Am I Bothered?

Just got back from Galway a few hours ago, and I loved it. Stephanie, Rachel, Katie and I were pretty much nomads, wandering throughout the countryside, loving almost every minute.

We started in Dublin, leaving town on the train at 11:10am, getting into Galway at 2:30 (can you imagine being able to cross an entire country in a little over 3 hours... That would get me to Portland at home!

Once in Galway we wandered through what seemed to be the central part of town (Shop St. I think it was) which led us to the water front and I saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in person (!!!) and it was beautiful. We hopped on a 6:00 bus from Galway to Doolin in County Clare (pop. 200) and spent the night in a tiny little hostel called "Paddy and Josephine's Doolin Hostel." How awesome is that? By the way, everyone here is named Paddy, it's wonderful :-) We were all hungry, so we meandered down to the local pub call Gus O'Connor's Pub and had incredible fish and chips and enjoyed some real live Irish pub music. There was a guitar, banjo, penny whistle, accordion and a few other instruments, and almost the entire pub knew the words to the songs they were singing. THAT is the Ireland I wanted to find!

The next morning we woke up at 7am to the mooing of cows on the hill behind us, outside our window. We rushed to get dressed (not showered, because, silly us, we didn't bring towels...) and got to the bus to get to the Cliffs of Moher before all the tourists got there. At first we all seemed slightly disappointed. They were pretty, but there was a wall going along the length of them so you couldn't look down. Then we decided to not follow any rules and we hopped the wall, walked to the edge and easily could have stayed there forever. It was completely indescribable, to the point of saying that you have to go there sometime in your life before the tourists. The minute you put your head over the edge it's like your whole world changes; things are not only literally upside down, but the whole idea that you are on the last piece of land until you reach the US and all that you have to do is take one wrong step and your swimming with the fishies just blows my mind. We took these pictures that don't do anything justice, but they are pretty cool.

We left and headed back to Doolin for some amazing soup at O'Connor's Pub then caught a ferry to the smallest island in the Aran Islands called Inishmere, or Inis Oirr, depending on the map you look at and sat on the beach while trying to dry ourselves off after a very rough, VERY wet boat crossing. We only succeeded in getting sand stuck to the wet parts of our jeans...

From Inishmere we caught another ferry to the biggest Island, Inis Mor and after another very rough, but not as wet, crossing, we docked and got pretty much caught in bad weather. We were bombarded by a man in a red taxi-tour-van who we paid €10 each for a tour of the entire island. It turned out to be cool, and sort of worth it, but we still felt like the best part of the day was spent on the Cliffs and on the first island. However, from the first stop on our tour, we saw a really cool 3,000 year old fortress that was on this huge cliff. Seriously, the Cliffs of Moher were incredible but the cliffs here were breathtaking. They were concave and we could stand on the very tip of a rock and look down and see absolutely nothing but turquoise water. The wind was so strong that you could throw a chunk (yes I said chunk) of sod in the air at the cliff and it would fly backwards almost 30 meters away. It's a new game. "Harry Potter Eat Your Heart Out" is what the guys kept saying... (?)

From the island we took another ferry back to the "main land" and then a bus to Galway. We met the huge group at a pub, then went to the B&B to shower and get ready for our trip back home. Rachel and I stayed up writing everything down that we did during the weekend and it took up 4 pages in my journal... Crazy.

Now we're home. And it feels great.