Éire pt. 2

Okay, here's the rest of the story about Ireland. It's about 10:00 here and I am sitting in bed on my computer - once again, I wore myself out a bit today walking around. I went to Regent's Park with Katie and Alex before the three of us met up with Gareth for some dinner on Brick Lane. Brick Lane is a street full of Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants where people stand outside their restaurants and come up to you offering you deals so you'll eat at their place and not the restaurant next door. Really good.

Anyway, last Friday, we all got up early at the hostel to catch our bus. It was freeeeezing in Dublin, so I had to bundle up. After a three hour bus ride, we arrived in Galway. Once again, we were getting confusing and contradictory answers from waitresses about which menu we were allowed to order from at that time of day, but the third restaurant we went to gave us a great lunch. We walked around a bit, and also booked tours for the next day. We split up into two groups, because Matt, Sean, and Paige were planning on staying in the Galway area all day and catch a bus back to Dublin at 2 in the morning and wait at the airport for the flight back, while the rest of us had to be back by 6 to catch the bus back to Dublin and stay in the hostel there again.



Galway was small and clean and had a great vibe to it, unlike Dublin. We were only there a short time, but I liked it.



For some reason I enjoyed this. Guinness has a quality team that it sends around Ireland to make sure all the taps and pipes and everything in pubs are cleaned and working properly.



Anyway, after we strolled around Galway city for a while, we hopped on a bus out into the country to get to our hostel. The women sitting next to us heard we weren't sure where we were going, and told us exactly when to get off. She asked us where we were from and when we answered she replied, "Boston? I lived there for 20 years."
Anyway, we arrived at the hostel and the place was amazing. It was big, the old couple who run it were amazingly nice, and it was very clean and comfortable. And it had a bathroom with a nice hot shower right in the room! This was the view outside the room:



There was this huge kitchen, so we decided to get some food to cook. The grocery store was at least a mile down the road, but we just hiked down there and back and got a whole bunch of food and walked back. It took forever - it must have been longer than the man estimated - but the views made it worth it.




Everything was in Gaelic, and most of the people were heard were speaking it to each other, but would randomly slip in and out of English. I looked this up, and I think it means 'Watch for children at the intersection"



After coming back, we made our dinners and hung around the hostel for a while. We were the only young people there, as everyone else had a car and tended to be in their mid 30s or older. That made it better. The woman who lives there answered all my questions about catching the bus in the morning and chatted with me for a long time about Boston (they had also lived there for something like 15 years) and our trip. Later, a few of us walked down this country lane to the water and just took in the view for a long time, until it got dark.





We caught the bus back to Galway at about 7:30 the next morning and were very sad to leave the hostel so soon. I wish I could go back.



We got back to Galway about 90 minutes before our tour bus was supposed to leave, so we had a nice extended breakfast and hung around Galway a little. Then, it was on the bus and around the countryside.
This was a castle we stopped at before anything else. Apparently, on the west coast of Ireland, none of the castles really have much history, outside of the fact that they are old. All the fighting that happened in Ireland I guess went on in the East, closer to England. In Scotland, no matter where we went, our driver would tell of us of an incredibly bloody battle or massacre that happened in the area. Anyway, this was nice to see, regardless.



We then toured all over the Burren, which is just a really rocky area south of Galway. I don't have any real good pictures of it, but here's one anyway. The little wall you can make out on the hill serves no purpose whatsoever. Apparently, during the famine, the lords decided to help by putting people to work. They must have not needed anything to be built, so they had people build useless walls and roads on the tops of mountains, just as a way to get people paid.



Anyway, we eventually got to the main attraction, the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs are about 700 feet straight up above the ocean at their highest point and stretch for a long distance along the coast. There is a little visitors center built into the hill near the cliffs, and then a walkway up to the edge, where there is a wall to keep you from the edge as you walk up to the highest point on the cliffs, where there was a little tower.



However, if you walk the opposite way along the cliffs, there is a point where the wall ends, and you supposedly can't walk any further along the cliffs. However, there's a spot on the wall that it is easy to climb over, and past that point there is no wall between the path and the edge. There's a big sign warning you not to go past, but people were streaming past it. It's pretty clear that the people who run the tourist site are covering themselves from any liability, while still allowing people to walk near the edge.



This is about as close as I went to the edge, though some people were really getting right up close to the edge. We saw a woman who was pushing a STROLLER along the path. It was empty, but her husband was holding this tiny child as they walked along the path right along this 400-foot drop. Some people.....



After that, the tour was basically downhill. We got back just in time to catch the last bus back to Dublin at 6 p.m. We were checked in at our hostel by 9:30 and had dinner at a little fast-food type place - almost nothing is open that late in Dublin except maybe bars. Very odd.
We shared our room with 3 guys at the hostel, but we were asleep before they got in. Adrienne had to get up before 6 to catch their 8:00 flight. My flight was at 11:40, so I got to sleep in a bit later and took the bus to the airport and met up with Matt and Sean. They had taken the late bus from Galway, as I mentioned before, and had been at the airport for hours. It was before 10:00 when I got there, and they were already drinking pints of Guinness. After all, it wasn't morning for them. I opted for a coffee and a bagel with egg instead, and we hung around until it was time to get our flight.

For the record: I wasn't sure if Ireland or Scotland was going to turn out to be better. I loved Ireland and miss it already, but I think I like Scotland slightly more. Edinburgh is probably the best city ever, and the countryside is even more beautiful than Ireland's, which is an impressive feat. Still, go to Ireland. Do it.