Ireland (Galway and Dublin) WARNING: Long Post!

Friday morning began my Feb. break adventure with my flight to Dublin. Before I left I was feeling surprisingly anxious and nervous as you could tell from my prior blog post. Not really sure why...but I settled down after getting on my train to Charleroi. Meghan and I didn't have any problems getting to the airport and were running pretty early because we had to take an early-ish train, so we were able to relax a little in the airport and get a bite to eat. We were in the cafe through security waiting for them to post something about our flight, when we suddenly heard an announcement telling us that our flight was in final boarding and we needed to get to the gate immediately, so we panicked and ran as fast as we could to the gate, but we had to go through a passport check first. Only annoying thing--the guy at the passport control desk almost wasn't going to let us through because he didn't understand that "autorise travail" means we have permission to work and do not have working visas...even though he speaks French...that was fun. Finally we got to the gate and on the plane and took off for Ireland! My first Ryanair experience was...interesting. I found out the whole flight is basically one big commercial and the flight attendants only wear half of a wing pin. Right. Brings a whole new light to the term "budget airline." I cracked up upon landing because they play this little thing that tells you that you were part of another on-time flight like it's monumental or something. Trust me...it was ridiculous. After arriving in Dublin, I really weirded out to hear English and understand everything everyone around me was saying when they gave me directions to our bus to Galway. Unfortunately for us, we had some bus problems because ours wouldn't start. Yikes. They brought another bus over and jumped ours (the battery was dead) and then we were on our way only about 20 minutes late. It was really cool driving through Dublin along the river at night, but once we got outside of the city I passed out. We got to Galway, found Meghan's friend Kelsey and dropped our stuff off at her apartment. The apartment she is in with three other girls is HUGE! I couldn't even believe it! Her living room alone was nearly three times the size of my dorm. Despite my fatigue, the three of us went out to meet some other people at this bar called Hole in the Wall...not my kind of place. Dirty...bad music...and Budweiser. I really felt like I was in Ireland as I walked down the street with rickshaws full of drunk people swerving around me. Kinda crazy. Thankfully, we went back home soon and I slept like a baby even though I was crunched on a small couch with my jackets for pillows and only my sleeping bag liner and a blanket. I can't complain about free lodging though!

In the morning, we looked outside and it was eerily foggy, which seemed especially Irish to me. We got ready and set out on our day of exploring Galway. First, we went to Galway Cathedral which was super pretty and seemed especially Irish to me. Next, we were off on a search for St. Nicholas' Collegiate Cathedral--easier said than done because apparently nobody really seems to feel that they should put up street signs in Ireland...right. This Cathedral is famous for all of the graves in the church and around it, which was pretty cool. There is one outside called the Lynch Memorial which has an interesting story. Lynch was a huge political power in Galway who had some family issue and he hanged his son...creepy. After the cathedral we walked through the market a little, which was the cutest market ever. Tons of little artisan stands--kind of like the famer's market in Madison, but with the ambiance of a small Irish city. We walked along the river down to the bay and the Spanish Arch, which was beautiful. I was so happy to finally see water, but that didn't cure my desire to see more. I wish I could have gone to the Cliffs of Moor, but that just means I have to go back. :-) We also stopped by the Galway Museum, which was pretty cool. They had a statue of...Paddy O'Connor??...which is the same as the guy in the Milwaukee Public Museum who tells you stories if you put money in. Love the MKE connections. We were pretty tired from a lot of walking around at this point, so we got coffee and relaxed for a bit before going for burritos. Delicious. We miss mexican food so much!! We went to a couple pubs after dinner, which was okay. At Hole in The Wall there was this HUGE group of crazy sorority girls dressed in neon 80s clothes. Galway definitely lived up the Irish stereotype of lots of drinking!

On Sunday morning, Meghan and I got up early to catch our train to Dublin. It was the nicest train I have ever been on hands down and it was an amazingly organized system--which reminded me of the US. I kind of decided Ireland is the US in Europe, so if you really like the US and want to go to Europe, go to Ireland. Minimal culture shock. The train ride was really pretty and we finally got to see the countryside, so that was cool. When we got to Dublin, we checked in to our hostel (The Times), which was so nice! It was rated number one hostel in Dublin, so we were a little spoiled. :-) We relaxed for a bit after our long train ride, then went out to walk around Temple Bar a bit. After visiting the book market, we were getting a little hungry, so we ventured to find somewhere to eat. We ended up going to Davy Byrne's Pub without knowing it, which was featured later in the evening at our Literary Pub Crawl--our next stop. It began at Duke's Pub where the actors performed a bit from Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett went to school at Trinity College) and talked about James Joyce who frequented the area and talked about Davy Byrne's Pub in his book Ulysses. Also where I had my first Guinness! Yum. On the way to our next pub, we stopped at Trinity to talk about Beckett and Oscar Wilde. We also learned that supposedly the bell tower only rings when a virgin stands underneath...crickets. Apparently though, it hasn't rung in something like 100+ years. Our next stop was O'Neill's where we talked about James Plunkett, and I tried Irish red beer, which was quite good, then to The Old Stand and finally back to Davy Byrne's. Can't say I learned too much on this tour though...I found it to be a little stale and too rehearsed, but it was fun none the less. If you have done the math, you may have figured out this was Superbowl Sunday, so Meghan and I tried to find somewhere to watch it after the pub crawl...but we had a major fail. We were recommended to go to one place that did NOT look like they were playing it, and then tried to go to one place that looked like it was...but I'm pretty sure it was in a strip club. We almost went because we thought it was in the pub part, but then we were led downstairs to something called "Rain". With all the drunk guys and the half naked cheerleader on the back of my coupon card from the doorman, I put two and two together and got out of there and went home.

Our next day in Dublin was really full...so prepare yourself for a lot of information. First adventure of the day: Dublin Free Walking Tour. Honestly, this was one of the best things I did on my ENTIRE vacation. The guides work solely on commission, so the tours they give are informative and entertaining. Our guide, Seamus (pronounced Shay-mus), took us to Dublin Castle for our first stop and talked about the two statues of the entrance. He explained why he hates them: the first one, Fortitude, is completely unproportional between the guy and the lion next to him. The lion honestly looks like a large house cat, but Seamus called Fortitude the "Venus de fucking Milo" (there's some Irish english for you) compared to Justice. Justice has no blindfold, so she is a partial judge, her scale is unbalanced because the rain falls more on one side than the other, and she has her back turned to the city--which apparently made a lot of people angry. After that, we went to the oldest part of the castle still standing which was the tower from 1204 where Seamus told us the story of Rebel Hugh O'Donnell. Apparently, this guy ended a huge centuries long family feud, so clearly Elizabeth I needed to capture him...and she did. He was locked up there behind the 4.6 meter thick walls and was the only prisoner there to ever escape successfully--by digging a hole down to the sewage pipe. Gross, right? But...kind of cool? We continued around the back of the castle where we could see all the different types of architecture. Some parts of it are medieval, some georgian, some victorian, gothic, and modern, so you have a really wide mixture, which is interesting. We went out by the garden which has these tiny pathways all around it that are in a celtic design. The garden also serves as a helicopter landing pad, which makes it the most interesting one to look at in the world! Pretty cool. From the castle we stopped by Jonathan Swift's birthplace...which isn't that exciting...but still cool. It brought me back to reading A Modest Proposal in Brit Lit. Next stop was Trinity College--again--where we learned that it is still legal to shoot a Catholic on campus with a bow and arrow. We also went by the library where The Book of Kells lives, which is this biblical book that I still don't totally understand the significance of and then to the "cricket pitch" to chat about the Easter Rising which was the start of the Irish revolution against Britain. Meghan and I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then decided to do the tour of Dublin Castle. The first thing I learned was Ireland has had a female president for the past 21 years...go Ireland! In one of the first rooms they had a bunch of chairs that came from Versailles that depict scenes from the fables of Jean LaFontaine (the Aesop's Fables of France), so those were really cool to see. The conference room was interesting too, because some of the chairs were lower backed and wider seated than the others, which apparently were for the ladies to provide ample room for their skirts. There were a few interesting notes about the other rooms, but I'll spare you the details. After the tour inside the castle, we went down to see the remains of the old Powder Tower, the fire in which was the whole reason the whole medieval castle needed to be rebuilt. We also saw the River Poddle, which runs underneath Dublin and is how the city got its name. When the Vikings came to Dublin, they named the river Dubh Linn (meaning black pool because the water was so dark), which eventually became modern day Dublin. After the Dublin Castle tour, Meghan and I hiked over to the Guinness Factory for the Guinness Storehouse Tour. It's not really a tour so much as a Guinness museum where you learn about how they make Guinness, but it's super well done. At the end of the tour, you go up to the Gravity Bar for 360 views of Dublin and a free pint of Guinness--great way to end the day. Just as we got up there, the sun was starting to set, so the views were absolutely amazing! We went home after the tour to make dinner and hang out. We actually ended up playing games with some of the guys staying at our hostel, which was really fun.

On our last day in Ireland, we spent most of the morning recovering Meghan's pictures because her stupid camera deleted them all!! What a bummer...but I got a chance to get a few more pictures that were better than my originals. We also walked by the Leinster House (parliament) where it looked like something official was going on, and stopped by the site of the first performance of Handel's Messiah! It's a hotel now, which kind of sucks, but cool none the less. I'll never understand why they don't leave original structures of important things like that. We also went through the famous St. Stephan's Green, which was so pretty! One of the best parks I have ever seen. After walking around for a bit, we went back toward the Leinster House to go to the Archeological National Museum of Ireland. It was interesting looking at all the artifacts, but the really interesting part was one room where they had all these small circular rooms you could walk in to. We didn't know what they were at first so Meghan just started walking around the corner when she saw a dead person! Lovely way to start the day. Apparently, back in the day when people died, their bodies were really well preserved by the bogs in Ireland, so the museum had about 5 extremely well preserved bodies. Gross, but interesting. After the museum, we started on our walk to Kilmainham Gaol, which was crazy long. And it was hailing. Needless to say, we were really happy when we finally got there. Kilmainham Gaol is a 17th century jail where they held political rebels during the Irish Revolution and Civil War. It was really creepy inside, but the tour was really interesting. When the jail was first created, they held public executions right in front of the jail, but public execution was outlawed and they moved them inside the jail grounds, but the last execution there was sometime around 1920, so the history of it is pretty fresh. After the jail tour, Meghan and I went over to the Irish Museum of Modern Art for lunch and a visit. The weirdest thing was when we went out in the gardens by this fountain because as soon as we walked within about 10 feet of it, it turned off, then we walked away and it turned on again, then back towards it, and it turned on. Coincidence?? We hadn't seen it turn off any other time. We headed back towards the center of the city to relax and eat something before our last Dublin hurrah--the Ghost Bus Tour. Most of the tour was pretty mild...just going around Dublin on the bus with our guide telling stories about the darker sides of city's past, but getting off the bus was actually terrifying. The first place was SERIOUSLY creepy. We went to St. Kevin's Park, which used to be a graveyard, but then someone decided it should be a park and asked people to claim their dead--which not many did--and then just moved the gravestones--all of which are still lined up around the periphery of the park. Right. Well, there's this chapel in the middle of it that has a really dark past. There was a Catholic priest who was determined to give a Catholic mass before he died even though it was illegal, so he gave it in that chapel, but he was caught and was executed right outside the chapel. This was a much more gruesome execution than you're thinking though--he was put over a fire with metal boots filled with oil on, so the oil literally melted his body--over the course of three days. What a way to go. Then, we went inside the chapel...great! The chapel has caught on fire mysteriously on numerous occasions, so the last time it did, they stopped rebuilding it. There were numerous creepy details about ley lines, spontaneous combustion, and the ghost of a little boy who died in one of the fires. We drove by St. Patrick's Cathedral where our guide told us the story about The Lady in White, who was buried alive the morning after her wedding, which apparently was pretty common. That's actually where "dead ringer" comes from--they would bury you with a string attaching your finger to a bell, so the expression came from seeing people who you thought had died walking around because they were actually buried alive. Our next stop actually getting off the bus was at "The Haunted Stairs" which were a set of stairs that led from the rich area of Dublin straight down to an underground city where the shadier types lived. Pickpockets used the stairs to escape after they robbed the rich people. The underground area came to be known as Hell, so the door is actually known as "the Gateway to Hell." There were a few stories about the stairs, but none nearly as creepy as the chapel. So ended my trip to Ireland! Good thing we did the haunted tour last. Next morning I caught an early flight to Lisbon... Check my mobileme for more pictures from my Ireland trip!