fulbright blog.: Happy Everything: Winter Break in Ireland Part II

After our adventures in Dublin, we were excited to head to the town of Galway. Galway is on Ireland's west coast, so took about 4 hours to get there on the bus. Bus Eireann is perfectly adequate for such a trip. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but it was okay.

When we got to Galway, we walked over to our hostel. It was a really nice place, and our roommates (both sets) were really nice! When we walked in, the first set was sitting around talking and immediately asked us if we were in Galway for Rag Week. Since we had no idea what Rag Week was, we said no. They explained that it used to be a huge charity thing put on by the University, but now it's just a week when youths converge on Galway to drink. These three girls were all 17 or 18, and they were very exicted for Donegal day. Donegal is a county in the north of Ireland. (But not in Northern Ireland). Tuesday was Donegal Day, where everyone from this county wears a jersey and gets lots of free drinks.

So the pub area of Galway was crawling with drunk youths, but they mostly only came out at night so it didn't bother me that much. We ate at a place called The Front Door the first night. I had a chicken sandwich - not super Irish, but it was the special!

An old castle.

The next morning we got a bus from the hostel to the Cliffs of Moher - or at least, we thought we were getting a bus from the hostel to the cliffs. It turns out that we got a tour instead! We saw some other things on our way to the cliffs and stopped for lunch in Doolin. The Cliffs were extrememly beautiful. They were used as the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride as well as the cliff where the cave is in the movie of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.

After the cliffs, we returned to our hostel where we made dinner then went to bed early. I was still waking up at my normal time to go to work, which isn't exactly conducive to staying up late.

The next day we went on a walking tour of Galway in the morning. After that we visited the city museum, which was free! There were some really cool exhibits there including one where local high school students picked out two pieces of art that inspired them then made self-portraits using that art as inspiration.

That evening our Irish roommates had gone home and we had new roommates. One girl was American but studying in London, and the other was from New Zealand. The four of us went together to a pub and listened to some live Irish music, which was fantastic!

The next morning we got ready then got on the bus to Cork!