Guion Goes To Ireland
Guion Pratt Joined: May 21st 2008
Logged in: September 2nd 2008
Logged in: September 2nd 2008
Travel Blog Posts
The Glen
(This sentence is difficult to understand.) Failte to Donegal, folks! I don't have much time today, so I'll make this quick, especially since I'll be able to tell any of this to you in person in a few days. But basically... I left Tubbercurry for West Donegal, the Northwesternmost county of the Republic of Ireland. The village of Glencolumcille, a three pub/one shop/one restaurant coastal village, is home to a premiere Irish language college called Oideas Gael, which attempts to resurrect the dying language of Irish Gaelic. Glencolumcille is located in a sort of isolated gaelthact region of Donegal. In other words, people moved there and started speaking Irish, whereas the real gaelthact region has more or less always spoken the language. All of that to say, I took a tinwhistle course at the college, something ... read more
Cliffs of Moher
I left because I was meeting Win (my brother, for those who don't know) in Cork on June 28th. My stay at the farm was unbelievable, and it deserved a number of blog posts, but in the interest of not writing another horrifically long post nobody will read (with good reason), I'll simply say that I had a great time getting to try all kinds of new things, and spending a lot of time alone and on a farm. Stories will trickle out almost certainly over time anyway. I had a great time fishing, farming, exploring the castle 100 meters from my house, and most importantly, playing the session in Ballydehob, which endures to be my favorite session thusfar in all of Ireland. Tim was kind enough to take me in to the very small town ... read more
Welcome to the Mizen Peninsula. If you look at a map of Ireland and find the southwest coast, you'll see several peninsulas down there with several smaller little ones coming of them fractal-style called "heads." I'm on Three Castle Head, named for the three-towered 13th century castle located a stone's throw from my house, on the Mizen Peninsula. The Mizen Peninsula features Skibbereen, which at 2 main streets is the largest town on the peninsula, and really the largest one before you reach Bantry, northwest by about an hour. It's really not that far from one town to the next here, but it takes a fair while, because the roads are so winding so as to accomodate the rolling--and sometimes spiking--terrain. The unifying element is that it is all breathtaking. Now, backing up a bit. I ... read more
Garda (cop) and kid playing soccer in the street.
This is the first time I've had more than 5 minutes at a time sitting down with an internet connection in about a week and a half. Spent the week in Dublin, and let me just say, that is more than enough time to do everything worth doing in Dublin, and then some. It's excellent as cities go, but it's just that - a city. New York, London, Atlanta, Dublin, they've all got their own tics and fingerprints, but at the end of the day, the atmosphere is the same. Many people in Dublin said it's like its own country, separate from Ireland. I managed to buy a relatively decent guitar there for pretty cheap, which I'll sell back at the end of my trip. Elizabeth Pigg, (a friend from high school for those of you ... read more
Hostel room
Left Raleigh at 3:45 yesterday afternoon, and now, 17 hours later, I am sitting in the lounge of the Astor Victoria Hostel in London where I'll be spending my next 4 nights as I tour London, before heading on to Dublin. Based on my walking around in the area surrounding the hostel, Victoria seems to be just about entirely comprised of hotels and theaters. Backing up a bit, the first thing I saw when I first surfaced on the London Subway (known as the "tube") was a large truck marked "Police Horses" making its way down the street behind the tube line. Side note: I was informed by a fellow tube traveler that Friday is the last day one may legally drink alcohol on the tube, so there has been a large unofficial word of mouth ... read more
