An early morning flight from Memmingen to Dublin came next! Right after my morning bus ride from Munich to Memmingen.
How I’ve managed to squeeze my backpacker’s backpack into the metal crate that Ryanair deems maximum size as carry-on luggage is beyond my knowledge. However, I’ve learned to arrange things inside of it to make it fit, even though it’s definitely much larger and much heavier than what they allow. I’ve avoided the 50 Euro bag check-in fee about 12 times with that backpack, thank goodness since most of my Ryanair flights were between 6.99 and 20.99 Euro.
This actually brings me to another point before I start writing about how amazing Ireland is and how I’d go back in a jiffy. Since I was asked a couple times earlier, and once again yesterday, let me make is clear that I do not have a mysterious source of income and my parents are not paying for me to backpack around and make Europe my learning playground. Since I was in 9th grade I knew that no matter where I decided to go to college or what I decided to study, I wanted to go to another country for a semester or year. Therefore, every single job I’ve had since I turned 16 became a way to save up for a traveling extravaganza that wasn’t yet planned, but I knew it’d happen. Lots of hours at some pretty crappy jobs contributed to my January-August adventures. So, before you judge, don’t. Especially when I flew Ryanair flights for 6.99, yes SIX EURO and 99 CENTS, [much less than any taxi I’ve taken].
Back to the main event, IRELAND! Adorable country with great people. I get to Dublin and walked about 30 minutes to get out of the airport…longest hallways ever, though I think the ones at JFK are worse since you think every corner is the end. Something struck me as odd right around then…the signs weren’t in English. Odd… I noticed that there were English translations underneath in smaller letters, underneath the Irish words, or Gaelic. Definitely didn’t look like any language I could figure out, no visible relation to English, “Exit” was “Slí Amach.” Took a shuttle to the city center and realized there was a Polish guy in front of me speaking very loudly on his cell phone, aww I hadn’t heard Polish in so long, and I knew there was a bunch of Polish people in Dublin though.
Got to the center about half an hour later, couldn’t find my hostel, which was right in Temple Bar, the famous bar and pub area of the city since all the street names were bizarre Gaelic names and even when people tried to simply tell me where to go, the street ended, or all of a sudden had a different name and I somehow ended up where I started. Finally I took a random turn by a burger joint and HEY there was my hostel and the famous Temple Bar!
I walked around Temple Bar, made friends in the hostel (80% Australians) and waited for my friend Analy to fly in from Barcelona. We went on pub crawl that night with all Canadians and Australians…who kept making fun of America. It was funny until it really wasn’t at all, especially when a few Irish guys told us how obnoxious our “American friends” are…THEY WERE CANADIAN, but who would know the difference? Both countries speak American English. The pubs were remarkable and so down to earth, pretty much any Irish pub in the world looks like an Irish pub in Ireland though, lots of wooden things, cozy and lots of Guinness, Bulmer’s and Jameson’s. BUT in Ireland, almost all the pubs had live music, especially folk-fiddle-type music and traditional Irish songs sung by handsome Irish guys with guitars on wooden stools, VERY P.S I Love You-esque (went to the pub where that was filmed too! Called Whelan’s. Bummer that Gerard Butler is Scottish and not Irish though). On our way back we meet some more Irish, watch the video below to get a gist of them and an opinion on the U.S, hilarious. The Irish crack jokes and hand out compliments like it’s their job, I’m not complaining.
Next day….RAIN RAIN RAIN. Very normal for Ireland; when it didn’t rain for a few weeks, people freaked out that the country’s grassy fields weren’t going to be as green as they should be. It’s very green there by the way, much greener than Scotland which was kind of like tundra, but I’ll get to that in my next post. Analy and I did a free walking tour of Dublin with an incredibly charming guide (maybe it’s the accent? Either way, he ended the tour with a big wad of tips from the ladies in the group). Dublin is quite a small city and almost has a grungy, industrial feel to it, but not completely since there are lots of colorful buildings, decorated pubs, street artwork (lots dedicated to James Joyce), and pretty bridges over the River Liffey. In addition, there are very old sections, such as the area with Trinity College. That night we walked around Dublin with our new Australian photographer friend, Marcus. This included, going to some pubs, listening to “Galway Girl” many times, having Marcus try onion rings for the first time, wearing our Burger King crowns around the city, getting some strange looks, taking lots of photos, and finally going to an Irish comedy competition. The next morning we were up at 5am and on a bus across the country to Western Ireland!
A little over two hours and we were already on the other coast in the small city of Galway. Our tour guide Sean was super nice and taught us lots about the city which started as a tiny fishing village, though famous as the birthplace of the Claddagh Ring (you know those rings with the crowned heart held by two hands that lots of girls wear). Went to the main cathedral with not only Jane Erye’s tomb but also hidden clues that the Knights Templar were once involved, very “Da Vinci Code”. Next we saw the house where Che Guevara’s ancestors lived in, betcha didn’t know he was Irish! Then the ancient city walls which are literally inside a mall since the developer wanted to build a mall in that EXACT spot but wasn’t allowed to tear down the historical pieces. Next was Kennedy Park which is where JFK (first and only Irish Catholic U.S President) gave a speech just weeks before his assassination. After Galway we went to some cliffs before heading over to County Clare for lunch in Doolin, where our waiter looked JUST like a young Prince Harry, I’m sure he gets it all the time, lucky lad! Analy kept freaking me out by getting extremely close to the edge of the cliffs and she did it some more at the Cliffs of Moher! Ahhh yes, the best part! The Cliffs of Moher definitely made it onto my list of Spectacular and Amazing World Wonders, I don’t have a list like this but I think I’ll start one now. If you saw the last Harry Potter movie than you might remember the big misty cliffs as Harry searches for horcruxes, those are the Cliffs of Moher. On that day we had the best weather the coast had seen in the past two months, sunny and warm enough to just have tees and tanks. The water was so blue and clear hundreds of feet below, and you really realized how high the cliffs were when you saw birds flying very high above the water, yet so far below the top. A large part of the cliffs doesn’t really have a fence or anything to keep people from going to close to the edge, so I wouldn’t recommend going off the beaten path on a windy day. We went to the next county over to hang out in the rolling hills and see some prehistoric rock tombs, something like Stonehenge in England. The next few days were spent hanging out in Dublin and getting to know some locals. I even met a guy, who was familiar with Connecticut, and not just familiar, he went all the time since he worked for Pratt & Whitney; he even gets free Guinness pints at City Steam in Hartford! After all the cheerful socializing in Ireland, next stop was Scotland!
spyinginspain 