips with his university, he had visited the rainforests of the Amazon, the endless expanse of the taiga and the quiet woods of the English countryside. He had never seen anything like this; the only thing he had ever seen that had made Samuel feel the same way was devil gardens in the Amazon.
Samuel was frustrated. What he would not give to be able to perform a complete genome sequence on just one of these trees and compare it to the ones from his world; still, this was a fanciful dream.
However, it did give him an idea: maybe he could use his spare time to study the forest and unlock its secrets.
“Yes, that might work,” Samuel said, a fresh burst of enthusiasm rushing through his being.
“No better yet, I could do a study on the Lamias, Boreray and Cicindeli… Jane Goodall, eat your heart out… hell, why not do both,” Samuel added, almost shouting at the sky.
There was one small problem however, he did not have Tamara’s memory. Samuel needed paper, parchment, a pen, anything he could find to record his findings.
“Hhhmm, I’ll have to ask Tamara the next time I see her. Maybe she has something I could use,” Samuel muttered, a little worried that his grand plan might fall through because he did not have paper and a pen.
Samuel returned to the extension and tried to put his mind to the task.
“How should I start?” Samuel asked himself. The most straightforward answer was to ask, and to a lesser extent study, Tamara. She was utterly calm around Samuel and acted completely natural with him.
As he paced outside the extension, talking to himself in a hushed voice, he was so focused on how he would go about his study that Samuel did not notice Tamara walk up behind him.
When she tapped his shoulder and said, “Hey!” Samuel responded by nearly jumping out of his skin.
While Samuel’s heart was busy tap dancing in his throat, he turned to see his best friend's emerald eyes and golden hair and was made angry by his embarrassment.
Samuel shouted, “What the hell are you doing!”
Samuel realised that he had snapped at Tamara and was worried that he might have offended her. Tamara then burst out laughing, which put all of Samuel’s fears to rest, so he started to yell some more.
After a tirade of pointless screaming that did nothing more than make Tamara laugh harder. Samuel eventually calmed down and, after realising how silly he must have looked, started to laugh too.
After the strange pair had finished their bout of giggling, Samuel noticed another familiar face.
“Hello, Aarush, good to see you again,” Samuel said to the centaur hanging around in the background.
“Hello, Samuel,” Aarush replied, giving a nod.
“You’re here early,” Samuel said to Tamara. Usually, Tamara did not turn up until at least three to four hours after sunrise.
“Well, I wanted to wait until it got a little warmer, but Aarush wanted to get here as quickly as possible,” Tamara answered with a hint of fatigue in her voice.
Samuel turned to Aarush and said, “Oh Aarush, I never knew you cared. Did you get lonely without me?”
Aarush blushed, turned his head away and mumbled: “Yes, in your wildest dreams.”
The trio was quiet momentarily, with only Samuel’s juvenile snickering piercing the silence.
Tamara interrupted Samuel and asked, “You seem cheerful today. What were you doing?”
Samuel once again had to think about how he had to word this. After several moments, he felt he had it and said: “remember yesterday when I said I was a biology student?”
Tamara searched her memory and found what she was looking for. “Yes,” she answered.
“Well, I thought that I should do some biology. Specifically, I would study you and the other people of the village.”
Tamara understood the words, but it took her some time to truly grasp what Samuel was getting at. Yet in just a few minutes, she had caught the concept, at least loosely, and she said: “Ok, I guess that’s fine, but how are you going to do it?”
“Well, honestly, I was hoping that you could be my assistant,” Samuel said; the hope in his voice was unmistakable to Tamara.
She was always eager to help Samuel, but something about this confused her. “Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know like you have done before?” she asked.
Samuel had expected this and replied, “Do you know what happens to your food inside your body or why you have to breathe?”
Tamara felt a little insulted. Of course, she knew that. “Yes, food turns to poo, and if you don’t breathe, your chest feels tight,” Tamara said as though she was talking to a three-year-old.
Samuel did not know what to make of this response.
“Yes… well… you’re not wrong,” he said, “but I was thinking more along the lines of what specifically happens.”
Tamara went quiet again, so Samuel decided to ask Aarush, “Aarush, you know what I’m talking about, right? Wanting to know exactly how and why things do what they do.”
Aarush had been standing a few metres away listening to the conversation; he had not expected to be drawn into it. Aarush did not have much time to think, so automatically, he answered: “yes, of course.”
Samuel turned back to Tamara and said smugly, “See, he gets it.”
Tamara scowled at Samuel; she did not enjoy being looked down upon, and Tamara was smart enough to know when someone was calling her stupid. Samuel recoiled slightly; he knew all too well what it was like to be hit by her. The last time it had happened, he had spent half a day hunched over in pain.
“It’s alright,” said Samuel, a slight tremor in his voice, “it’s not an easy thing to grasp, but I am sure you will get it soon.”
Tamara replied with a “humph,” crossed her arms and strolled off to be by herself for a while as she cooled off. With disaster and a significant amount of pain narrowly avoided, Samuel let out a sigh of relief and sat down on the grass.
Samuel looked back at Aarush and then patted the ground by his side. Aarush paused for a moment but quickly decided there was no problem, so he sat by Samuel’s side. The two of them said nothing for around a minute, each being careful about what they said to one another until Samuel plucked up the courage to ask, “Would you like to help me?”
Aarush was torn between two modes of thought. The first was the immense desire to work with someone who was clearly intelligent with a great wealth of knowledge. The second was the years of stories and warning tales drilled into his head since he could walk.
Once again, his curiosity and desire to know more won over his caution.
“How could I help you exactly?” Aarush answered.
This was a surprisingly quick answer for Aarush, and the fact that he agreed made Samuel think he might finally be getting through.
“I hoped that you could answer some questions for me,” said Samuel, and he quickly added, “It’s only fair, seeing as I answered your questions yesterday.”
Aarush could not argue with that logic, so he nodded and said: “ask away.”
The first question had been swilling about in his head for almost as long as he had been here, “What happens when two people of different races have children?”
Aarush turned his head and looked down at Samuel as though he had just asked: “is fire hot?” Aarush’s eyes darted back and forth and said: “they have children.”
Samuel sighed and said, “I know that, but what are the rules?”
There was a slight pause. Aarush still did not understand, so he added: “Say, for example, you have a Lamia woman and a Cicindeli man had children. Would the Lamia woman give birth to either a Lamia or Cicindeli baby, a mix of the two or just a Lamia?”
Aarush’s face had not changed. The only part of his body moving was his tail swishing from side to side.
“A Lamia, it’s always the same race as the mother,” Aarush answered; disbelief could be heard in his voice. “How can you not know this?” Aarush asked.
“Because where I am from, there are humans and only humans,” explained Samuel.
Aarush was astonished at this answer. Samuel had seen the same look before when he had told Tamara, and he was silent as he tried to imagine a world with such a lack of variety. Yet Aarush found that he could not do it.
The concept of there being only one race in the entire world was impossible for him to understand.
“Are you certain there must have been another race somewhere in the world?” Aarush said, trying to cling to his worldview.
“No, my kind lived in every habitat imaginable and even ones that are not,” said Samuel.
“Hold on for a second!” said Samuel, and he turned his head to look at Tamara, who was sitting under the shade of the trees. “You OK over there Tamara?”
Her response was a quiet “hhm.”
Samuel turned back to Aarush and said: “she’s fine.”
Samuel saw the strain on Aarush’s face and felt he should do something to distract him from it. “So, Aarush, tell me about yourself,” he said.
Aarush stopped thinking about a world overrun with humans and said: “what, why?”
“You know enough about me, so what’s your story?” Samuel asked.
“Where do you want me to start?” Aarush inquired, not sure what he should say. No one had asked about his past before.
“What compelled a young centaur boy to travel from village to village telling stories for a roof over his head and a bowl of carrot soup?” said Samuel, trying to clarify himself.
Aarush thought back to his earliest memories; they were still clear even after nearly two decades, and he said: “Umm, I guess it all started when a traveller, a Diwata, came to the Great Plains Village.”
“A terrible name,” interrupted Samuel, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, do you want to hear this story?” said Aarush; he was not used to being interrupted and did not like it.
“Sorry, please continue,” said Samuel apologetically.
“Anyway,” said Aarush, trying to find where he was, “Ah yes, a Diwata came to the village; he was a peddler, travelling from place to place, trading things from far-off lands.”
Aarush paused momentarily and then continued, “On the second day he was there, I worked up enough courage to walk up to him and talk to him. He was very polite, and he answered every question I had. I asked him about other people I had only heard about and strange lands that were half submerged in water,” Aarush paused once again, this time for dramatic effect.
“And as he told me more and more, I began to be filled with a great desire to see it all for myself.” Aarush stopped talking again and turned to look Samuel in the eyes, “So I guess that is why I travel.”
“That was indeed an interesting story, but it was only half an answer,” stated Samuel, “why tell stories.”
Aarush had never really thought about this. To be completely honest, when he first set out travelling, he had never intended to tell stories as he moved from place to place; it had just sort of happened, “Well, when I first went to a new village, I was very nervous, and I didn’t know what I should do, I had spent most of my childhood just dreaming about the journey, not the destination.”
Samuel let out a small sigh and then continued, “But then a boy came up to me. He was around the same age I had been when the Diwata had come and asked me about what was out there.”
Aarush looked up at the clouds and spent a few moments in that memory until he realised he was keeping Samuel waiting, “I had only been travelling for around a week, and I did not really have any stories, so I just started telling some stories my mom and dad had told me when I was young.”
“And that was when I saw the same look on his face, the same wonder I had felt when I was a boy. Before I knew it, a crowd had gathered around me and were listening so intently. It felt so good to see all of those people happy. I just started doing it everywhere I went.”
“Well, that does explain a lot,” said Samuel. Behind him, Samuel heard the distinctive sound of scales sliding over grass, and then Tamara stood beside him. She moved her tail in front of her with one graceful movement, after which she sat down and rested her head on Samuel’s shoulder.
“You feeling better?” Samuel asked.
“Yeah,” mumbled Tamara.
“Will you help me out?” Samuel added.
“Yeah,” repeated Tamara.
Samuel put his arm around Tamara’s shoulder and said: “thank you. There is just one problem.”
“What’s that?” Tamara asked.
“I can’t get near anyone without them trying to nail me to the wall.”
“Yeah, that might be a problem,” agreed Aarush. “Any idea how you could get around it.”
“Not just yet. I still need more time to think, but I’m certain the answer will come in time,” reassured Samuel.
“What were you talking about while I was sitting over there?” Tamara asked, pointing behind her.
“Aarush was just telling me about how he got into the business of telling stories,” Samuel answered and said, “You should ask him about it when you get home. It’s quite interesting.”
“We still have the rest of the day to get through, so what next?” Aarush said, feeling that his life story would not keep them occupied for the entire day. The three of them were silent once again, each thinking about what they could do to pass the time. It was at times like this Samuel seriously missed his gaming rig.
That scenario being out of the question, and he still needed more time for his biology project, he decided to engage his other interest, exploration.
“We could go for a walk and see what we find,” said Samuel to Aarush and Tamara.
Tamara took her head off Samuel’s shoulder and said: “Why?”
Samuel looked Tamara in the eye and said: “It’s an adventure; who knows what we could find, ancient treasure, a long-lost city or maybe a whole village filled with humans.”
Tamara’s eyes lit up, and a smile slowly crept on her face, but still, one thing confused her: “What is a city?”
Samuel smiled as well; he knew he had her now. “It is like a village, only it is much bigger with tens of thousands of people,” he explained.
“Ok” was Tamara’s answer, and she stood up.
Samuel turned around and said to Aarush, “What about you?”
Aarush had been travelling for a good number of years, and he knew that the odds of finding any of those things were almost nonexistent, but his body tingled at the joy of discovery.
“I’m in,” said Aarush as he stood up.
Samuel copied the two demi-humans and stood up. As he reached full height, Tamara said, “I think we should go that way.”
She pointed in the direction left of the cave, heading into the forest.
Aarush then asked, “Why over there?”
Tamara turned to face him and answered: “No real reason. I’ve just never been that way before.”
Then Samuel piped up, “You heard the lady we’re going that way.” They began to walk in that direction, with Tamara following behind. Aarush was in no mood to be left behind, so he got his legs in working order and followed them.
Next Chapter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like to read the rest of the story now you can find the finished book on Amazon.
E-book (US/UK/CA/AU/DE.)
Physical(US/UK/CA/DE.)
If you decide to pick it up, or already have please leave a review or rating, it helps immensely.
submitted by Aeogeus to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.03.15 16:06 inabiskit The Lyme Regis Woman: In 1974, a woman was found dead in a beach hut in the popular seaside town of Lyme Regis. Despite an extensive investigation that spanned several continents, her identity has continued to elude authorities.

Background
During early September of 1974, a series of storms wreaked havoc on parts of Southwest England. According to news coverage at the time from the county of Dorset, trees were felled by strong winds, raging floods swept through villages, and boats were sunk at their moorings. A brief footnote in one of these articles noted that in the seaside town of Lyme Regis, often referred to as the ‘Pearl of Dorset’, a row of wooden beach huts (structures used by swimmers for changing clothes or sheltering from the weather) were damaged by the wild weather.
However, it wouldn’t be long until the beach huts at Lyme Regis would once again be back in the public eye, this time in relation to an entirely different matter. The discovery of a middle-aged woman’s body in a beach hut only days later would spark extensive coverage from local media, and set police on a five-month investigation which tragically failed to reveal her identity. While the mystery of the Lyme Regis Woman’s identity is now largely forgotten, contemporary newspaper coverage allows us to piece together an intriguing composite of her life and death.
Initial Discovery
It was on the evening of September 10th, 1974 that a holidaymaker from Somerset was walking along Monmouth Beach in Lyme Regis, near an old stone pier and harbour wall dating back to the thirteenth century known as The Cobb. As he walked closer to inspect the row of beach huts that had been damaged by the recent storms, he noticed a woman inside one of them lying across a table. Although he initially thought that she was asleep, the man must have found the scene unusual as he notified the Harbour Master. Upon returning to the hut, they realised that the woman was deceased, and contacted emergency services.
Authorities initially suspected that the woman had been murdered, as she had a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck with a piece of wood placed through it. Moreover, they stated that the hut had been found in a state of disarray, as if a struggle had taken place. However, as the investigation progressed, the murder theory was gradually ruled out. The police were also able to determine that the woman was not the owner of the hut, as it belonged to a woman living in London. As the mystery continued to deepen, the detective in charge of inquiries at the time expressed frustration over the lack of early leads:‘She is a totally unknown woman, and that is the mystery about it at present’.
The Victim
The Lyme Regis Woman was believed to be of White European ancestry, and was estimated to be somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. She had blue-grey eyes, and curly fair hair that was beginning to turn grey. The woman had a stocky build, weighing approximately 13 stone (83 kg), and had stood around 5'5 (165 cm) in life. A photograph of the woman can be seen at this link (warning: although it isn’t graphic, please be advised that it was taken postmortem).
The woman had a number of distinguishing features, including several warts located around the knee of her left leg. She also had eight gold fillings in her teeth.
The Lyme Regis Woman was wearing a blue three-quarter gabardine raincoat and a paisley patterned blouse, as well as brown trousers. She was also wearing men’s brown nylon socks, but no shoes were located with her body. The woman did not have any other distinctive belongings such as a handbag, or a wedding or engagement ring. Tourists and locals were asked by police to keep an eye out for any abandoned handbags that were located in the Lyme Regis area.
The Initial Investigation
The beach hut where the woman was found was quickly swarmed with sightseers, so police were forced to cordon off the area. Searches by police and dog handlers continued into the night under floodlights, and a local doctor was called in to examine the body as a pathologist was not immediately available.
Police began their enquiries on the day after the body’s discovery, going house to house around Lyme Regis to see if any local residents knew the woman. They also visited local boarding houses, asked for information on any local missing persons who had not yet been reported, and searched parks for cars which had been left for more than 24 hours. After police purportedly questioned ‘every household in Lyme Regis’, enquiries were expanded to the nearby towns of Axminster, Honiton and Seaton.
The Woman’s Movements
One line of inquiry which produced clear results concerned the woman’s movements during her final days. A used ticket found in her pocket suggested she visited the Carlton Cinema in London’s West End on 8 September, two days before her death. She then appeared to have taken a train from London to Axminster, where an employee recognised her as the woman who deposited a suitcase at the station’s ‘left luggage’ counter on September 9th, the day before her death. She was subsequently recognised by a bus driver as one of his passengers on the Axminster to Lyme Regis bus, a journey of approximately 5.5 miles (8.7km). The last sighting of the woman before her death took place in the early morning hours of September 10th, when Pat Rice, a local man, saw the woman near the lifeboat station at the Ladies’ Guild stall looking ‘very vacant’. This location is on the Cobb, close to the beach huts on Monmouth Beach where her body was discovered.
More Leads and Dead Ends
Despite the best efforts of detectives, the other information which emerged from the investigation was only fragmentary and never came together to reveal the woman’s identity. For example, early newspaper reports contained some intriguing name-related clues which didn’t seem to lead anywhere. One article stated that the woman’s name may have been ‘Mary’, as a letter addressed to this name and signed only ‘N’ was found nearby. It was also reported that the woman may have known somebody by the name of ‘Ted’ who may have been a relative, but the basis of this information is unclear.
Another line of inquiry related to the woman’s eight gold fillings, which were estimated to have cost at least £160 in total (£1,443.85 in 2024, or approximately $1840USD). Investigators believed that this dental work may have been performed in the United States or Canada. Dentists throughout the UK were approached for assistance in identifying the woman’s dental work, and the investigation went international when an FBI computer check was run against the woman’s dental information, but these enquiries yielded no results.
Finally, while the discovery of the woman’s briefcase at Axminster station must have felt like a breakthrough moment, it did not advance the investigation either. The woman had deposited a blue suitcase at the left luggage counter, but its maker could not be traced. It contained ‘various articles’ including a set of artist’s paintbrushes and a pair of trousers with no maker’s label, but no documents or objects which could be used to trace the woman’s identity.
Conclusions and Questions
Despite an initial flurry of media coverage, further updates about the Lyme Regis Woman’s identity dried up quickly. An article from early November, nearly two months after the woman’s discovery, contained no new information but noted that police were ‘no nearer to solving the riddle’ of her identity.
The last we hear of the Lyme Regis Woman comes in February of 1975, when an inquest into her death was held in Bridport. During the inquest, an investigating officer was able to demonstrate how the woman most likely died, by using the length of wood to twist the scarf very tightly around her neck. Investigators also emphasised the absence of injuries or marks on the woman indicating any struggle during her death, which made the possibility of foul play unlikely. This theory was convincing enough for the jury, who returned a unanimous verdict of suicide by strangulation.
After five months of continuous investigations which made little headway, the investigating team clearly felt that it had run out of options. ‘We shan’t be making any more inquiries’, said the lead investigator upon the inquest’s conclusion. And on that unsatisfying note, the record of publicly available information about the Lyme Regis Woman comes to an end.
As with my last write-up on the Durness Man, the mystery of Lyme Regis Woman’s death is not so much how or why it happened: I’m inclined to agree with the inquest’s conclusion that the woman died by suicide. Instead, her story intrigues me because it is a blend of evocative and incomplete features: there are small clues which hint at aspects of her life, but this case seems genuinely impossible to solve without genetic genealogy. Here are some questions which have been on my mind during this write-up:
Sources
Reading Evening Post - September 11, 1974
Western Daily Press - September 11, 1974
Hull Daily Mail - September 11, 1974
Birmingham Evening Mail - September 11, 1974
Western Daily Press - September 12, 1974
Western Daily Press - September 13, 1974
Western Daily Press - September 16, 1974
Western Daily Press - October 2, 1974
Evening Post - November 7, 1974
Western Daily Press - February 4, 1975
https://imgur.com/a/gMoVCcb
submitted by inabiskit to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]

2024.03.15 13:06 redditduk [Megalist] SG Gigs, Concerts, Raves: Late March (15-28 Mar 2024)

29 Mar: new list https://reddit.com/singaporemusicchat/comments/1bqdxum/megalist_sg_concerts_gigs_raves_early_april/?

15 Mar, Fri - Ides of March

16 Mar, Sat

 
 
 
 
 

17 Mar, Sun - St. Patrick's Day

 
truncated for word limit

19 Mar, Tue

truncated for word limit

20 Mar, Wed

21 Mar, Thu

 

22 Mar, Fri

 
 

23 Mar, Sat - Earth Hour at Wisma

 
 
 

24 Mar, Sun

 
 

Events

 

BAZAARS

25 Mar, Mon - Holi

26 Mar, Tue

27 Mar, Wed

Thu, 28 Mar - Good Friday Eve

 
 
I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.03.15 00:00 redditduk Giglist for 15 Mar

Just to cover today, the weeks ahead is still under works.

15 Mar, Fri - Ides of March

 
 
 
 
 

Events

submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.03.01 10:40 redditduk [Megalist] SG Concerts, Gigs, Raves: Early March (1-14 Mar 2024)

Update 15 Mar: newer https://reddit.com/singaporemusicchat/comments/1bfcdne/megalist_sg_gigs_concerts_raves_late_march_1528/

01 Mar, Fri - Esplanade Gemadah Trad Malay Music Weekend

 
Truncated... word Limit
 
 

02 Mar, Sat - Tay Tay

03 Mar, Sun

04 Mar, Mon

05 Mar, Tue

06 Mar, Wed

07 Mar, Thu

Truncated... Due to word Limit

08 Mar, Fri - International Women's Day, Geylang Serai Bazaar

 
 
 
 

09 Mar, Sat

 
 
 
 
 

10 Mar, Sun

 
 
 

Other Events

 

11 Mar, Mon

12 Mar, Tue - Start of Ramadan

13 Mar, Wed

14 Mar, Thu

 
 
 
I am on telegram: search sg music chat or visit t.me/sgmusicchat
submitted by redditduk to singaporemusicchat [link] [comments]

2024.02.27 07:47 Mysterious-Dark-1724 Updated altar

This is my updated altar, I love how my altar is getting along and how it is slowly evolving. I do not keep all the candles on it as it’s too cluttered with them there. From right to left we first have a bee wax candle that I shall dedicate and burn to Aristaeus, the great God of beekeeping once it is spring, next to that we have a sea breeze that I shall dedicate and burn to Pallas Athena, the great goddess of wisdom and warfare once it is spring, next is my conquerer challenge macro from walking the equivalent of Marathon to Athens. Now to the main part of my altar in the front right is my statue of Pallas Athena, behind to the right is the great god, Dionysus, the God of alcohol and much more, next to Dio is the great god Aristaeus, next to him is Lady Hestia (I do not worship her but I have her there as I see her as a mother as humankind and that she is looking over me like a caring mother), next to her is Lord Hermes, the gif of travel literature and much more. In the middle of them is the libation bowl that I got a while ago from a charity shop. Now on the right side of my altar, I have the Greek-style single flower vase next to a North Yorkshire Moors candle which I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Hermes of travel and much more once it is spring. Finally but certainly not least is my Irish cream candle I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Dionysus god of wine, madness and much more once it is spring. Behind them all, on the left, I still have my books on bees and beekeeping and then on the right I have my books on Ancient Greece and mythology.
Where I got everything
-I got the beeswax candle from a shop which has a bee section I cannot quite remember where (I dedicate it to Aristaeus because he is the God of beekeeping).
-I got the sea breeze candle from Oxfam (I dedicate it to Athena because of the help she gave Odysseus in the Odyssey).
-I ‘won’ the medal for conquering the challenge by walking 26 miles (42km) (it is dedicated to Athena because of Athens mainly)
-I got my statue of Athena from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy, they have so many different statues of the theoi and I mainly get my statues from there as they are reasonably priced and good quality. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Dionysus from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Aristaeus from NovaSculptures of Etsy. The seller may have shut their profile or the item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got my statue of Hestia from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Hermes from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. The item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got the vase from a charity shop and it is dedicated to all of them or just my altar in general.
-I got the North Yorkshire Moors candle in a village on the North York Moors I cannot remember where (it is dedicated to Hermes because loads of people go on walks on the Moors and I would if I had a full day free and I probs will).
-I got the Irish cream candle from a Christmas present I believe with Bailey’s included in it (which I have already drank, also I dedicate it to Dionysus because it is related to alcohol).
submitted by Mysterious-Dark-1724 to Hermes [link] [comments]

2024.02.27 07:47 Mysterious-Dark-1724 Updated altar

Updated altar
This is my updated altar, I love how my altar is getting along and how it is slowly evolving. I do not keep all the candles on it as it’s too cluttered with them there. From right to left we first have a bee wax candle that I shall dedicate and burn to Aristaeus, the great God of beekeeping once it is spring, next to that we have a sea breeze that I shall dedicate and burn to Pallas Athena, the great goddess of wisdom and warfare once it is spring, next is my conquerer challenge macro from walking the equivalent of Marathon to Athens. Now to the main part of my altar in the front right is my statue of Pallas Athena, behind to the right is the great god, Dionysus, the God of alcohol and much more, next to Dio is the great god Aristaeus, next to him is Lady Hestia (I do not worship her but I have her there as I see her as a mother as humankind and that she is looking over me like a caring mother), next to her is Lord Hermes, the gif of travel literature and much more. In the middle of them is the libation bowl that I got a while ago from a charity shop. Now on the right side of my altar, I have the Greek-style single flower vase next to a North Yorkshire Moors candle which I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Hermes of travel and much more once it is spring. Finally but certainly not least is my Irish cream candle I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Dionysus god of wine, madness and much more once it is spring. Behind them all, on the left, I still have my books on bees and beekeeping and then on the right I have my books on Ancient Greece and mythology.
Where I got everything
-I got the beeswax candle from a shop which has a bee section I cannot quite remember where (I dedicate it to Aristaeus because he is the God of beekeeping).
-I got the sea breeze candle from Oxfam (I dedicate it to Athena because of the help she gave Odysseus in the Odyssey).
-I ‘won’ the medal for conquering the challenge by walking 26 miles (42km) (it is dedicated to Athena because of Athens mainly)
-I got my statue of Athena from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy, they have so many different statues of the theoi and I mainly get my statues from there as they are reasonably priced and good quality. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Dionysus from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Aristaeus from NovaSculptures of Etsy. The seller may have shut their profile or the item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got my statue of Hestia from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Hermes from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. The item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got the vase from a charity shop and it is dedicated to all of them or just my altar in general.
-I got the North Yorkshire Moors candle in a village on the North York Moors I cannot remember where (it is dedicated to Hermes because loads of people go on walks on the Moors and I would if I had a full day free and I probs will).
-I got the Irish cream candle from a Christmas present I believe with Bailey’s included in it (which I have already drank, also I dedicate it to Dionysus because it is related to alcohol).
submitted by Mysterious-Dark-1724 to dionysus [link] [comments]

2024.02.27 07:46 Mysterious-Dark-1724 Updated altar

Updated altar
This is my updated altar, I love how my altar is getting along and how it is slowly evolving. I do not keep all the candles on it as it’s too cluttered with them there. From right to left we first have a bee wax candle that I shall dedicate and burn to Aristaeus, the great God of beekeeping once it is spring, next to that we have a sea breeze that I shall dedicate and burn to Pallas Athena, the great goddess of wisdom and warfare once it is spring, next is my conquerer challenge macro from walking the equivalent of Marathon to Athens. Now to the main part of my altar in the front right is my statue of Pallas Athena, behind to the right is the great god, Dionysus, the God of alcohol and much more, next to Dio is the great god Aristaeus, next to him is Lady Hestia (I do not worship her but I have her there as I see her as a mother as humankind and that she is looking over me like a caring mother), next to her is Lord Hermes, the gif of travel literature and much more. In the middle of them is the libation bowl that I got a while ago from a charity shop. Now on the right side of my altar, I have the Greek-style single flower vase next to a North Yorkshire Moors candle which I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Hermes of travel and much more once it is spring. Finally but certainly not least is my Irish cream candle I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Dionysus god of wine, madness and much more once it is spring. Behind them all, on the left, I still have my books on bees and beekeeping and then on the right I have my books on Ancient Greece and mythology.
Where I got everything
-I got the beeswax candle from a shop which has a bee section I cannot quite remember where (I dedicate it to Aristaeus because he is the God of beekeeping).
-I got the sea breeze candle from Oxfam (I dedicate it to Athena because of the help she gave Odysseus in the Odyssey).
-I ‘won’ the medal for conquering the challenge by walking 26 miles (42km) (it is dedicated to Athena because of Athens mainly)
-I got my statue of Athena from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy, they have so many different statues of the theoi and I mainly get my statues from there as they are reasonably priced and good quality. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Dionysus from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Aristaeus from NovaSculptures of Etsy. The seller may have shut their profile or the item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got my statue of Hestia from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Hermes from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. The item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got the vase from a charity shop and it is dedicated to all of them or just my altar in general.
-I got the North Yorkshire Moors candle in a village on the North York Moors I cannot remember where (it is dedicated to Hermes because loads of people go on walks on the Moors and I would if I had a full day free and I probs will).
-I got the Irish cream candle from a Christmas present I believe with Bailey’s included in it (which I have already drank, also I dedicate it to Dionysus because it is related to alcohol).
submitted by Mysterious-Dark-1724 to Athena [link] [comments]

2024.02.27 07:45 Mysterious-Dark-1724 Updated altar

Updated altar
This is my updated altar, I love how my altar is getting along and how it is slowly evolving. I do not keep all the candles on it as it’s too cluttered with them there. From right to left we first have a bee wax candle that I shall dedicate and burn to Aristaeus, the great God of beekeeping once it is spring, next to that we have a sea breeze that I shall dedicate and burn to Pallas Athena, the great goddess of wisdom and warfare once it is spring, next is my conquerer challenge macro from walking the equivalent of Marathon to Athens. Now to the main part of my altar in the front right is my statue of Pallas Athena, behind to the right is the great god, Dionysus, the God of alcohol and much more, next to Dio is the great god Aristaeus, next to him is Lady Hestia (I do not worship her but I have her there as I see her as a mother as humankind and that she is looking over me like a caring mother), next to her is Lord Hermes, the gif of travel literature and much more. In the middle of them is the libation bowl that I got a while ago from a charity shop. Now on the right side of my altar, I have the Greek-style single flower vase next to a North Yorkshire Moors candle which I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Hermes of travel and much more once it is spring. Finally but certainly not least is my Irish cream candle I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Dionysus god of wine, madness and much more once it is spring. Behind them all, on the left, I still have my books on bees and beekeeping and then on the right I have my books on Ancient Greece and mythology.
Where I got everything
-I got the beeswax candle from a shop which has a bee section I cannot quite remember where (I dedicate it to Aristaeus because he is the God of beekeeping).
-I got the sea breeze candle from Oxfam (I dedicate it to Athena because of the help she gave Odysseus in the Odyssey).
-I ‘won’ the medal for conquering the challenge by walking 26 miles (42km) (it is dedicated to Athena because of Athens mainly)
-I got my statue of Athena from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy, they have so many different statues of the theoi and I mainly get my statues from there as they are reasonably priced and good quality. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Dionysus from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Aristaeus from NovaSculptures of Etsy. The seller may have shut their profile or the item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got my statue of Hestia from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Hermes from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. The item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got the vase from a charity shop and it is dedicated to all of them or just my altar in general.
-I got the North Yorkshire Moors candle in a village on the North York Moors I cannot remember where (it is dedicated to Hermes because loads of people go on walks on the Moors and I would if I had a full day free and I probs will).
-I got the Irish cream candle from a Christmas present I believe with Bailey’s included in it (which I have already drank, also I dedicate it to Dionysus because it is related to alcohol).
submitted by Mysterious-Dark-1724 to Aristaeus [link] [comments]

2024.02.27 07:45 Mysterious-Dark-1724 Updated altar

Updated altar
This is my updated altar, I love how my altar is getting along and how it is slowly evolving. I do not keep all the candles on it as it’s too cluttered with them there. From right to left we first have a bee wax candle that I shall dedicate and burn to Aristaeus, the great God of beekeeping once it is spring, next to that we have a sea breeze that I shall dedicate and burn to Pallas Athena, the great goddess of wisdom and warfare once it is spring, next is my conquerer challenge macro from walking the equivalent of Marathon to Athens. Now to the main part of my altar in the front right is my statue of Pallas Athena, behind to the right is the great god, Dionysus, the God of alcohol and much more, next to Dio is the great god Aristaeus, next to him is Lady Hestia (I do not worship her but I have her there as I see her as a mother as humankind and that she is looking over me like a caring mother), next to her is Lord Hermes, the gif of travel literature and much more. In the middle of them is the libation bowl that I got a while ago from a charity shop. Now on the right side of my altar, I have the Greek-style single flower vase next to a North Yorkshire Moors candle which I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Hermes of travel and much more once it is spring. Finally but certainly not least is my Irish cream candle I shall dedicate and burn to Lord Dionysus god of wine, madness and much more once it is spring. Behind them all, on the left, I still have my books on bees and beekeeping and then on the right I have my books on Ancient Greece and mythology.
Where I got everything
-I got the beeswax candle from a shop which has a bee section I cannot quite remember where (I dedicate it to Aristaeus because he is the God of beekeeping).
-I got the sea breeze candle from Oxfam (I dedicate it to Athena because of the help she gave Odysseus in the Odyssey).
-I ‘won’ the medal for conquering the challenge by walking 26 miles (42km) (it is dedicated to Athena because of Athens mainly)
-I got my statue of Athena from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy, they have so many different statues of the theoi and I mainly get my statues from there as they are reasonably priced and good quality. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Dionysus from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Aristaeus from NovaSculptures of Etsy. The seller may have shut their profile or the item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got my statue of Hestia from Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. This specific one can be linked here.
-I got my statue of Hermes from the Son of the Pharaoh of Etsy. The item is no longer available as I cannot find the link I’m afraid. I may have posted it in an older post when I posted about my altar.
-I got the vase from a charity shop and it is dedicated to all of them or just my altar in general.
-I got the North Yorkshire Moors candle in a village on the North York Moors I cannot remember where (it is dedicated to Hermes because loads of people go on walks on the Moors and I would if I had a full day free and I probs will).
-I got the Irish cream candle from a Christmas present I believe with Bailey’s included in it (which I have already drank, also I dedicate it to Dionysus because it is related to alcohol).
submitted by Mysterious-Dark-1724 to Hellenism [link] [comments]

http://rodzice.org/