WEDNESDAY
I wake up early and head for the airport. It is relatively uneventful and I make it to Dublin in one piece. The most exciting thing was passport control. Spain is in the Schegen, which means that we do not have to go through passport control in many countries and even though I have been to France twice, and italy for 10 days, I have no proof of this in my passport. I do have a stamp for Ireland, though. I didn’t think I would get one since they are on the Euro, but I did! Since Meg doesn’t have a phone, we decided to meet in St. Stephen’s Green (the corner closest to Trinity College) at noon since I thought my flight was scheduled to land at 11:00. It was scheduled to land at 11:30. It arrived on time, but it took me until 1:00 to get there. Fortunately, I ran into Meg just as she was leaving. Problem Solved.
We were both hungry, but food in Ireland is really expensive. Fortunately, we found a “Farmer’s Market” on the steps of the Bank of Ireland, across the street from Trinity College. There wasn’t a whole lot of produce, but there were a few stands and we each got chicken sandwiches. Since Meg hadn’t seen Trinity College yet, which was necessary since her brother studied there for a year, we went there after lunch. We walked around the cool buildings and were about to see the Book of Kells when we found out that it would cost eight euro to get in. with the student discount. Neither of us wanted to see it that badly, so we went back outside. We stumbled upon a free walking tour of Dublin that was happening to make it’s Trinity College stop. The guide told us about the Book of Kells. He mentioned that Trinity College students can swipe themselves and three guests in for free. So, we loitered around the entrance of the library until a student came up and was taking his one friend in…and we became friends 2 and 3! It was awesome. Maybe not worth eight euro, but getting in for free made it so much more fun!
We went to the bus station and boarded a bus to Galway. We were both tired and slept most of the 3h40m drive, but I did peek a few times and saw the rolling Irish countryside, which is about as I expected. We checked into our hostel and looked at the weather for the next day, to pick what our activities would be. It looked like rain and we decided we would appreciate the refuge of a bus, so we picked the Cliffs of Moher over the Aran Islands, where we would be renting bicycles. We found a tour that included a walking component…more to come on that. We wandered around looking for a pub that was still serving dinner and found An Pucan. Their burgers were eight ounces and came with fries, so we split one (after all, we are dainty females). It was amazing. The burger had onions in the meat, and on top of it was a little cheese, a little bacon and a fair amount of salsa. I must recreate this burger upon my return to America. With dinner, I had a Bulmer’s Pear (yes, that is cider made from pears, it is a new creation from Bulmer’s) which ended up being more than a pint, but I wasn’t complaining. A band started playing and some dancers came out, which was a delightful way to spend my first evening in the motherland.
The band/dancers (resting) at An Pucan. I have a video of the dancing.THURSDAY
We woke up for breakfast and went to the grocery store to pick up lunch supplies and then joined our tour. First, we took a bus ride out to a farm. While the older folk stayed on the bus and went to the Allowee Caves, we got out and hiked through the Conolly farm in the Burren, which is filled with limestone. Our guide, who grew up on the farm that his parents still run (it is a cow farm, and yes we got close to the cows) told us all about the Burren and some folk tales as we hike up the “mountain” that his family owns. We then went down, stopping first at a stone slide that Irish people have been sliding down for centuries (I guess they have them all over. I went down, to embrace my roots). We stopped in his grandparents house (which is now I guess the office for his tours) and had some apple tart that his mom had made that morning. I almost bought some homemade Irish whiskey jam but thought that would be difficult to get through customs.
We re-joined the bus and went to what we dubbed “Baby Stonehenge”. There, I ran into a girl named Molly who is a fellow Sociology major at Notre Dame with whom I have taken a few classes. She just spent the semester in Rome and came out to Ireland to visit a friend that had studied in Dublin, but came to Galway by herself. We also met Kaitlin, from Michigan State who had studied at John Cabot in Rome with Molly and the other Notre Dame students (we actually met her on the walk). We made plans to go out to the pubs with them and a couple of other girls from the tour. We then progressed to the Cliffs of Moher, which were gorgeous. The fog was setting in as we got there and the view got a little worse as out hour progressed, but we enjoyed it. Meg was concerned that she would fall off (a few tourists fall/are blown by gusts of wind each year) but she did not.
The Cliffs...Don't worry I have loads more pictures...We went back to Galway and took naps before dinner. Meg and I went back to An Pucan since it was raining and we knew how to get there and that they would have good food. I got Bangers and Mash and was able to forget that I was eating lamb. We met up with the girls from the tour and went to a few pubs. We walked into one and they were playing the Folsum Prison Blues and I said that, as much as I love Johnny Cash, I did not come to Ireland to hear a band to a rendition of him. When they started playing Hootie and the Blowfish and got us out of there. Meg and I really wanted to hear a fiddle since she plays violin, I used to and we hadn’t heard one Wednesday night (the band from the night before was playing at the first pub we went to with the girls, which was not An Pucan…they were good but we wanted more variety). We finally found a place but the others wanted to go to bed, so the two of us stayed with some random French girl we had picked up. The fiddling wasn’t that exciting (the accordian drowned it out) but at one point some lady (who was not in the band I think) started singing. The whole pub quieted down. The songs were beautiful, about the famine and migration. I wanted to shout out: Hey! I come from those people! But I restrained myself.
FRIDAY
Galway is the birthplace of the Claddagh ring, so Meg and I had some shopping to do. We found the original shop (it even had its own museum in the back, apparently Grace Kelly got a ring) but opted for a cheaper version next door. Meg and I got matching rings, how cute. Since I wear my class ring on my right hand, I had to get it for the middle finger of my left hand. If I got it for the ring finger on my left hand, I would be telling the world that I am engaged/married, depending on how I pointed it, and neither of those is true.
We also stopped in the Galway Cathedral (which is Catholic, unlike the two cathedrals in Dublin). It was very nice. We also stopped for lunch at a place with a soup and lunch combo (I got a delicious peas soup). Since it was a little wet and cold outside, we decided that 12:30 was neither to early nor too late for coffee with Bailey’s in it, and our waitress agreed. The girls sitting next to us from the Franciscan University of Steubenville (who had just been studying abroad with Dan Devine, you understand that, Mom) were drinking plain tea, but I don’t think they judged us.
We boarded the bus back to Dublin after I got lost in a bookshop, as per usual. Meg had to catch her flight back to London because her flight to the States was in the morning. Our bus was delayed forty minutes, so she had to take a taxi to the airport instead of waiting for a city bus, but she made it just fine. I checking into my hostel and then walked around. I found the St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral, which serves as the Cathedral for Catholic Dublin to check Mass times and then I swung by Christ’s Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals, because I heard that they sometimes had free concerts and I wanted to see if they had any that weekend. They did not, but I took pictures. I then got lost looking for the Temple Bar area (somehow I ended up at the Canal instead of the River and I’m not sure how). By the time I made it to the pubs, they were really overcrowded so I decided to just call it a night, since my hostel was a bit of a hike anyway.
SATURDAY
I woke up for breakfast. My hostel used to be a convent and the breakfast room is called the church restaurant…so you can guess what that is. Right outside the former chapel, they turned the confessional into two photo booths, which I suppose is rather ingenious. I then walked. And walked and walked. I walked all the way to the Kilmainam Gaol which is 2km from the center of the city. It came highly recommended and I really enjoyed the tour. The organizers of the Easter Rising were held and executed there, so we learned a lot about Irish and Dublin History and it was also interesting because it was built at the time of Victorian Prison reform.
The GaolAfter the fabulous tour, I walked some more. The Gaol isn’t that far from Pheonix Park, the largest enclosed park in Europe and I went there because I love parks so much. In 1979, Pope John Paul II said Mass there and one third of the Irish population attended. They built a 90-foot cross on the spot and I wanted to see it. Halfway into the huge park, I consulted my guidebook map and realized I was still barely there. Since I had come that far, I figure I might as well keep walking. As soon as the cross came into view, it started pouring and the wind was heavy. I felt like Winnie-the-Pooh on his blustery day. I got close enough to take a picture and then turned around. Of course, by the time I left the park, it had stopped raining.
I went into the Dublin city center and went back to St. Stephen’s Green, since I hadn’t actually gotten in it on Wednesday and found it very idyllic. I also popped back into Trinity College since it was close and I had forgotten to take pictures earlier. I also stopped by Dublin Castle to take a few pictures. At 5:00, I went to Christ’s Church Cathedral because they had Evensong, a nice way to see the inside for free. This is where Handel’s Messiah was first performed (it had pretty good acoustics, although it seemed a little small for such a momentous occasion) and for Christmas and Easter every year, they perform it again. I sat by Strongbow. The Evensong was sung almost entirely by a choir, so it was very beautiful. And, except for an occasional mention of the Holy Ghost, it was just like Catholic Evening Prayer. I then went to Mass in the Catholic Church, so I could a) go to a Mass that weekend since I would be traveling all day Sunday and b) go to a Mass in English, which I hadn’t done since Easter. It was in English, but the responses were different, and I still felt a little foolish. The little girl they got to sing the Alleluia was quite good, though.
St. Stephen's GreenI went to dinner at Fitzgerald’s, a pub right by the O’Connell Bridge. I was determined to have a pint of Guinness in Dublin, so I found O’Neill’s, on Grafton Street. I met an interesting man from Belfast, who told me about his failed marriage to a woman from Barcelona. Maybe he also has a girlfriend from Barcelona. I drank my Guinness a little too fast and ended up with a mild stomachache because that stuff is HEAVY. No, Mom, that pint and the half pint I had with dinner did not make me drunk or even slightly tipsy, so don’t worry. I went back to my hostel and checked the internet for a while before packing and going to bed. This took a while, because the Australian girls in my room weren’t planning on stopping their conversation for a while, but eventually they went to bed, too.
SUNDAY
I woke up early to get a good breakfast before my plane. My hostel had continental breakfast (that was not all you an eat, like most hostels with breakfasts) but you could order extra things, so I ordered French toast. The woman I ordered from (like most of the people working in this particular hostel) was actually French. She asked me: “How do you want it? Because I’m French and we put sugar on it, but these Irish people, they don’t put sugar on it.” I opted for the sugar, which was brown sugar sprinkled on it and it melted like syrup. Delicious. The night before, I got some instructions from the hostel people to go around the corner to a city bus stop to catch a bus for 2 euro to the airport. On Sundays, they start at 8:25 and come every half hour. My flight was at 10:50, so I figured I would catch the 8:55 bus and get to the airport between 9:25-9:35, which would be plenty of time since I was already check in and didn’t have to check baggage. I got to the bus station at 8:45 to be safe. At 9:35 the bus still hadn’t come so I had to get an 18 euro taxi. Ireland does have a terrible public transport reputation, and between the experiences of Meg and myself in getting to the airport, this was definitely proven.
I had a three-hour layover in Liverpool, where I hung out with some of John Lennon’s old suits and studied for my Mundo Arabe exam on Monday. It was interesting to study the influence of Britain’s policies on the Arab World while in London, surrounded by British people. My flight to Madrid was packed, I sat by two ladies from an elder hostel in Liverpool. I couldn’t understand a word they said.
I made it back in time to go to Pastucci’s to celebrate Gabi’s last night in Toledo (which was Monday night, but Pastucci’s is closed Mondays. We had another celebration Monday night: making strawberry/cherry pierogi with our UCLM friends). As we were leaving for dinner, Obama’s commencement speech started, so Melissa, Jose and Erica stayed behind. Gabi and I were starving (I had barely eaten all day) so we went ahead and got our pizzas and they joined us later. I have already watched the speech on youtube, so I’m not a total failure at life.
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