I’ve been struggling to get photos together from my trip, and for whatever reason, I’ve had the hardest time figuring out how to use iPhoto in conjunction with Photoshop to edit my pictures. Apparently, iPhoto has this cool but confusing feature where it will maintain the original version of your photo that you imported, and then every time you edit the photo, it will save the edits for you so that you can always “roll back” any changes that you regret. I don’t think this feature works well with Photoshop or other external editors though, and I know it doesn’t work well when I’m trying to upload my images to Flickr. I know those of you who have been Mac and iPhoto devotees for years are scoffing at me, and you should. This is probably something really easy to do, and I’m a little embarrassed to be such a Mac-noob. But I am asking you for help, internet.

Anyway, back to the trip I mentioned. Last month, on a complete and utter whim, I decided to meet Amy in London and then travel to Ireland. This was as shocking of a decision to me as it was to others, since I concieved and finalized the decision about five days before I left. This was my first time out of the country, and even though I only had a total of about 4 days overseas, it was a wonderful trip. Because of my iPhoto frustration, I didn’t get all the photos up on Flickr, but I hope to have them added as I figure things out. You can see the ones I’ve got so far right here.

We only got to spend one full day in London – not enough time to see everything, but I think I could have stayed a month and still not have seen everything. We hit the important places – the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, and walked along the Thames to see the Big Ben and some other historic places. The highlight of our trip was definitely Ireland. We went to Galway, which is a city on the West coast of Ireland (opposite Dublin). We got to see the countryside on our bus trip from Shannon airport, and it was stunning. The land was just as I had always imagined – incredibly green, and it really looked good enough to eat. I’m not kidding. I really considered it.

The city of Galway was great as well. We stayed right on Eyre Square, and were surrounded by lots of cute shops and pubs. Everyone in Galway is so friendly and laid back. We got to spend two nights and almost three days in Galway. We took one half-day trip to a town nearby called Athenry. It was really quaint and sweet – a real countryside town. The little town was built around an old castle and the remaining castle walls, and it was just really cool to see how people there lived among those kinds of relics without even thinking about it. Kids were cutting through the castle yard, hopping over medieval walls on their way home from school. We even heard people speaking in Gaelic, and I was truly caught off-guard when the bartender at the Arch Pub asked us if we were “Gemini”, meaning “twins”. I thought she was asking if we were German, and I was appalled when Amy kept agreeing with her. It took me a while to figure it out.

We also managed to catch an incredible movie the day we left Galway called “The Secret of Kells”. It had just been released, and was one of the most beautiful movies I had ever seen, from the story to the incredible artwork. I don’t know if it will ever be released here in any way, but it was definitely one of the best parts of the trip. If you ever get the chance, it’s worth going to fairly extreme lengths to catch this movie.

Well, that’s the recap. It’s been about a month since the trip, but I think I’ve remembered the key pieces, despite the delay. The title of this post is a translation from a song by Pizzicato Five called “The Apartment.” That’s really all there is to say about that.