Ladies and Gentlemen,

Prepare yourselves for an extremely long tale of the epic variety. I have many adventures to relate on this blog post so tuck in, dear friends.

This past weekend, I journeyed with two friends, Kathleen and Evie, to the West of Ireland to see the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, and enjoy the city of Galway. Well, check, check and check. I’ll start from the beginning. We left Cork at 3:30 pm on Friday and arrived in Galway 4 long hours later. I’m generally pretty good with road-trips but at point, every seat on the bus was taken and it was a bit of an uncomfortable squeeze. But we managed and arrived in Galway! We had directions to the hostel that we had booked online which seemed clear enough but obviously not enough for us because we ended up going in the opposite direction with no idea how to find the damn place. So we asked a Garda that had just written someone a parking ticket. He was very nice and thinking that we knew where to go, we headed out again but in the right direction this time. Well, unfortunately, that didn’t really work either because we didn’t see the landmarks we were supposed to see so we asked a random guy on the street. He didn’t really know where we were trying to go but another man was walking past and asked us if we were lost which we responded that yes, we were. He asked where we needed to go and we told him Sleepzone Hostel and he was like oh yes! No problem, I can just take you there. It’s on my way. Now to Americans this is going to sound extremely sketchy and not safe. Which, of course my guard was up and ready to high tale it out of there if I got creepy vibes, but this actually happens a lot in Ireland. People are just really nice. He could have just told us where to go but it was on his way and he wanted us to be able to get there. So we chatted on the way, and it was actually really close. So we were on the right track! But he left us at the end of the street it was on and we thanked him and he headed on to the pub. Lovely soul.

So we checked into the hostel and went to put our stuff in our room that we had booked, which was quite nice. It was a very pleasant hostel and the receptionist worker guys were super nice and helpful; they gave us a map of Galway and marked nice places to eat and cool pubs to go to which was really sweet. We told him that we wanted a traditional Irish meal for dinner that night so he recommended this great place. So we left our stuff in the room, taking all our valuables with us, and headed out for this restaurant. We did make it there and had a fantastic meal! I got a Shepherd’s Pie and this delicious veg soup. So we ate, paid and then headed out looking for a traditional pub to chill in. My friend, Evie, is a journalist, in her final year of College and is doing her thesis on pubs in Ireland. She takes photos of the place and then interviews the owner or manager. It’s pretty freaking cool. We did go to one of the pubs suggested to us, but it didn’t really have the right vibe for her project so we just stayed and listened to the live band that was playing while drinking a pitcher of Woo woo. The name was just too funny to not order! It was quite delicious and it was grand craic all around. They played some fantastic songs, all of which I either danced in my seat to or made my way to the dance floor. When you gotta dance, you just gotta dance man! I’m not going to cool down my groove just because other people are afraid of what everyone is going to think of them if they jam out. So yeah, I did attract some odd glances but that kind of just made it more fun. I’m never going to see these people again, might as well make a fool of myself.

    

Anyway, we went back to the hostel and settled in for the night planning on journeying to the Aran Islands in the morning. We were rudely awoken at 4 in the morning by assholes who were partying loudly, slamming doors, yelling, and just being extremely inconsiderate. My goodness we have the worst luck with hall mates when we travel. I don’t see how people can be so blatantly inconsiderate of everyone around them. That’s just not how I was raised. Shout out to my awesome parents for raising me so fabulously. I turned out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself. Anyway, after getting half a nights sleep, we arose and journeyed to the street where we were allegedly supposed to be catching this bus to the Aran Islands ferry. An address would have been helpful but they only listed the street name on the ticket so we made our way there, finding this wonderful bakery on the way! Extremely reasonable prices for literally masterpieces of the food variety. I just got coffee because I’m scrappy and packed bread, peanut butter, and nutella to make sandwiches for breakfast. I did get coffee though which was delicious and just what I needed to prepare myself for one of the most epic adventures of my life.

The bus ride was about an hour and then we arrived right in time to catch the ferry over. Now, before I rode on this ferry I don’t think I would necessarily have described myself as a boat person but now I can definitely say for sure that I am not one of those. I really did not expect myself to be such a baby but let’s get forreal it was actually terrifying. We decided to ride on the top deck because it had the best views so we sat right by the windows. Now the thing about ferries, which seems obvious, is that they rock..a lot. Back and forth, so far to each side that it literally feels like you’re about to plunge to your death at every moment. I literally could not handle myself. I ended up moving to the middle with Evie where it wasn’t quite so rocky and she let me listen to music with her in order to distract me. Nevertheless, I still found my self in a fetalish position holding onto the seat sides for dear life. It’s not even that I got seasick. I wasn’t queasy, I was just terrified for my life. So I am now definitely sure that boats are not for me. But we did make it there alive and that is when the real adventure started.

Right off the boat, there were a million tour guides right up in our grill trying to get us to pay them to take us around the island. We had gone there not really sure what our plan of action was but on the way into the dock, we had seen a sweater market so we beelined for that. Now that’s not to say that we didn’t get stopped by a bunch of people that wanted to give us tours. This is when I first met Johnny, the new love of my life. I should probably mention that Johnny is a horse. But not just any horse, he was the sweetest, prettiest, most lovely horse I have ever met. He was named after Johnny Cash. I immediately knew that we had to take Johnny around the island. His owner had a carriage thing attached to him and we decided that it would be a more legitimate experience if we took a horse drawn carriage instead of a car. So Johnny took the three of us and this other couple and started off down the road. Now, something we didn’t exactly foresee was how cold it would be. It was already much much colder on the Island than we were used to but adding in the wind in our faces sitting in an unheated carriage was a bit of a freezing experience. But lovely just the same. He had a couple blankets that we used to huddle together and cuddle with. Our tour guide actually lives on the Island so not only did he have the normal historical background information but he also pointed out where his mother lived and we waved to her. It was very sweet.

    

It really felt like we had gone back in time. We were surrounded by the most beautiful land with stone fences everywhere and beautiful houses, some with thatched roofs. There were also no lack of ruins for us to see. We saw numerous churches, houses, etc. We actually saw ruins of a church that people still got married in. Our guide still had ribbons on the inside of the carriage from the ceremony. It was beautiful. I would definitely love to get married in a place like that someday.

Our real adventure started when he told us to take this “path” to the first site that he wanted to show us. People don’t usually go there during tours, but he thought it was one of the coolest places so we were all for it. Our destination was this completely natural “pool” that is partly connected to the coast. Anyway, it’s a perfect rectangle; it absolutely looks man-made which is why it’s so cool that it’s not. It was just used in the Red Bull cliff diving competition. There’s actually a pretty cool video that shows some of the Aran Islands and has a great look at the pool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdKCB7E4M_w So check that out and you can see what I’m talking about. Now getting there was another story. He let us off and told us to follow this path between two houses that would leave us to the coastline. Which was all fine and grand until the path abruptly ended and led us through this huge rock field. I guess I shouldn’t have expected a nice laid path all the way to the coast, so I just laughed and started hopping from rock to rock. This is when it started raining. Not that that’s some huge shocker seeing as I’m in Ireland but it did make the rocks we were hopping on more slippery. It didn’t slow us down much though. I even had my own theme music going while I was hopping around. What’s the use in having an adventure if you’re not going to have theme music!? We were so spread out that no one could really hear me until I think our guide caught a little of it and he turned around and kind of giggled at me. I just smiled back and kept humming.

        

After we climbed through this rock garden, we had to walk under the cliffs in order to get to the optimal viewing point of the pool. This is where it started to get a bit dangerous. We were right on the edge of the Island with not a lot separating us from the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were not calm either, they kept slamming against the coastline and kind of exploding upwards. Which was a fantastic view, but also we had to be extremely careful to not get too close to the edge or we would be swept away forever. So we were smart about it but the couple that was touring with us were freaking idiots. They got way too close and it made me quite anxious. They didn’t get swept away but there were a few close calls. We got to the pool and the guide would literally not let go of my arm which made me realize how dangerous this actually was. I got a spectacular view but then the waves started getting bigger so we had to high tale it back to the rock garden where it was safer. We did get some great pictures though.

   

We were then supposed to journey up to the main attraction of Inis Mor, which is the island we were on. It’s this huge ruins of an old stone fort. I don’t know, it was supposed to be super cool. So he kind of points us in the direction we were supposed to be taking and we start off. However, at this point there is literally no path or markers for a path. It’s just countryside with a lot of stone fences and some cows. It was not exactly easy going. We had to climb over numerous stone fences that weren’t exactly solid or easy to get over. But we managed. At one point Evie was like, we are so in Lord of the Rings right now and it was just so obvious that we totally were. She was Legolas, I was Aragorn, and Kathleen who has never seen LOTR was Gimli. She was the slowest one though, so it totally fit. At one point, we decided that we should skip the site and head straight for the village that we were supposed to meet Johnny at because it was raining, cold, and honestly we had a pretty good view of it from where we were. Struggling through the country was so much fun, but it was also exhausting and none of us really wanted to climb up this enormous hill. So we beelined toward the town but then the land started to get more and more thorny, which was unpleasant to say the least. Then, we came to a straight up land height change where there was a pretty decent distance straight down. However, there really was no other way to go in order to get to the village so I kind of just went for it. I actually found a pretty decent way down. At one point, I had to sit and then reach my legs out so that I could make a part of the drop but it wasn’t too hard. So I helped Kathleen and Evie down and standing at the bottom, it was ridiculous that we had just scaled that thing but we were all super impressed with ourselves. Not to pat myself on the back or anything but I did find the way down. Woohoo go adventure Chlo!

 <— Cliff we climbed down.  

So we came to the village and there were these really cool craft stores! Some of which I did make some pretty awesome purchases in. We then went to this little cafe where it was super warm and we had some piping hot soup. Just what the doctor ordered. We had to wait a bit until Johnny got there and the couple showed up. But they eventually did, which was a relief because until that point we weren’t exactly sure we were in the right place. By this time though a lot of hours had passed (adventures aren’t exactly time minimal activities) and we had to get back to the Ferry in order to catch the last one off the Island. So Johnny took off and we went back along the coastline. It was an amazing view. There was a place where seals sometimes are but we didn’t get lucky and there wasn’t a seal in sight. Too bad.

We got back literally right in time and the Ferry took off. This time we sat on the bottom so it wasn’t as rocky. It still wasn’t pleasant, but I relaxed a bit more. I was also half asleep though. Adventures really take it out of you. We made our way back to the hostel and by that point we were all exhausted. We had planned on going to another pub that night for Evie to photograph but none of us were up to it at all. So we got a ridiculous amount of food from Papa Johns and ate in on our hostel room floor while chatting it up girl style. It was the perfect ending to an all around amazing day.

On Sunday, Kathleen was meeting up with her family that lives there and Evie and I were taking a bus tour up to the Cliffs of Moher and around the Burren. So we walked to the Coach Station and found the bus that was going to take us around. We only had time for a half day tour because we also had to catch the last bus back to Cork that night and it left at 6PM. The tour promised we would get back around 5PM, which was helpful because Evie wanted to photograph another pub. She’s trying to get a few from the North, South, East, and West of Ireland. Anyway, the bus took off and we had a funny tour guide that told us so much cool information. I wish I could have been taking notes because there was no way I was going to remember everything. We arrived at the Burren pretty quickly and we drove up into it. The Burren is a karst landscape made mostly of limestone. Because of all the limestone, the sun reflects off of it and onto the plants which make them thrive. I thought that was pretty cool. There is an old Irish saying that goes “There’s not enough trees to hang a man, not enough water to drown a man, and not enough soil to burry a man in the Burren.” It was actually very accurate. There were really none of those things. We drove past a lot of cool ruins and then we passed by this tomb of some sort that housed numerous burials. It kind of looked like a stone table but a lot bigger. Then we saw a man who wanted to be buried standing up so he could keep watch over his land. So there was this vertical stone structure that looked like there could be a man in it. Creepy, but awesome. We then arrived at the infamous Cliffs of Moher. I was pretty excited to see them; it’s one of the top sights to visit in Ireland and also some of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was filmed there. SO COOL.

     

I was expecting it to be a little overrated because I had heard a couple people say it was but honestly it was one of the most majestic sights I have ever seen. It was swarming with tourists of course, but the view was literally spectacular and took my breath away. It was very calming until I saw these three American girls around my age cross over the boundary to take a picture closer to the edge of the Cliffs. I was infuriated. If it was safe, then there wouldn’t be boundaries and blatantly ignoring them is just ridiculous! It’s shit like that that makes Americans look bad. I mean mugged hard core and then laughed when a Security Guard came over and forced them to get down. Idiots. But that didn’t take away from the experience. I could still get pretty close to the edge which made for some fantastic pictures while following the rules and being safe.

      

Then, as luck would have it, we stopped at this adorable pub in Dingle on our way back so Evie photographed it and got the number to call and have an over the phone interview. Luck as on our side! The food was also to die for. Our tour guide said that usually they put alcohol restrictions on the group because they usually stop for lunch before they get to the Cliffs but since we had already been to the Cliffs, he told us to drink as much alcohol as we could in 40 minutes. Being the rebel that I am, I had a whole ¾ of a pint of Guinness. I know, I’m such a badass. After lunch/dinner, we headed back to Galway. Although we did not get back at 5PM like we were promised, we got back at 5:30 so we kind of had to rush getting to our bus station. But we did make it and settled in and watched the first hour of P.S. I Love You. I thought it was fitting since we were in Ireland, and it’s just such a great movie. We both laughed and cried and then her laptop died which was super sad. So then I napped/read for the rest of the way.

So that is an account of my adventures. I hope it was enjoyable to read about. I can assure you it was more than enjoyable to experience. I’m so glad that I had time to explore some of Ireland! This weekend my study abroad group is taking a trip to Northern Ireland and I’m extremely excited! We leave tomorrow morning and I actually still need to pack..

A couple fun Irish facts: I don’t know if I mentioned this before but with their accents, Irish people don’t pronounce th’s. They pronounce everything that has a th with just a t. Some funny example that I hear constantly is “mats” referring to math. My Econ professor always says it and I giggle each time. Also a line here is referred to as a queue (pronounced Q). It wasn’t totally foreign to me but literally no one calls it a line. There are also a couple of annoyances that I feel I should share. 1) Students whisper in class all the time like it’s not distracting to anyone else. Which to be fair, are not always Irish, there are some foreigners too but it is infuriating. 2) Students will also leave class early before the Professor is done talking. That is just appalling to me. Along with students packing up their stuff before the Professor is done with the lecture. I don’t care what time it is, you sit there and listen until you are dismissed. That’s my take on it. 3) There is this hideous fashion trend that Irish girls are into where they wear tights and then super short jean shorts over them. To class. It’s ridiculous! Not only is that not fashionable in the slightest, but I think they are competing with everyone to try to get the shortest shorts imaginable. I have seen far too many butts. It’s appalling. They look like Ladies of the Night. Now, Dad, I know you don’t like it when I criticize girls’ choice of clothing but I couldn’t help it. It needed to be said.

Alright, phew, that’s all for now. I need to pack and get myself ready for Northern Ireland woot woot!! Much love to the U.S.


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