Ireland

I landed and got to my hotel around 9AM. I managed to nod off a couple of times on the plane, but was still really tired. Luckily my hotel let me check in early without any trouble and I took a fabulous nap. My hotel was off of O'Connell street and when I woke up I decided to take a wander. My guidebook had mentioned an open market a couple of blocks away, but I wasn't in the market for fresh fish. I kept walking through the shopping district where I saw all the usual suspects, h&m, zara, etc. But there were a couple of other cute shops. I am not allowed to buy any new clothes, so I avoided them like the plague! I kept walking down through town and found a couple of girls xxx places and the Babes in Toyland in Dublin. Leave it to me to find the feminist porn shop. I didn't go in because I did not have much room in my luggage and I didn't want to have to worry about an adapter! I kept on and I was surrounded by so many different types of people and languages. I stopped at a little Italian cafe and had the best salad and a cup of tea, along with a little almond pastry. Mmm. I took a walk through Temple Bar which is a bit like a mini Camden Town, or, like Belmont and Clark used to be for you Chicagoans. My type of people. I toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo, but decided now wasn't the time. I probably walked a good quarter of the city and by the time I got back to my hotel I was done in. The area I was in is steeped in history. I was very grateful that I had taken the Irish Lit class with Professor Murphy at DePaul. Everywhere I turned were familiar names and it helped me have some context of the history of this city.

Day Two

I had grand plans to go to bed early and get up early, but those were ruined by the party going on outside my hotel window until 3AM. I probably should have just gotten up and joined the party. Regardless, I got up at a decentish hour and went down to the hotel for a full Irish breakfast. That consists of fried eggs, baked beans, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and black pudding. I had everything but the black pudding. At times I am grateful I am a vegetarian. After breakfast I headed a bit North with every intention of going to the James Joyce museum. I think I may have walked right past it. No worries, I found the Hugh Lane Municipal Art Gallery on my way to the Irish writers museum. The art museum was in this gorgeous Georgian home. One of the installations was a depiction of the egg war that took place in Gulliver's Travels. For those of you who only see it as a fantastical tale, it was actually a critique of English colonialism. The installation really spoke to the setting it was in and was an interesting critique of colonialism. There were some of the other paintings one would expect to find at an art museum. Does every little museum have a Manet? But there was also a fabulous exhibit of modern Irish art. After that I went next door to the Irish Writer's museum. It had an interesting collection of books and memorabilia. There was an audio tour, which gave a lot of tidbits about the authors. Most I were familiar with, but there were a few new authors that it was delightful to be introduced to. By then I was out of time and I had to head back to the airport to pick up Christina.

Christina and I had met twice before and just decided we'd meet up before the start of class. Originally she was thinking Galway, but my one requirement was to go horseback riding. That is how we ended up in a little town called Renvyle. We had rented a car and were going to drive clear across the country to the West coast. I'll admit, I was a little anxious about driving a car on the wrong side of the road. Plus the gear shift is on the wrong side as well. Christina and I managed to make it out of the airport (which luckily was not in the city) and onto the main roads. My first roundabout was a blur. Let's just say I didn't realize until many roundabouts later that I was supposed to be yielding to existing traffic. We made it to Galway and then had to veer North-West a bit. Our two lane highway turned into a two lane road that went through towns. I may have dinged the passenger side mirror against another car. I had little to no concept of where the left side of the car was. Our two lane road turned into a one and a half lane road and we were twisting and turning through the mountains. Every turn revealed a new beautiful sight. There were sheep in the fields, peat drying in the field, mountains, lakes and greenery galore. At some point we passed the bridge that was used in the filming of The Quiet Man. Our one and a half lane road turned into a twisty turny one lane road. I described it to my mom as driving through the Rockies, while driving stick on the wrong side of the road. We followed the directions to our hotel, which were past the pub across the street from the thatched cottages and finally made it to Maol Reidh Hotel around 9:30. They had stopped serving food, but scrounged us up some sandwiches. We then walked into the little pub next door and wondered if we had made a mistake. We were the only women. It took a little while to get a beer and then gradually the younger set wandered over to talk to us. When I say younger set, I mean younger. Most of them were around 18-20 years old. After that we went to our locked hotel and tried to stick a key that did not fit in the door and then a guy who looked a bit like lurch let us in. We climbed into our individual twin beds (I almost fell out in the middle of the night) and fell to sleep.

In the morning,, after a delicious breakfast of smoked salmon scrambled eggs, we drove to Kylemore Abbey (click link for photo) which was gorgeous. It was a drizzly rainy day and it suited the environment. I have to say that at times I expected to see John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara around the corner. Between the beautiful countryside and the thatched cottages you start to wonder if you are in the movie! Then we drove into Clifden stopping along the way to do a bit of shopping. In Clifden we had lunch at Mitchells Restaurant, which was fresh and absolutely delicious food. I should tell you about Irish Brown Bread. It is like nothing you have ever tasted before. It is kind of like the texture of whole wheat bread, but it has a much smoother texture and it is much more complex and nutty. Amazing stuff and it showed up at every meal. I need to figure out how to make it. Clifden is about the size of downtown DeKalb. We did go to the local jeweler, where everything is made on the premises and I bought a ring with Connemara marble in it. Did I mention that we were in Connemara. After that we headed off to Cleggan for horseback riding. I've only ridden English twice now. While waiting we tried to talk to the stablehand, but thought he was a bit, well, slow. Come to find out he was from France, working in Ireland for the summer. I tried so hard to have a conversation with him, but all that would pop into my head was Spanish. I've been ruined. Before we set out our guide, who was Polish, had me do a trot about the ring and then a canter. Then when I got to the beach she would trot off with Christina and let me canter with Rocky. It was the most exhilarating experience. Even better then Cairo because this time I was under my own power. We meandered back to the stables and headed back to our hotel where we had a fabulous dinner of fresh baked fish, veg, and potatoes, oh and brown bread. For desert I had strawberry mousse with fresh strawberries and bits of meringue cookie mixed in. Mmmmmm. One would think that was enough for one day, oh no. We headed back into Clifden. First pub we stopped at there was a hen party and all the people were under 21. Um, no. The next pub we went to had a great mix of people and there was a very clever cover band playing. We were kind of talking to these two guys next to us, when one of them grabbed me and started dancing me about to a slow song. He was tall, kind of scruffy and his sweater smelled of wool. Come to find out he was French. They went out for a smoke and disappeared. Much dancing and madness, not by me, ensued and then it was time to drive home in the complete and utter pitch blackness. Did I mention the complete and utter pitch blackness. It was a wee bit scary, but we made it back home alive.

Day three

Got up in the morning and have another brilliant breakfast and then we start to head back to Dublin. We were given different directions out of Connemara and saw some more beautiful countryside along with sheep in the road. We also shaved about an hour off our travel time. Come to find out we had taken the scenic route in. At this point I was driving like a native and whipping through country roads and passing the slow Americans. We stopped in Galway for about an hour (all the time we could spare) and there I finally found my hand knit sweater. Gorgeous. Ran through town, took a bunch of pictures and then hit the road. We returned the car and then figured out which bus to take to All Hallows. I asked the bus driver to let us know when to get off. He forgot about us. Get off the bus and flag a cab. He can't find the place. Start walking in the general direction and end up walking for a mile around the walled grounds trying to find an entrance. Get to school with ten minutes to spare before we are supposed to meet for class. We had class and some other people went out, but I went to bed.

I have to make a comment about the Irish and the weather. It's quite simple, it isn't raining. No really, if it is spitting and drizzling you just completely ignore it. One would expect with all the rain and clouds people would be dour or pissed off, but everyone we met was happy. In fact a lot of people wander around singing and whistling. So, I spent the week carrying around an umbrella and ignoring the rain. I never opened the bloody thing up.

Day four

First day of class. Porridge for breakfast. Utter crap for lunch. Lectures all day. Oh, check facebook during afternoon tea and realize that all of you people are wishing me a happy birthday because it was my birthday. I thought my birthday was on Tuesday. Laughingly ask everyone if they'd like to go out for drinks that night and gather up a group of people. Crap for dinner. Head to the temple bar area and people keep buying me drinks. At some point I get into a fight with a guy from Arizona who looks Irish and I am mad at him for pretending to be Irish, even though he really wasn't!! His friend Stan from Belgium was delightful and bought me a drink. I danced with him a couple of times when the Irish lads got a bit too rambunctious. At that point it was way past the point to go home and so we did. I drank a bunch of water and took some Advil and went to bed.

Day five.

Not sure how I got up. Porridge for breakfast and class all day. More to follow....