Long Excursion to the South West regions

Firstly, I must apologize for the lack of blogging recently. Last Wednesday, September 15th, we took off on a five day excursion. I’ll start from the beginning…

Wednesday we left the Park Lodge Hotel to head off to Thoor Ballylee. This was the not-so-humble abode of a Mr. William Butler Yeats, one of the best Irish authors of all time. This castle with attached cottage was built on a river which Yeats believed to be the same river his good friend Lady Gregory’s heritage was planted on. In Ireland, rivers pop up and disappear with very little apparent reason, sadly Yeats was incorrect. However, the bridge from the road over the river to his home was quite impressive so it was probably worth it anyway. An interesting side story on the bridge: it was half demolished by the I.R.A. but that was done with great respect. The men who were blowing up the bridge, after setting the charges approached the house and alerted Yeats wife and child who were in the castle at the time that they were going to blow up the bridge out of respect for W.B. Yeats. His wife’s response was, “Well can’t you go blow up a different bridge?” and they told her it had to be that one. Luckily they only blew up one side of it so the bridge remains intact.

After leaving Thoor Ballylee, we visited the aforementioned home of Lady Augusta Gregory, Coole Park. Before I go any further, I just have to say Coole is absolutely gorgeous. Sadly during times of suppression of Irish heritage the government tore down her house claiming it was structurally unsound (which was crap) but the land and the gardens were still intact. We stopped by the signature tree which was a giant tree signed by many of the greats who visited Lady Gregory. Some of the initials etched into the trunk were those of W.B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey, George W. Russell, Lady Augusta Gregory herself, John Mansfield, and George Bernard Shaw. We toured the woodland trails and then headed on with our journey.

A tour of the city of Cork was next on which we stopped by Fr. Finbaar’s Cathedral, the Holy Trinity Church, and the University of Ireland Cork. We spent the night out in Cork and enjoyed it despite the fact that it was flooded by underdressed fifteen and sixteen year olds who had just completed their junior certificates.

Thursday we left Cork to stop shortly after at the infamous and majestic Blarney castle. Yes, of course I kissed the Blarney stone. It was a very impressive estate that included the fortified castle, the house, and a poison garden! Who knows why we found marijuana in the poison garden, but I sure got a kick out of that.

From Blarney we headed on to stop quickly at the Michael Collins site. If you don’t know who he was, you should. So here it is in short, he was a leader in the Irish revolutionary war. He also invented guerilla warfare and utilized it so well that the English finally asked the Irish to meet and come to a compromise at a conference of the leaders of the two forces. He was ambushed near Cork and killed; now a memorial stands in the same place.

That night we headed to Kilkenny and stopped by the Ross Castle for an impressive tour. The view from what could be called the master bedroom was illustrated with mountains and a lake. The lake was prophesized to be the only possible way to infiltrate and capture the castle. In a way, this saved it. When the tenants saw ships coming into harbor they fled, fearing for their lives. This also helped preserve the castle so we could see it in all of its (restored) glory.

Killarney for the evening was filled with Irish music in very enjoyable pubs.
Friday we took off from the hostel and headed out towards the Muckross House to see how someone in the 1800’s may have lived among the landed gentry. This estate was much more than expansive; it was gorgeously maintained as well. I personally wasn’t all that thrilled about touring the house and hearing where and when each piece of furniture was from so if you ever decided to visit, I’d recommend not touring the inside. The house included a sunken garden, mountainous landscape, two lakes, a rock garden, and an abbey.

From the Muckross house we headed out to tour the Ring of Kerry. It was quite impressive touring around the peninsula. We stopped at the Barracks to tour the now-museum. This is another place that would not be recommended by many people on this trip. The rest of our tour of the Ring of Kerry was amazing.

Saturday, on our way to the Dingle Peninsula, we stopped at the Kerry County Heritage Museum which was extremely interesting. The basement was outfitted as a recreation of Tralee in 1450 allowing for a “Medieval Experience”. We headed out to the Dingle peninsula stopping in the town of Dingle and the Blasket Islands Historic Museum. The Blaskets housed one of the last Gaelic communities and also were the cause for the destruction of some of the Spanish Armada’s ships.

Sunday Morning we headed home but not without an exciting stop at the infamous Cliffs of Moher. This was possibly one of the most exciting parts of the trip thus far. We walked along the cliffs staying a few steps back from the intimidating edge. We did however take a risk and laid on the edge overlooking the 214 meter sheer drop to the ocean. From there we headed back to the Park Lodge.

Rock of Cashel & Hurling excursion

The time: 10:30am Saturday morning and we're off on a magical bus ride to Tipperary county. Upon first arrival at the Rock of Cashel it became immediately apparent why it has been marked as one of the need-to-see locales in Ireland. It's stunning silhouette had all of our jaws dropped. Parts of the castle date back to the 12th and 13th centuries. When we got there we watched a 12 minute video clip that, I think everyone would have agreed with me in saying, was worthless. After the video we had time to explore the castle an it's surrounding cemetery. The site itself, planted on top of a hill, was not ridiculously expansive but the history that took place in that location certainly was.

After leaving the rock of cashel, we headed into Tipperary to see the All-Ireland U-21 Hurling Match featuring Galway vs. Tipperary. It was an extremely exciting event with 21,110 people attending. There was dissension over the fact that it was being held in a non-neutral location and many of the Galway fans boycotted the match. That put us in the ranks of the hundreds of Galway supporters. Luckily, there were a few Galway loyalists who sat in the row behind us. I hopped up to sit next to them and got the blow by blow of everything that made hurling, and Galway, amazing. The fans were definitely slightly psychotic but that only made eveything more exciting. You may think I'm exaggerating so I'll prove it with a specific incident:
Setting: Tipperary player gets railed hard and is laying face down on the field. Play stops. Ref, trainers, and health officers rush towards the downed player.
Me: "Oh Man! That guy just got F*d up!"
Galway Fan: "Good. I hope so. I hope he's dead."
End Scene. True Story. All in all the game was a blowout and it was not in favor of Galway. Nonetheless it was extremely fun and filled with hard-hitting action.

The Aran Islands

Nine miles off of the coast of Spiddeal lies three small islands known as the Aran Islands. There is only one word that approaches an appropriate definition of them - Legendary. Three small isles make up the Aran Islands : Inis Mor, Inis Meain, and Inis Oirr. This is one of the only places in Ireland where the original Celtic language is still the primary language of the 800 inhabitants.
The ferry brought us to Inis Mor which is the largest of the three islands at 9 miles long and 2 miles wide. After stopping for a delicious fresh fish, we made our way out of Kilronan (the main city of Inis Mor) to Dun Arann Lighthouse and Signal Tower.

 This ancient fort is placed at the highest point in the islands and the view is spectacular overlooking Kilronan on one side, the Galway coast on another, and the Aran countryside on a third. Continuing on from the fort we headed to the oldest Celtic fort in all of Ireland Dun Aonghasa dating back to 2000B.C. The cliffs on the edge were spectacular and again the view was phenomenal.

After that we took off on our bikes once more to find the Aran Seal Colony but to our dismay the tide was much too high for the seals to be comfortably sunbathing. We biked through Kilronan to a pub on the outskirts and after a refreshing pint of Smithwicks we took off toward Teampall Bheanain (Church of Saint Benan.) The church is reputed to be the smallest in the world with dimensions of 3.7m x 1.8m. On approach it's silhouette marked the edge of the hillside. The road ended 2km from the church at the base of the steep rocky hill next to a goat pen - funny side story: the locals offered me a free goat because they had too many after I jovially played with their dog for about fifteen minutes.

We returned to Kilronan and visited the Aran Sweater Market and Museum to purchase one of the renowned hand knit beautiful sweaters.

Here it goes...

After spending more time in the airport than I would have liked, my real excursion began. Driving through the Irish countryside was every bit as beautiful and amazing as one might have guessed. After arriving at the Park Lodge Inn where I will be staying for the next four months I quickly picked out my room and unpacked. We are staying in cottages that used to be for the cleaning staff but now are fully functioning college apartments. It is wonderful; I have a kitchen (although small,) a living room, a dining room, and three bed rooms (two doubles one single,) an entry way, and a deck. It's a really nice set up, especially since I offered to be the cook in exchange for the single (which is nearly as large as the doubles.) After unpacking, my cottage-mates and I walked to the sea shore which is only about 5 minutes from us. It was a phenomenal sight to behold and we hoped around on the rocky shore for a good half hour. I also discovered an old oar that had washed ashore long ago and had been pinned between a few rocks and is well-weathered. Dinner was a fancy meal served by the hotel staff so that they, and our professors, could address a few items of business. When dinner was over the pub crawl began. We headed into Spiddal witch is about a twenty-thirty minute walk where we proceeded to stop, and drink, at all of the pubs. Spiddal is a small town and only has three but it was still tons of fun. There was live music at our third pub and plenty of very amazing Irish people to make the night well worth it.
This morning we took a bus into Galway, about a half hour East and took a bus tour of the entire city. After that we were let loose on the town. We took care of all our shopping needs and became acquainted with the town. I ate lunch at McDonoughs and had the local favorite, fish and chips. I made friends with an older couple eating there and they gave us pointers on Ireland, they were shining examples of the friendliness that the Irish are famous for. After doing a bit of grocery shopping it was back to the Park Lodge we went. JP (John Pierre) the brother of the owner of the hotel has his own pub in the basement and has decided to open it for us this evening. Best wishes to all! I uploaded  a few pictures to facebook too.

Where in the World is Bobby?

The small dot outside of Galway is marking Spiddal. Spiddal is the small town which I will be staying in until December.

School

National University of Ireland, Galway. This is where my professors teach although through our program they visit us in Spiddal to teach. Absolutely gorgeous.

Arrival

I arrived in Shannon Airport this morning at 6:40a.m. local time. We were immediately exposed to the exquisite Irish accent when an airport worker boarded our plane to welcome us. After passing through customs, tracking down my luggage, and exchanging my U.S. Dollars for Euros I stopped at an airport coffee shop and got into a lengthy discussion with the barista. Apparently her daughter studied at the University of Galway and she told me all about different places to look for in Galway. Sorry this is a brief and boring post but, well, I still haven't left the airport. There isn't much else to say.