Céad míle fáilte romhat!

From the land of sand to the scene of green. Ireland 2010!

After arriving back home in Paris on Tuesday night, I was going to have all of Wednesday to relax and prepare for my trip to Ireland on Thursday. Unfortunately, as I boarded the plane in Morocco, my immune system finally got the best of me and I became sick. I think I had some sort of flu without the nausea, and I was in pretty bad shape. Wednesday was spent in bed the entire day, praying that I would feel better for the next day.

Thursday rolled around too soon, and I forced myself out of bed to pack and leave for the airport. That day was a blur of sickness and hoping that once I arrived in Ireland I would feel better!

We landed in Dublin around 11:30 p.m. after a short plane ride lasting only over an hour. My friends and I hurriedly bought a bus ticket bound for the city center. We made the mistake of buying a day pass instead of a one-way ticket, but that was only a minor hiccup in getting there! The city center was luckily only a 15-20 minute ride from the airport, and we got off the bus, only to be welcomed to a fairly empty city center. I was surprised the streets weren’t more full of people out at night.

We walked towards the general vicinity of where we thought our hostel was, and literally stumbled upon it within 5 minutes! After checking in and getting the low-down on the hostel, we were off to bed. I was still pretty weak from not eating for two days, so I took the chance to sleep as soon as I could. I wanted to be better for the rest of the trip!

Friday was spent walking all around the main areas of Dublin. It was really interesting to see how big Dublin was, because it wasn’t! Maybe it’s because I am used to huge cities like Paris, but the city itself wasn’t that massive. Our hostel was right next to Trinity College, so we toured around the campus for a while, passing by the Book of Kells and other famous sites. After the college, we found several great parks to walk through and sit to have a rest. They were all beautiful and really great to get fresh air and green scenery.

Near one of the parks was the home where Oscar Wilde resided for some time in Dublin! My friend is in love with him, so it was great to see how happy she was going to this famous location! The park next to his house had a statue of him sitting on a rock, so we took some really funny photos with Mr. Wilde.

One thing that we all had to get used to was the driving in Ireland! I didn’t realize before visiting that they drive on the left side of the road! Thankfully, the city has placed warnings on the sidewalks for all those not used to this backward way of checking before you cross the road. It saved all of us many times!

We walked through the city for a long while, and got the chance to come across many great churches. The only thing about the churches in Ireland? A lot of them cost money! I couldn’t believe that they were charging to walk through a church. I was happy seeing the churches from the outside, so I opted out of paying the fees. Plus, I walked into the entryway of the churches to peek at the inside anyway! We went into one, however, that was free. It is always interesting to note the differences between churches in all the countries I have been so far.

St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Christ's Church

After walking around most of the city, we went to the Guinness Factory to take the museum tour. It was so interesting to see how they make Guinness, as well as find out some history of Ireland.

One whole floor was dedicated to the advertising of Guinness throughout the years. So interesting for me as an advertising/PR major! They had the original lease from Arthur Guinness himself, which was signed for a period of 9,000 years! I couldn’t believe a lease could go for that long. Another great part of the tour was the view at the top of the building. It is the tallest viewing place of Dublin, so it was awesome to see the city from such a viewpoint.

New shampoo ad, anyone?

View from the top of the factory.

Leaving the factory, we headed over to the city center for some souvenir buying and shopping. I saw so many Flaherty and Flannigan items, but never a Flattery! It’s a shame.

My lucky button I found in Ireland!

Exhausted from walking all day and not fully recovered yet from my Morocco bug, we had dinner, listened to a man and woman play some fun covers of U2, the Beatles and more, and then went to bed!

The infamous colored doors of Dublin.

I love how it goes from old to new styles.

Saturday I woke up feeling almost completely better, so I was happy to finally have my health back! For about an hour that morning we shopped some more through the stores and then stopped in a Subway for a cheap lunch. After lunch, we boarded our bus for the ride across the country to our next destination: Galway.

Galway was a much smaller town, yet I loved it! We checked into our hostel, which was right in the middle of the main street of restaurants and shops, and then went out to discover some of the town. Galway itself is right on the shore of the bay, so it was great to be so close to the ocean! Unfortunately, it was drizzling the rest of the night, but we had high hopes for the next day!

I woke up on Sunday, and was instantly bummed out. Rain was hitting the window, and there was no sign of the sun anywhere in the sky. We had our bus tour that day, so I had been hoping for sun. Once we hopped on the bus, I was praying as hard as I could that the clouds would break up! After a while on the road, the sky finally started to clear up and I was beyond happy.

The bus tour ended up being my favorite part/day of the entire trip. I had wanted to see Irish countryside the whole time, so getting the chance to experience that was awesome. We drove past clusters of trees known as “fairy rings”, and learned about a lot of Irish tales. The first stop of the tour was to an abbey in the middle of the green fields of the countryside. The beautiful Celtic crosses of the tombstones and the great stone fences were my favorite aspects to the place.

"Fairy rings" of trees.

We left the abbey and stopped in a small town before the Cliffs of Moher (our ultimate destination) to have lunch. I had amazing seafood chowder. Mussels, fish and bits of lobster were in the soup, making it the ultimate seaside meal!

On arriving at the cliffs, I was instantly shocked. Being the number one tourist site in Ireland, I wasn’t disappointed in the least. They were so massive and epic! We got two hours to walk and hang around the cliffs, and my friends and I could have stayed there literally all day. Tip to anyone who goes: go past the sign that says, “Don’t go past this point”, because it is definitely the best way to view the cliffs! I think that they just put the sign up so that they don’t have liability if someone dies (which hundreds of people have in the past). I love it though, because the integrity of the cliff’s edge is keep intact by not having metal fences to ruin the experience. It was a little scary at times to walk paths that were so close to the edge, but it was so amazing to get the view that we did. As we made our way towards the entrance, clouds were forming on the cliffs. It was breathtaking to see how fast the scenery changed. By the time we got to the information area, you couldn’t see a single thing past the patches of grass along the sidewalk. I felt so lucky that we had gotten to see the cliffs on a nice, clear day!

Sometimes I'm a rebel.

Everyone passed it!

Thrown into the ocean.

The clouds forming!

Skinniest portion of the path. Scary stuff!

We begrudgingly walked back to the bus after our two-hour hiatus at the cliffs, and started the ride back to Galway. A stop to a beautiful stone beach was made, where we all took awesome photos of the crazy shore that was made up of oddly shaped stones. Driving along the coast, our tour guide showed us several old Irish homes made of stone, as well as several castles in the distance. We got to walk around one final castle before heading back to the city center of Galway.

Remains of an old Irish home.

Irish sheep!

Monday was an incredibly relaxing day in Ireland! We woke up early and headed to the shore for a nice walk along the water. The tide was really low, so we marched through the seaweed and seashells for a while, and then headed into town to browse through shops and a couple churches within Galway. One church was where Christopher Columbus attended frequently! It was interesting to walk through the building, because they had memorial stones on all the walls of people who had died in the town. I had never seen that within a church before!

St. Nicholas' Church.

After lunch, we headed back to the beach, excited to have beautiful weather! The water was surprising crystal clear, so it was so nice to sit on the rocks and relax as the tide came in. We stayed around the beach for most of the afternoon, where we became friends with a stray dog that Kiyomi and Claire fell in love with, and even named. It went through many names, all of them Michael Jackson-related. It was so great to just rest and soak in the scenery. Walking back to get dinner, I fed some of the swans that are famously in the bay of Galway.

Lynch's Castle. Supposedly the father hanged his son in their window for killing a Spaniard. Also where the term "lynch" is said to come from.

It looks like it is attacking me...but it was just eating out of my hand!

Our final night I decided to have an Irish meal. I had Shepard’s Pie for the first time, and it was amazing. Really, it was so good! Completely satisfied, we listened to a group of boys play and sing traditional Irish music, and fell fast asleep.

We flew back the next day and I spent the rest of the afternoon recuperating from all the traveling I had done the past two weeks.

Ireland was beautiful, and had a wonderful air of comfortableness to it. It reminded me of a beach town in the U.S., with a really relaxing vibe. No one was rushing, and everyone was really welcoming! The accents helped with the atmosphere as well. Ha. My trip made me definitely want to come back when I am old enough to rent a car so that I can drive to random towns and experience even more of the Irish culture.

Now I have 5 days of break left, and they have been full of being lazy and relaxing so far. I’m so lucky! School starts Monday, and I am actually ready to get back to learning French. I can’t believe I only have 7 weeks left! My time here is flying past so fast.

Next week we have our excursion to Versailles, then my birthday is on Sunday! After that, the next weekend is Rome! Things are going to go into hyper-drive, I can feel it!

Síochán leat,

Affecteusement,

George