We woke up this morning feeling quite under the weather, said bye to Larisa, who was heading back to Dublin, then went back to sleep until 10 minutes before check out time! We got up and packed quickly then went and checked out, then sat in the common room for a while with Sean who was waiting to get swapped into a different room. After a bit we said bye to him and made our way down to the bus station (not the one next door this time, unfortunately!) and put our bags under the bus. I went inside to buy our tickets (€22 each! What a rip off!), then I waited by the bags while Darren went to find us some food. He got back just as everyone started to board, so we got on and got a seat up the front (hopefully that will help with the hangover!) then started the boring, long, rainy, wet and cold 5 and a half hour drive up through the border to Derry. We eventually got in, grabbed our bags and contacted Darren, who was going to be our couchsurfing host for our time there. We waited inside for a bit because it was freezing, then after half an hour we waited out the front and were met by him shortly after. ----From here, my Darren will be Daz, and couchsurfer Darren will be Darren! (He doesn't like 'Daz'!!)---- So Darren met us out the front and we all walked together to his house which was maybe just under half an hours walk. We went inside and met his housemate Chris, then put our bags upstairs before going back to the lounge and meeting Ciaran, one of Darren's friends who was visiting from Letterkenny. (Making Ciaran a Mexican, as he's from 'south-of-the-border') We pulled out our guitars to show off, as Darren and Ciaran were both musicians as well, then Ciaran had a play of the 12-string, and tuned it down to be in DADGAD tuning... Which we don't use and don't know how to play... That was a bit strange. They were apparently in the process of working out a song they were writing together, so we thought we'd give them some space to keep doing that, and went for a walk to find some food. We walked for a bit through some ridiculous rainy, windy and freezing weather conditions, then eventually found an Indian restaurant! Score! So we got in out of the cold, and ordered a couple of vegetarian dishes to share, which were delicious. The korma was a little sweet, but the okra and mushroom dish was amazing. When we had warmed up our insides quite a bit, we payed and headed back out into the crazy night. It was almost hard to walk at some points, the wind was so strong! But we made it back home, where the guys had finished sorting out the song they were playing with, so we ended up getting a bit of a jam happening with them. They were both very good guitarists and Darren gave us some tips, lessons and exercises we could practice to strengthen our fingers, and I even learnt a couple of chords in the DADGAD tuning. They showed us the song they were working on, which was quite beautiful. Ciaran has a very nice voice, and it was just nice listening to an Irish accent in song! Lovely. Then they changed it up into a 5/4 jam, which was very cool! They recorded it as well, using a basic set up like we have at home; Logic, a compressor mic and an audio interface. Eventually we decided to head up to bed (well it was about 3am!) so Darren turned on the heaters upstairs and we had a cuppa and hung out a while longer to give the room a chance to heat up a bit, then we went up to bed while the guys kept jamming the night away.