Well here it is, the post I have never taken the time to think about but I dread it as I type these words. While I do not leave Ireland until May 22nd, I will be spending the last two days in Dublin and so I actually have only one more full week in Galway City. This will most likely be another long post. Keep your Kleenex nearby, there will be some sentimentality in the air.
On January 3, 2010, I arrived in Dublin far too early in the morning jetlagged but filled with anticipation and curiosity at the coming semester in Ireland. My whole life I have been surrounded by my rich irish heritage and have been told so many stories about ancestors and the country itself, from the politics to the world famous emerald green landscape. Now, for five months, I was actually going to live in Ireland, on my own.
Things moved so quickly and that Dublin orientation was rapidly in the past as I settled into my home in Galway City, the best city in Ireland. In this trend of quickness, I found a great group of friends that I have stuck with this whole five months and I am sure I will stick with them for many years to come. I am blessed to have found such great friends in such a short amount of time. Seeing each other at all of hours of the day, everyday, may have helped the relationships grow as fast as they did, but I won't complain. Over the next five months we, together, experienced the transition to a new school and academic environment, the new feeling of living far away from any family or familiarity, and took incredible trips around Europe that I will never forget. I saw Edinburgh Castle, Westminster Abbey, "Oliver" in a London theatre, ate lunch under the Eiffel Tower, kissed the Blarney Stone for the second time, stood awestruck at the Giants Causeway, ate sausage and drank beer in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, walked under the Bradenburg Gate in Berlin, crossed the Charles Bridge in Prague, spent an evening on the beach looking out on the Mediterranean Sea in Barcelona, ambled through the Prado Museum in Madrid, hiked up a mountain in the Alps to Neuschwanstein Castle, and was moved by my unfogettable afternoon at Dachau concentration camp memorial. WOW.
Those are just the beginnings of the vast wealth of memories that I will forever hold in my heart and mind. Perhaps the greatest times occurred not in those various famous European cities, but in the living rooms of my friend's apartments here in Gort na Coiribe, drinking tea, eating cookies, and laughing for hours each night as we told stories and just truly enjoyed each other's company. Furthermore, I'll never forget the afternoons walking down Shop Street in Galway, spending nights drinking a pint or two of Ireland's finest Guinness in one of many Galway pubs, or just stepping outside in the evening and admiring the spectacular Galway sky as the sun began to set. I get chills just thinking about the experience I have had these past five months and I will live in a state of shock for the next week knowing that it will soon come to an end.
While I am very much looking forward to coming home to Pearl River and living the normal life again in that great house on the corner of Oriole Street and Sandra Lane, someone might have to pull me off the streets of Galway and drag me to Dublin airport in 8 days time. For five months, I have lived in an absolutely awesome city and have experienced a whole new and differnet part of the world. The Irish people have been my fellow residents and they could not have treated any of us American students any better. Their compassion, their charm, their sense of humor, and ability to always make you feel warm and welcome is something I will always treasure. Sure they may have a few too many pints sometimes, but they are incredible people.
Though I am only 21 years old now, I have seen myself go through so many changes over the past few years and this has just been another change for the better. I have learned so much about myself and other people and I am very grateful for that.
As I get on the plane next Saturday, destination Newark Airport, it will no doubt be the epitome of bittersweet. If my friends and I could stay another five months, I'm sure we would, but we can't. I will take what I have learned here in Galway, both in and out of the classroom, and apply it to the rest of my life as best I can. I am forever grateful to Galway City and all the friends I shared this experience with.
I'll end this post with one of Ireland's greatest writers: W. B. Yeats. His poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, tells the story of a man who dreams of the lake isle that he used to go to as a young boy and how that place brought him so much peace and happiness. For the rest of my life, Galway City will be my lake isle of Innisfree, and I'm sure I will dream of it often.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Thank you to everyone who has been reading all these blog posts for the past five months. I really appreciate it and I have loved writing about my experience for you. I will see you all very soon and I can't wait.
Conor
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Spring Break 2010 Pt. 2 (Munich, Prague, Berlin)
So after a long two weeks of traveling around France, Spain, and Portugal, while at the same time trying to outrun a hovering volcanic ash cloud over the skies of Europe, we all arrived home in Galway for a few days of rest and recuperation. However, after just three days, what did we do? Why, we hopped on yet another Ryanair flight and began another journey, this time only lasting one week. We arrived in Munich, Germany and discovered that we were staying in a hostel that might as well have been a hotel. Sure we stayed in a room with three sets of bunk beds, and it wasn't the most glamorous place, but it did have a huge lobby, an atrium room with a glass ceiling and numerous comfy chairs and hammocks to lay on. It also had its own bar/cafe. Fortunately, as nice as it was, the Wombats hostel was only used for sleeping and breakfast. During our days in Munich, we saw the massive English Gardens, apparently much larger than Central Park, and ate all kinds of traditional German food. We had sausage and pretzels, dabbled in some real German sauer kraut, and spent one evening in the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous beer hall in Munich, and maybe in all of Germany. There each of us in the group of five had a stein, one of those giant glasses of beer. One of the German favorites is called Radler, a mixture of beer and lemonade which is so good.
We took a walking tour of the city and learned a lot about the history of Munich. While walking around, we came to realize that Munich is spotlessly clean and it seems a little too nice in some parts. Everything is just very clean and neat all over the place. We went inside the church that Pope Benedict used to reside at and saw many different types of buildings and architecture. On the last night we were there, hours before we took a brutal overnight bus to Prague, we headed down to the Oktoberfest grounds and luckily for us, Springfest was in full swing. Springfest is like Oktoberfest Jr. and when we arrived at the famous beer hall tent, people were jumping up on tables and dancing the night away to a cover band that played some great 90's American music.
The most amazing two days of the trip, as different as they were, were our day trips to Dachau concentration camp and Neuschwanstein Castle in the German Alps.
First up was an afternoon at Dachau. When we arrived and walked up to the entrance of the camp, I got the feeling that it was going to be an intense and emotional afternoon. We took a guided tour of the grounds where they showed us the main processing building where there were displays and posters telling the history of the camp. Within that building also were the showers prisoners would use when they arrived, along with examples of some of the punishment devices that were used on them by Nazi soldiers. We moved on to see replicas of the barracks that prisoners slept in and then finally made our way to a secluded part of the camp where the gas chambers and crematoriums were located. Walking through that building and through the gas chamber room knowing what had taken place there 60 years ago was very overwhelming. The things that happened there will never truly be grasped by all of us, but being there shed just a little light on those dark days in our world's history only half a century ago.
The second day trip was a much more pleasant one and its a day that I will not soon forget thanks to the scenery that surrounded me. After a two hour train ride through the beautiful German countryside, we arrived at the foot of the German Alps in the small town of Fussen. From there we took a bus to the foot of another mountain, on which stood Neuschwanstein Castle, creation of King Ludwig II and the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland. With our tour guide, we hiked up the mountain and took another guided tour inside the castle. We couldn't take pictures inside the castle but letme tell you, the decorations were just incredible. The throne room, which has never actually contained a throne since Ludwig only spent about 170 days there in total, contained a tile mosaic floor with over one million tiles. The walls were painted gold and adorned with magnificent wall paintings. The best sites of all though were outside the castle windows. All around us were the breathtaking German Alps, rising high into the clouds, capped with blankets of snow. It was very surreal to be standing there overlooking the Alps. Just never imagined that I would be there in that situation, but I was, and I'm not complaining.
From Munich we traveled to another charming and elegant city, Prague, in the Czech Republic. Like Munich, Prague was very clean and almost seemed a little artificial. With Prague Castle on top of the hill overlooking the city, it all seemed like something out of Epcot Center in Disney World. We stayed in another nice hostel and saw all of the most famous sites in Prague on another walking tour. Since we began our travels, the Sandeman's New Europe Tour Company has been our best friend. We've taken so many of their tours and they've all been great ways to see the cities we have visited. We saw the famous astrological clock, a concert hall where Mozart played live, walked across the famous Charles Bridge, and ambled around the grounds of Prague Castle, the largest and oldest medieval castle in the world! Prague was a very charming city and one of my favorites that I have seen this semester. As for the Czech language, it's totally crazy.
The last stop on the European travel marathon 2010 edition was the capital of Germany, Berlin. As a history major, and as a lover of World War II history, Berlin was the place for me. They city is chock full of WWII history and 20th century history involving the USSR and the Berlin Wall. Once again we stayed in a great hostel and took one more Sandeman's free walking tours. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the former location of Hitler's bunker, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Pergamon Ancient History Museum, the Olympiastadion soccer stadium that played host to the 1936 Olympics (where Jesse Owens beat Hitler) and the 2006 World Cup Final (where Zidene made his infamous headbutt). But most important of all, was the Hotel Adlon, the most expensive hotel in Berlin and place where Michael Jackson hung his baby off of the top floor balcony. Sadly, I think I saw the most cameras come out when we passed that hotel.
On Monday we got a flight back from Berlin and arrived back in Galway safe and sound, just before that pesky ash cloud arrived back over Irish airspace, causing more travel trouble for some of my friends here. Shockingly, tomorrow marks just two more weeks until this incredible semester comes to an end. I'll have to write an end of the semester reflection sometime before I leave but it is starting to hit me and all my friends that we do not have much more time left here. It has flown by in a flash, but as they always say, time flies when you're having fun. This semester has been the best experience of my life and I'm gonna enjoy these last two weeks as best I can before I get back home for another summer in the town of friendly people, Pearl River.
I'm going to upload all the pictures from all my European travels to my other picture site so I'll let you all know when that happens. If you have access to my facebook page, they are all up on there already. I'll also post some on here later on.
Thanks for reading everyone and I'll be seeing you soon!
Conor
We took a walking tour of the city and learned a lot about the history of Munich. While walking around, we came to realize that Munich is spotlessly clean and it seems a little too nice in some parts. Everything is just very clean and neat all over the place. We went inside the church that Pope Benedict used to reside at and saw many different types of buildings and architecture. On the last night we were there, hours before we took a brutal overnight bus to Prague, we headed down to the Oktoberfest grounds and luckily for us, Springfest was in full swing. Springfest is like Oktoberfest Jr. and when we arrived at the famous beer hall tent, people were jumping up on tables and dancing the night away to a cover band that played some great 90's American music.
The most amazing two days of the trip, as different as they were, were our day trips to Dachau concentration camp and Neuschwanstein Castle in the German Alps.
First up was an afternoon at Dachau. When we arrived and walked up to the entrance of the camp, I got the feeling that it was going to be an intense and emotional afternoon. We took a guided tour of the grounds where they showed us the main processing building where there were displays and posters telling the history of the camp. Within that building also were the showers prisoners would use when they arrived, along with examples of some of the punishment devices that were used on them by Nazi soldiers. We moved on to see replicas of the barracks that prisoners slept in and then finally made our way to a secluded part of the camp where the gas chambers and crematoriums were located. Walking through that building and through the gas chamber room knowing what had taken place there 60 years ago was very overwhelming. The things that happened there will never truly be grasped by all of us, but being there shed just a little light on those dark days in our world's history only half a century ago.
The second day trip was a much more pleasant one and its a day that I will not soon forget thanks to the scenery that surrounded me. After a two hour train ride through the beautiful German countryside, we arrived at the foot of the German Alps in the small town of Fussen. From there we took a bus to the foot of another mountain, on which stood Neuschwanstein Castle, creation of King Ludwig II and the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland. With our tour guide, we hiked up the mountain and took another guided tour inside the castle. We couldn't take pictures inside the castle but letme tell you, the decorations were just incredible. The throne room, which has never actually contained a throne since Ludwig only spent about 170 days there in total, contained a tile mosaic floor with over one million tiles. The walls were painted gold and adorned with magnificent wall paintings. The best sites of all though were outside the castle windows. All around us were the breathtaking German Alps, rising high into the clouds, capped with blankets of snow. It was very surreal to be standing there overlooking the Alps. Just never imagined that I would be there in that situation, but I was, and I'm not complaining.
From Munich we traveled to another charming and elegant city, Prague, in the Czech Republic. Like Munich, Prague was very clean and almost seemed a little artificial. With Prague Castle on top of the hill overlooking the city, it all seemed like something out of Epcot Center in Disney World. We stayed in another nice hostel and saw all of the most famous sites in Prague on another walking tour. Since we began our travels, the Sandeman's New Europe Tour Company has been our best friend. We've taken so many of their tours and they've all been great ways to see the cities we have visited. We saw the famous astrological clock, a concert hall where Mozart played live, walked across the famous Charles Bridge, and ambled around the grounds of Prague Castle, the largest and oldest medieval castle in the world! Prague was a very charming city and one of my favorites that I have seen this semester. As for the Czech language, it's totally crazy.
The last stop on the European travel marathon 2010 edition was the capital of Germany, Berlin. As a history major, and as a lover of World War II history, Berlin was the place for me. They city is chock full of WWII history and 20th century history involving the USSR and the Berlin Wall. Once again we stayed in a great hostel and took one more Sandeman's free walking tours. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the former location of Hitler's bunker, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Pergamon Ancient History Museum, the Olympiastadion soccer stadium that played host to the 1936 Olympics (where Jesse Owens beat Hitler) and the 2006 World Cup Final (where Zidene made his infamous headbutt). But most important of all, was the Hotel Adlon, the most expensive hotel in Berlin and place where Michael Jackson hung his baby off of the top floor balcony. Sadly, I think I saw the most cameras come out when we passed that hotel.
On Monday we got a flight back from Berlin and arrived back in Galway safe and sound, just before that pesky ash cloud arrived back over Irish airspace, causing more travel trouble for some of my friends here. Shockingly, tomorrow marks just two more weeks until this incredible semester comes to an end. I'll have to write an end of the semester reflection sometime before I leave but it is starting to hit me and all my friends that we do not have much more time left here. It has flown by in a flash, but as they always say, time flies when you're having fun. This semester has been the best experience of my life and I'm gonna enjoy these last two weeks as best I can before I get back home for another summer in the town of friendly people, Pearl River.
I'm going to upload all the pictures from all my European travels to my other picture site so I'll let you all know when that happens. If you have access to my facebook page, they are all up on there already. I'll also post some on here later on.
Thanks for reading everyone and I'll be seeing you soon!
Conor
Sunday, April 25, 2010
I Survived the Iceland Volcanic Ash Cloud! Spring Break 2010 Pt. 1 (France, Spain, Portugal)
Well it has been what seems like an eternity since I've posted on here and looking at the date of the last post, it actually has been. As you can imagine, being in Europe over the past couple of weeks, a lot of things have happened so I suggest you sit in a comfy chair while reading because this may be a long post.
On April 9th, my spring break travels around Europe began in the City of Lights, Paris. With my two friends Kiley and Brian, we spent four days in Paris seeing everything there is to see and then some. We stayed in a hostel room with an older guy from Quebec who we referred to as just that, "Quebec." He was nice but the only thing he ever said to us was, "What time is it, please?" Literally that was all he kept asking us every time we saw him. Anyway, that's not that interesting. Now I'll try and rattle off all the places I saw in Paris. On the first full day we were there we took a free walking tour and walked all over the city. We saw everything from Notre Dame to the 1,000,000 euro houses along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde and of course, the Eiffel Tower. We walked through the courtyard of the Louvre and saw the glass pyramid and strolled through Tullery Gardens on a bright sunny day. We walked past the Orangery museum and up the Champs Elysses to the Arc de Triomphe. At night we usually stayed in the Montmarte section around Sacre Coeur and ate a crazy amount of baguettes and crepes. As I'm thinking about it now, it really was basically an eating trip the whole time. As we ate our crepes sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur overlooking the whole of Paris, it was a bit too surreal. I just spent a weekend in Paris! Paris was really everything I imagined it to be. Stunningly beautiful all over and luckily we had perfect weather. Even the French people were pretty nice which was surprising.
For our one day trip outside of Paris, we traveled to the Palace of Versailles. Let me tell you, you will never see anything as extravagant and amazing as Versailles. We took the tour of the palace and I was awestruck at the decoration and beauty of each and every room. The paintings and sculptures and pottery and adornment was just unbelievable. Out behind the palace the jaw-dropping scenes continued in the gardens that stretched on literally for miles with massive fountains and classical music playing. It was quite an experience.
After four days in Paris, we left for Barcelona to meet up with another group of friends. As a blackberry owner, I had the distinct honor of informing all my friends that a volcano erupted in Iceland. At first we all just shook it off and thought nothing of it. Then the news stories kept rolling in. European airspace was shut down and we were right in the middle of our travels. Madrid and Portugal were still on our list of future destinations but we had no clue what was going on. We received messages from other friends who were stranded in places like Greece and Italy and had no idea when they would be getting out. So began a lot of stress for a group of American college students who were just looking to have fun traveling around Europe for a couple weeks.
As for the sights that I saw in Barcelona, there were many. We walked up a very steep hill/mountain to Gaudi Park where we overlooked the city and got to see Gaudi's impressive and abstract park that looked like something out of Candy Land. We walked in and around La Sagrada Familia Church which has been under continuous construction for over 100 years I believe and won't be done for another decade. We ate palella and drank sangria and hung out on Barceloneta beach looking out on the Mediterranean Sea. The highlight of Barcelona for me was the trip to the Camp Nou, home of soccer team FC Barcelona. This stadium is one of the meccas of European and world soccer and I got to tour it. Such a cool experience. Unsure of the volcanic ash clouds future path, we crossed our fingers and thankfully got our flight from Barcelona to Madrid.
This is where the real stress began. Unfortunately, because we were constantly checking the Ryanair website and CNN.com, we probably didn't get to enjoy Madrid as much as we would have liked but it was a great city nonetheless. Our hostel was really nice despite the fact that we were in a room with some woman from San Diego who looked like a witch and would literally spend the day sitting on her bed saying strange prayers and mediatations. I think she might have been working on some spells or incantations but I can't be sure. In Madrid we went to the Prado museum, saw the big bullfighting arena, walked through the Plaza Mayor, and hung out one afternoon in an incredible park, the Central Park of Madrid if you will. We also ate some great tapas and drank more sangria.
Our final stop on the trip is a rather unique and perhaps obscure one: Porto, Portugal. After an 8 hour bus ride from Madrid to Porto which included a random roadside drug checkpoint in which the bus was searched by Spanish police and two of my friends were taken off the bus for random checks from huge K9 drug dogs, we arrived in Porto confused and exhausted. For the last three days we strolled around Porto and spend the evenings along the Duoro River eating some good food. The stress of the volcano continued to mount and came to its peak when we were informed that our flight home to Dublin was cancelled. After this deflating news, we created a plan that would continue our journey right into our spring break part 2 which actually begins tomorrow in Germany and Prague. However, just to make us all a little crazier, our flight was miraculously reinstated and by some strange miracle, we arrived back in Dublin on Thursday, just as we intended when we originally booked this trip. Don't ask me how it all worked out, I don't think I'll ever have an answer for that.
All in all it was an experience I'll never forget. The semester that I went abroad, and the two weeks that I took a spring break trip, a volcano erupted in Iceland and wreaked havoc across Europe, and I was there for it. It's certainly a story that I'm sure I'll tell a few more times in the future.
Hope you've all gotten to this point and have not fallen asleep yet. I'll make another post right after this with some pictures from the trip.
You may be shocked to know that I actually am still doing schoolwork and I'm just finishing up an essay now. It needs to get done today because tomorrow morning, bright and early at 5 AM, I take a bus across Ireland to Dublin Airport and depart for another week to Munich, Prague, and Berlin.
Hope all is well with everyone at home and I must take this opportunity to say Happy Birthday to Grandma! Hope you have a great day at Uncle John's with everyone. Wish I could be there.
Conor
On April 9th, my spring break travels around Europe began in the City of Lights, Paris. With my two friends Kiley and Brian, we spent four days in Paris seeing everything there is to see and then some. We stayed in a hostel room with an older guy from Quebec who we referred to as just that, "Quebec." He was nice but the only thing he ever said to us was, "What time is it, please?" Literally that was all he kept asking us every time we saw him. Anyway, that's not that interesting. Now I'll try and rattle off all the places I saw in Paris. On the first full day we were there we took a free walking tour and walked all over the city. We saw everything from Notre Dame to the 1,000,000 euro houses along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde and of course, the Eiffel Tower. We walked through the courtyard of the Louvre and saw the glass pyramid and strolled through Tullery Gardens on a bright sunny day. We walked past the Orangery museum and up the Champs Elysses to the Arc de Triomphe. At night we usually stayed in the Montmarte section around Sacre Coeur and ate a crazy amount of baguettes and crepes. As I'm thinking about it now, it really was basically an eating trip the whole time. As we ate our crepes sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur overlooking the whole of Paris, it was a bit too surreal. I just spent a weekend in Paris! Paris was really everything I imagined it to be. Stunningly beautiful all over and luckily we had perfect weather. Even the French people were pretty nice which was surprising.
For our one day trip outside of Paris, we traveled to the Palace of Versailles. Let me tell you, you will never see anything as extravagant and amazing as Versailles. We took the tour of the palace and I was awestruck at the decoration and beauty of each and every room. The paintings and sculptures and pottery and adornment was just unbelievable. Out behind the palace the jaw-dropping scenes continued in the gardens that stretched on literally for miles with massive fountains and classical music playing. It was quite an experience.
After four days in Paris, we left for Barcelona to meet up with another group of friends. As a blackberry owner, I had the distinct honor of informing all my friends that a volcano erupted in Iceland. At first we all just shook it off and thought nothing of it. Then the news stories kept rolling in. European airspace was shut down and we were right in the middle of our travels. Madrid and Portugal were still on our list of future destinations but we had no clue what was going on. We received messages from other friends who were stranded in places like Greece and Italy and had no idea when they would be getting out. So began a lot of stress for a group of American college students who were just looking to have fun traveling around Europe for a couple weeks.
As for the sights that I saw in Barcelona, there were many. We walked up a very steep hill/mountain to Gaudi Park where we overlooked the city and got to see Gaudi's impressive and abstract park that looked like something out of Candy Land. We walked in and around La Sagrada Familia Church which has been under continuous construction for over 100 years I believe and won't be done for another decade. We ate palella and drank sangria and hung out on Barceloneta beach looking out on the Mediterranean Sea. The highlight of Barcelona for me was the trip to the Camp Nou, home of soccer team FC Barcelona. This stadium is one of the meccas of European and world soccer and I got to tour it. Such a cool experience. Unsure of the volcanic ash clouds future path, we crossed our fingers and thankfully got our flight from Barcelona to Madrid.
This is where the real stress began. Unfortunately, because we were constantly checking the Ryanair website and CNN.com, we probably didn't get to enjoy Madrid as much as we would have liked but it was a great city nonetheless. Our hostel was really nice despite the fact that we were in a room with some woman from San Diego who looked like a witch and would literally spend the day sitting on her bed saying strange prayers and mediatations. I think she might have been working on some spells or incantations but I can't be sure. In Madrid we went to the Prado museum, saw the big bullfighting arena, walked through the Plaza Mayor, and hung out one afternoon in an incredible park, the Central Park of Madrid if you will. We also ate some great tapas and drank more sangria.
Our final stop on the trip is a rather unique and perhaps obscure one: Porto, Portugal. After an 8 hour bus ride from Madrid to Porto which included a random roadside drug checkpoint in which the bus was searched by Spanish police and two of my friends were taken off the bus for random checks from huge K9 drug dogs, we arrived in Porto confused and exhausted. For the last three days we strolled around Porto and spend the evenings along the Duoro River eating some good food. The stress of the volcano continued to mount and came to its peak when we were informed that our flight home to Dublin was cancelled. After this deflating news, we created a plan that would continue our journey right into our spring break part 2 which actually begins tomorrow in Germany and Prague. However, just to make us all a little crazier, our flight was miraculously reinstated and by some strange miracle, we arrived back in Dublin on Thursday, just as we intended when we originally booked this trip. Don't ask me how it all worked out, I don't think I'll ever have an answer for that.
All in all it was an experience I'll never forget. The semester that I went abroad, and the two weeks that I took a spring break trip, a volcano erupted in Iceland and wreaked havoc across Europe, and I was there for it. It's certainly a story that I'm sure I'll tell a few more times in the future.
Hope you've all gotten to this point and have not fallen asleep yet. I'll make another post right after this with some pictures from the trip.
You may be shocked to know that I actually am still doing schoolwork and I'm just finishing up an essay now. It needs to get done today because tomorrow morning, bright and early at 5 AM, I take a bus across Ireland to Dublin Airport and depart for another week to Munich, Prague, and Berlin.
Hope all is well with everyone at home and I must take this opportunity to say Happy Birthday to Grandma! Hope you have a great day at Uncle John's with everyone. Wish I could be there.
Conor
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you.
Hello all!
Sorry for the big gaps in between posts but nothing too exciting has happened since the Aran Islands trip. Have no fear though, April is going to be non-stop adventures so stay tuned for tons of posts.
I'll give you a preview of the upcoming days and weeks in April:
As most of you probably know, the Goldens arrive in Galway this Wednesday. I can't wait to see them after over 3 months away from home. We're probably going to take day trips to the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands and of course I'll be the tour guide around the lovely Galway City. From Galway they're going to Dublin and I might join them for a day or two before I need to get home and get ready for my own European adventures. There are two trips currently booked and planned:
From April 9th to April 22nd:
Paris > Barcelona > Madrid > Porto (Portugal)
From April 26th to May 3rd:
Munich > Prague > Stockholm
An Italy trip is also in the works and will probably happen mid to late May. I can't believe this is all happening and I will be going to all these amazing cities and countries. Can't wait to get started and experience it all.
Not much else going on here. My classes end on Wednesday and then I'll be hanging with the family for the next week after that.
Hope all is well back home with everyone!
Conor
Sorry for the big gaps in between posts but nothing too exciting has happened since the Aran Islands trip. Have no fear though, April is going to be non-stop adventures so stay tuned for tons of posts.
I'll give you a preview of the upcoming days and weeks in April:
As most of you probably know, the Goldens arrive in Galway this Wednesday. I can't wait to see them after over 3 months away from home. We're probably going to take day trips to the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands and of course I'll be the tour guide around the lovely Galway City. From Galway they're going to Dublin and I might join them for a day or two before I need to get home and get ready for my own European adventures. There are two trips currently booked and planned:
From April 9th to April 22nd:
Paris > Barcelona > Madrid > Porto (Portugal)
From April 26th to May 3rd:
Munich > Prague > Stockholm
An Italy trip is also in the works and will probably happen mid to late May. I can't believe this is all happening and I will be going to all these amazing cities and countries. Can't wait to get started and experience it all.
Not much else going on here. My classes end on Wednesday and then I'll be hanging with the family for the next week after that.
Hope all is well back home with everyone!
Conor
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Hanging Over Some Cliffs - Day Trip to the Aran Islands
Yesterday I made yet another little trip to another one of Ireland's most beautiful places: the Aran Islands. For some more info on the islands, visit my good friend, Mr. Wikipedia right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_Islands. For our day trip, we visited the largest of the islands called Inishmore.
We were up early and got a bus from our housing complex at 9 AM. After about an hour bus ride we hopped on an Aran Island ferry and made another 40 minute trip across Galway Bay to Inishmore. It was yet another beautiful day of sunny skies. This past week the weather literally never changed from blue skies and sun; it was awesome. When we got to the island and off the ferry, we all rented bikes and began our journey along the coast of the 9 mile island. On our trip up the coast, we stopped to make friends with some horses, chickens, and cows, took plenty of pictures of the winding stone walls and farms scattered around the landscape, and eventually came upon a small beach. As a group of us laid down in the tall grass along some cliffs near the beach, we looked down and to our amazement, watched as two random men stripped down and ran into the water. Confused and a little disturbed, we decided it was as good a time as any to continue our bike ride.
Our final stop on our bike ride before turning around and heading back to the ferry was possibly my favorite thing I've seen so far in Ireland. I know that I've said that for about a dozen different things but if you see the pictures, you'll see why I am positive this time that it's my favorite. Dun Aengus (or Dún Aonghasa in Irish) is an ancient Iron Age fort that sits atop cliffs that are over 300 feet tall. After making a long hike up some steep hills, we got to the fort and once again were awe-struck by its size and beauty. We walked to the edge of the cliffs and realized that it was totally open, giving us the chance to just sit with our feet hanging over, looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean. We all sat together and didn't really say much as we were all a little shocked at what we were seeing. Below us was only ocean and some rocks jutting out from the water. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend too much time there, but that half hour or so may have been my favorite half hour of all my sightseeing times here in Ireland.
Once again it was a great day. We had a great bike ride, saw some incredible scenery, and got to spend some amazing time at Dun Aengus. I don't know how I'm going to be able to contain all these memories in my mind once I get home in May. I think I'll find a way though.
Thanks for reading!
Conor
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Traveling the UK: Part 2 (Scotland)!
So here is the second and final part of my two part series: Traveling the UK. This past weekend may have been my favorite weekend so far in Ireland. From Thursday to Sunday, my friends and I meandered through the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland. We stayed in the "Redrum" at one hostel, saw where Sean Connery was knighted, ate haggis and fried Mars bars, and may have seen a few ghosts in the Edinburgh graveyards. Let's get into a little more detail though, shall we?
First up on the agenda was Glasgow. Upon arrival, we made the long trek from the bus station to the Blue Sky Hostel. It was a really cool and funky place with spray paint on the walls and wacky themes for each room. Yes, we were in the room themed after "The Shining," complete with a huge picture of a crazed Jack Nicholson on the door and the words "REDRUM" painted across the bottom. When we walked inside, there was no surprise, the whole room was painted red. Don't worry though, we were all okay. Thankfully, our work to fun ratio tipped entirely to the "fun" side so we didn't go insane. (Lame joke, I know). So for one day and night, we explored Glasgow. It's your basic city. We headed into the center where all the shops are along with the City Hall which was really nice. We saw some typical red stone Scottish architecture and spent the night at Ashton Lane, a very cool little cobblestone street with plenty of cool pubs and restaurants. It was a brief stay but a good one nonetheless.
Friday morning we got on yet another bus and made our way to Edinburgh. I have to say it here and I'll probably say it again: Edinburgh is an awesome city. I mean really awesome. When we first arrived I could see all of the medieval architecture and knew that this would be a great weekend. Just thinking about the history of it made me giddy being the nerdy history major that I am. Edinburgh is kind of divided into the old town and new town. Thankfully, we stayed in the old town. But we didn't stay in some run of the mill youth hostel. We stayed in the Castle Rock Hostel, named for the fact that it sits at the bottom of Castle Rock. Outside our window, the magnificent Edinburgh Castle hovered over us. Off in the distance outside our hostel, we could see the snow-capped mountain ranges of Scotland. For the next two days and nights, we explored almost every inch of Edinburgh. Friday we were on our own as we walked down the Royal Mile, the main road in the old town, past all sorts of old pubs and tons of Scotland souvenir shops.
Saturday was the big though. We first had a big Scottish breakfast, complete with haggis (all kinds of pig innards cooked in a pig's stomach and seasoned with some spices). Honestly, it was pretty good. It tasted like sausage which is never a bad thing. From there we made our way to the starting point of a free guided walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was a totally cool young guy named Ronnie. He had a great Scottish accent and gave us a great tour. We walked up and down the Royal Mile, down the Grassmarket area where most executions took place many years ago, and saw some very cool Harry Potter historic spots. We stood outside the window where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Just around the corner from there is the castle off of which she based Hogwarts, and finally, we saw the grave of a man named "Tom Riddell." Now, although the name is spelt differently in real life, this was the inspiration for "He Who Must Not Be Named." (Again, lame). At the end of the tour we were told the story of the Scottish "Stone of Destiny." It is a totally wacky story and too long for me to write in here. I suggest everyone google it though! Saturday night brought yet another tour: the Edinburgh Ghost Tour. With our Jesus look-alike tour guide Alan, we walked through the Edinburgh night to various graveyards and monuments that are said to be haunted. We saw the grave of philosopher David Hume and stood atop a hill overlooking the city at night while Alan told us all kinds of ghost stories.
After a fun-filled day of touring Edinburgh, we were all exhausted and hit the hay pretty quickly. We slept in a very happily themed room this time: The Happy Days Room." Each bed had its own Happy Days character. My bed was Big Al. Wish I watched Happy Days more b/c I don't know who that is. Oh well.
Here it comes again: Edinburgh is an awesome city. Best city I've visited so far by a "royal mile." The lame jokes just keep on coming today.
Hope you're not bored out of your mind yet. If you got through all of this, I appreciate it. I really enjoy writing these and I hope you enjoy reading them.
I'll be heading to the Aran Islands on Saturday so another post should be coming soon.
Conor
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