One Day in Ireland

The story of spring break, continued.

Wednesday I woke up feeling better, thankfully.  I continued better the rest of the trip, with nothing worse than my normal minor queasiness on moving things.  We left Ennis and moved into County Clare, which Sean told us is the most superstitious and supernatural of Ireland's counties.

Our first stop was in Burren National Park, which is a very rocky area that's apparently a botanist's dream in the summer because plants from all over grow together in this one area.  But we stopped at a dolmen (I forget the name at the moment), which is over 5000 years old, from somewhere between 3800 and 3200 BCE, meaning it's older than Stonehenge and therefore probably the oldest man-made thing I've ever seen.  It looks sort of like a stone table but is actually a doorway through which ancient people put some of their dead.  Sean also told us another Fionn mac Cumhail story about this dolmen.

Our day got more supernatural/superstitious from there, because our next stop was at a fairy ring.  Sean warned us at the beginning not to go into the center of the fairy ring or else bad luck would follow us, if we were even able to leave the ring at all.  He also told us to walk clockwise around the perimeter of the ring and thank the fairies (in Irish, which we learned especially for this), for which they might grant us a wish.  It actually was this pretty amazing place, because the ring was this perfectly natural cluster of intertwined branches in a complete circle, with a clearing with a few trees in the middle.

One of the girls actually walked backwards around the fairy ring, though.  She walked partly clockwise, like she's supposed to, took a few pictures, and then turned around and started back, even though Sean was telling her to walk around the entire thing clockwise.  She laughed and ignored him and he was sort of groaning as we got back on the bus that bad luck was going to follow her now.  And it sort of did, because it struck not her but people around her.  This particular girl was one of my roommates and new friends, and as it turned out, I was not the only person to get sick on this tour because two of our other roommates also spent time throwing up.  Three people, on one eighteen-person tour, all rooming together -- I mean, one of the girls threw up because of motion sickness and the other for a combination of motion sickness and maybe the 24-hour flu I seem to have had, and okay, maybe it's not a huge coincidence that sickness would pass to the people one spends the most time with, but it is still undeniably Bad Luck.  And I blame Karen. :p

After the fairy ring, we stopped at a wishing well.  It was like a miniature stone castle on the side of the road, barely taller than I am, with an open doorway leading to a small well.  The was also a stone in front, and the tradition behind this particular well was to stand facing the road and toss your coin over your shoulder towards the well, and if it made it into the water without striking stone, your wish would come true.  I was the first one to try it, and I did manage it, but I actually forgot to wish for anything, so oh well.  This particular wishing well also has a rather sad story, because originally it didn't have the mini-castle.  That was built during the Famine, when there was a British program putting the starving Irish to work doing all sorts of useless things just so they wouldn't be getting food for free.

Wednesday morning was a very full morning, because our last stop before lunch was at the Cliffs of Moher.  I got lots of pictures from several different vantage points, so I am quite pleased with that, but I was actually more impressed with the Giant's Causeway as a geological marvel and scene of beauty.  What was hilarious, though, is that one of our group didn't even bother going to see the Cliffs at all -- she spent the entire time in the shop!  She said she got a picture of the screen of the Cliffs in the visitor center, and then just spent the entire time in the gift shop.

We had lunch in this little village on the coast called Lahinch, where they had a pub with excellent seafood chowder.  From there we took the coastal route up to Galway, including a stop in the Burren to climb around on the rocks a bit, and more for plain photo stops.  We got into Galway at about five, and my friends decided we wanted to save money so we would cook some pasta.  There were about eight of us who wanted to go the cheap route, and the hostel had a fairly small kitchen, so I didn't do any actual cooking, but I did very much appreciate paying only one euro for my share of the food, rather than the ten to fifteen euro a meal out would have cost.  I am definitely going to try to do more of my own cooking when I'm in Europe, because it's really striking how much I can save.

For that night, Sean advised us to go to this particular pub to listen to a band that played a combination of Irish and Spanish music that worked together really well.  I went, but the band didn't go on until almost ten, and I was getting really tired by that point (still getting over being sick), so I only listened to about five songs before I went back to the hostel.  I was impressed with what I heard, though, since it wasn't just Irish and Spanish -- they played Indian music, and Greek, and I'm sure more that I didn't get to hear.  I was very tired, though, because I ended up going to bed around eleven that night and falling asleep so deeply I didn't even hear five other girls come in and get ready for bed.

I have had a very long day today, so I am very tired and will finish talking about spring break tomorrow.  Easter Monday is a bank holiday in Britain, so I will have one day to just sit back and relax.  Thankfully.