The Craic Was Mighty

Thursday morning we left Galway for a tour of Connemara, which had some really awesome scenery.  For such a small country, Ireland is a lot more variable than I was expecting.  The beautiful coast and the rolling green hills I was expecting, but then there was the Burren National Park, and Connemara, which had stretches I could have mistaken for the Nevada desert if I weren't looking too closely.  The plants were different -- I didn't see sage, and saw a lot of this grayish-green thing I'm not sure what it was -- but the hills and the dirt and the general landscape just looked so much like Nevada.

I...wasn't really all that homesick on seeing it, though.  This was about an hour, hour and a half away from Galway, so some people had been taking naps, and when we got to the most Nevada-looking part, Sean was all "Wake up and look at the landscape!  Isn't it beautiful?"  I looked at the landscape and was thinking less of "I miss Nevada" and more "I've seen enough of this at home.  What happened to all that funny green stuff?  I want more of that." :p

We stopped at a town called Killary, which was home to the only Irish fjord, so I got some pictures of the fjord.  That village was also where the movie "The Field" was filmed, apparently, and we went to the pub where all the pub scenes were filmed, which seemed to be very proud of that because it had "The Field" paraphernalia all over.  That pub also apparently made really good Irish Coffees (coffee with whiskey) and Bailey's Coffees (coffee with Bailey's), but I didn't have any because I don't like coffee, and it's just as well because some people said later that having alcohol that early upset their stomachs.

We had lunch in Westport, then went to Croagh Patrick, the mountain from which St. Patrick is said to have banished all the snakes from Ireland.  (Heh.  Our first day, Sean told us that story, then said that Ireland never had any snakes in the first place.  Banishing the snakes is supposed to have been Patrick's miracle, and you need a miracle to be a saint, but since Patrick didn't actually banish the snakes, he was never actually made a saint, which I did not know.  The Irish took him for their patron saint because he's the one who converted them to Christianity, but he's not actually a saint.)  Anyway, the mountain is a pilgrimate site now, and on some day in August is basically the official time to make the pilgrimage so tens of thousands of people climb the mountain on that day.

Sean wanted us to climb at least partly up the mountain, but I only climbed to the pilgrimage base, where there's a statue of the Virgin Mary.  I wasn't the only one not really interested in climbing, though, so several of us hung around the base for awhile and took pictures of the bay, since it really had an awesome view.  It wasn't really much of a hike, though, since Sean really only allotted about half an hour to it, so we were on our way soon enough.

We also stopped at the Famine Memorial by Croagh Patrick, which was depressing.  Well, of course it was, since it had to do with the Famine, but it was this metal statue of a ship crawling with skeletons.  And Sean told us about the Famine, and how people died not just of starvation in Ireland but of conditions on the ships they were emigrating in, which is why the memorial is a ship with skeletons, and it was just...depressing.  Apparently when he was Prime Minister, Tony Blair acknowledged to the Irish that the Famine was preventable, which is so sad.  Two million Irish died or emigrated, and it could have been prevented.  That's just horrible.

It also really makes me want to know the British side of things, what a Brit would say to the version of history Sean told.  I mean, I don't think Sean was lying or exaggerating, but I want to know how the British would tell the story.  I think I'm going to corner my history teacher at some point and ask him.

We stopped at this lake where the waters looked black, which is Sean's favorite place in Ireland because he said he's never seen it look the same twice.  The landscape was very impressive.  There were also sheep wandering across the road.  I am so amused at how many sheep I saw in Ireland -- probably more than I saw people, really.  

Our last stop of the day was at Kylemore Abbey, a huge mansion across a lake.  Very picturesque.  After that, we headed back towards Galway, getting in around six.  Sean told us about this restaurant on Quay Street famous for its mussels, so we went there for dinner, and they really did have very good mussels.  Mmmm.  I love shellfish.

After dinner we went across the street to a pub playing live music, where I got my last half-pint of Guinness in Ireland, plus some sort of blackcurrant cordial to offset the bitterness.  I liked the Guinness with blackcurrant much better than regular Guinness, so I'll have to see if that's just an Irish thing or if I can get it that way at home.  The music was not Celtic, sadly, but the band on when I was there was basically playing covers to classic rock songs from CCR, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more like that, so I still enjoyed it.

In Ireland, there are two days out of the year where alcohol is not allowed to be sold.  I think one of them is Christmas (could be wrong about that though), but the other is Good Friday, and the prohibition started at midnight.  Technically, at least.  We were still in the pub at midnight, but the bartender said they were just closing the downstairs bar and keeping the upstairs one open until they closed for the night.  I wasn't interested in drinking more, though, and I was getting pretty tired, so we just went back to the hostel.

Friday was our last and easiest day of the tour.  We had free time in Galway until 2:30, and then we were just going straight back to Dublin.  Sean mentioned a museum in Galway, but it turns out that was also closed for Good Friday, so oh well.  Mostly I just spent my morning shopping.  I got a hat made from good Irish wool, because I've seen so many sheep in Ireland that I couldn't resist getting something made from them.  I also got a really pretty necklace and earrings in Celtic designs made of silver and inset with Connemara marble, so I was very pleased with that.

I met up with my friends at this crepe place for lunch, and oh, crepes.  It's been so long since I had a crepe.  They were so good.  I definitely need to get crepes in France.

Mid-afternoon we left for Dublin, and just went straight there.  We got in at about five, and thus ended the tour.  But even given things like my mud mishap at Blarney Castle and me getting sick, I'd had such a great time.  I'm so glad I decided to book a tour, because it was exactly what I'd hoped for and more.  I wanted to see more of Ireland than what I thought I'd be able to find on my own, which I think I did, and I learned so much Irish history and mythology, and I made some great friends.  That was so wonderful.  I fell pretty much immediately into a group of friends and we just stuck together the entire time, even getting dinner together that last night in Dublin because we weren't quite ready to be done yet.  I just started using my Facebook a bit more, and this tour is exactly why.  I want to keep in touch with these people.

Anyway, I checked into my hostel, and of all random things, met two people from my program there.  I hadn't even known they were going to be in Ireland for midterm break.  Apparently they spent a few days in Wales and then went to Dublin, and they were checking out just as I was checking in so we didn't do much more than say hi, but it was still a very amusing coincidence.

The next day I wanted to sleep in a bit, since my ferry wasn't leaving until 2:30, but I still woke up around eight.  I decided to spend a bit of time online before going out into Dublin, but I should have spent less time online, because I ended up not having as much time to do things as I'd hoped.  My plan was to start the furthest from my hostel and then work my way back towards it (since I left my luggage there), so I'd wanted to do the Old Jameson's Distillery, Dublin Castle, and Trinity College, but I ended up actually only having time for the Old Jameson's Distillery, where I volunteered to be a whiskey taster and got a certificate for my troubles. :p  I did enjoy that, but I would have liked a bit longer in Dublin.

Two of my fellow whiskey tasters were this couple from Sweden, and we got to chatting.  We hit it off pretty well, and they invited me to lunch with them, so that's what I did.  I liked them.  The husband had studied abroad in America when he was a student, so it was really interesting, discussing what it was like being American and studying in Europe, and vice versa.

Around 1:30 I caught a taxi to Dublin Port.  I technically could have walked, but I'm rather glad I didn't, because my map showed the route to be deceptively short and easy, and I might well have gotten lost and taken forever had I decided to walk it, but a cab was only five euro.  So I was in Dublin Port, and from there I left Ireland.  Already I missed it.

In case my subject line is confusing, "craic" is pronounced like "crack", and it amuses me (and Sean, and my tour) to use it.  Craic is Irish slang for basically something like fun/enthusiasm/great times.  "Having great craic" or "the craic was mighty" is basically saying that awesome things are happening and you're having a great time, which is really my trip to Ireland in a nutshell.

This post is long enough and I'm getting tired, so for next time will be the travails of my trip back to London and what's been happening the rest of this week.  But there was Ireland, and though it was expensive, I would so love to go back some day.