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.

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.

Sláinte!

I feel like I've had a very long week that has gone by very quickly, however odd that sounds.  I've done so much, but how was that only five days?

Sláinte, by the way, is a toast in Irish.  It basically means "Cheers!".  I'm quite pleased to have learned a bit (a very little bit) of Irish this week.  But anyway, it'll be easiest to go chronologically.

I met my tour at 8:15 Monday morning, and we were on the road about half an hour later.  There were eighteen of us, ages ranging from early twenties to late thirties, mostly from America, Australia, and New Zealand, with the odd people from England, Germany, and Peru.  Our tour guide's name was Sean, and he was great.  Very knowledgeable and very funny.  He told us that Monday would be our most travel-heavy day for most time on the bus, and he joked that it'd only be ten or twelve hours until we reached our first stop, and one of the Aussies was like "Really?"  I laughed, because I'd be surprised if it took twelve hours to cross the whole country.

Most of our stops were photo stops, with longer breaks for lunch and then dinner in our overnight town.  I don't really remember all the names of the places we stopped, because there were a lot of them.  Our first stop, though, was the Rock of Cashel, which was an old castle and monastery.  On our way there, Sean told us about the basic histories of monasteries in Ireland, which is mostly: built in the fifth or sixth centuries, attacked by Vikings a lot because people would keep their valuables there.

From there we went to Blarney, to visit Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone, and Sean told us both history and myths about the Blarney Stone.  This was where I had my first piece of bad luck on this trip, because it was sort of drizzling and in front of me on the path to the castle was a big puddle that stretched across the whole width of the path.  I decided to go on the grass around the puddle, but the grass was slippery enough that I got my hands and jeans all muddy.  That sucked.  I could wash my hands in the bathroom, but I couldn't really do much for my jeans, so I had to wear my muddy jeans until we got to the hostel that night.

Regardless of that, though, I did make it to the castle, and I did climb to the top, and I did kiss the Blarney Stone.  I'd had no idea that thing was placed so awkwardly.  Before coming to Ireland I'd though oh, you climb to the top of the castle and kiss a rock up there, okay.  Except it was on the outside wall and sort of underneath the battlements so I had to lay down and lean back and grip the safety poles to actually kiss the stone, and there was an attendant there to make sure we stayed safe.  I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses in case they fell, so I did get a picture of me kissing the stone, but no glasses.

We also stopped at the Mitchelstown Caves, into which we did a bit of climbing, and which were pretty awesome.  They had these calcite ribbons that were really amazing.  We went about a kilometer into the caves, where our guide said they held an annual concert for charity, because in that particular cave was a sort of natural stage.  To show off the acoustics in the cave, the guide decided a group of people should sing, and he picked the Americans.  There were six or seven of us, but we couldn't think of anything we all would know except the national anthem, so we ended up singing The Star-Spangled Banner in a cave in Ireland.  Very odd experience.

Our final stop on Monday was in Killarney, where pretty much the first thing I did was a bit of laundry.  More importantly, though, one of the best things about this tour was that I pretty much immediately fell into a group of friends, so the six of us (four Americans, one Aussie, one New Zealander) roomed together the entire time and spent most of our free time together or in some variation of the group.  It was really awesome.

Sean suggested things for us to do in all the towns we stopped in, and we pretty much always took his suggestions because we didn't know anything else to do.  In Killarney, he suggested going to this pub to listen to this storyteller, who told hilarious and poignant stories about this fictional bar.  That was a pretty great time.

Tuesday we left Killarney at 8:30 and started up the Dingle peninsula.  We started in Dingle for a bathroom stop, then basically made a circle along the coast road, ending in Dingle again for lunch.  We saw some great scenery along the coast road, including the beach of Inch, which is actually about a mile (Sean making a joke about this being the only place where an Inch is literally a mile), and we stopped at another particularly awesome beach at the bottom of a short cliff, which we actually climbed down so we could walk on the beach for a bit and write our names in the sand.  The tide would soon wash that away, of course, because apparently this particular beach is under water most of the time and Sean said he'd never seen as much of it before as he did when we were there, so that was nice.

Which reminds me, the weather was actually pretty great most of the trip.  It did rain on me a bit, but not that much -- most of the time when it rained was when we were on the bus anyway, and even then it wasn't as much as I was expecting.  We actually saw a lot of sun.  It was great.

Anyway, we continued along the coast road, Sean telling us stories about Fionn mac Cumhaill, a big-time Irish mythological hero.  I was so pleased to be getting Celtic mythology stories on my tour.  Awesome stuff.  We had lunch in Dingle, and then started heading north, because we were going to be crossing the Shannon River on a ferry and spending the night in Ennis.

On the way to the Shannon I started feeling worse than my normal mild motion sickness, so once I the ferry I bought a 7Up and that settled my stomach a bit.  By the time we got to Ennis, though, I really wasn't feeling well or up to much at all, which made me sad, because Sean told us that Ennis and County Clare were well known for their traditional music and we should go listen to that that night.  Also, at the hostel, they were going to give us a lesson in Irish set dancing.

I wanted to listen to the traditional music and learn the dances, but I was not feeling well.  When we got there around five, I took a nap.  The dance lesson was at six, so I woke up and went down there to watch, but I didn't feel well enough to participate.  It was over after an hour, and everyone else went to dinner, but I wasn't hungry and I just wanted to sleep more, so I went back to bed.

I woke up again when people started coming in around midnight, and initially I felt better, because I decided to take my shower.  I made it through the brushing my teeth part of my nightly routine when I became very grateful that I hadn't had dinner, because my lunch decided to revisit me.  At least I was already in the bathroom, so I made it to the toilet with minimal mess, but that was very unpleasant.  I did feel much better after my stomach was empty, though, so I took my shower, drank from the water bottle one of my roommates and new friends was kind enough to fill for me, and went back to bed.  All in all I slept about thirteen hours.

I'll stop it there for now, because it's almost midnight here and I'm zonked.  Tomorrow I'm going to see more of Dublin and then I'll be getting back to London, so I'll probably finish the story of my tour on Sunday.