Onto the Continent!

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--Author's note--this post was written yesterday on the bus in Ireland, but I am posting it a day late from Vevey, Switzerland. It did indeed rain later on the bus ride that day, per expectations (see below).

Almost time to move on to another country! This travel update comes on a bus between Dingle and Dublin, Ireland (a cross country bus ride here takes about 5 hours). It hasn't rained yet today, and if it doesn't precipitate at all, it would be the first dry day of the trip. At least I'm experiencing the real Irish weather.

I've been in the western part of the country since my last post, working down the coast from north to south. Owing to its adjacency to the Atlantic Ocean, the shorelines on this side form dramatic cliffs and crags that drop from pristine rolling sheep pastures. The grass here is the most beautiful I've ever seen--very green, soft, and homogeneous. Sheep are the most common livestock, but farmers out here also raise cattle, horses, donkeys, and chickens. A lot of the trails here go through the sides of fields, but fortunately my shoes have been spared of any mishaps with the plentiful animal refuse. I also didn't fall off any cliffs, though the signs warn that many others have and cliff viewers are mostly left on their own how close they want to venture to the ledges.

I've been doing a lot of biking the past few days; my first cycling adventure was on the Aran Islands, southwest of Galway. The islands are about an hour away by ferry, and are known for their shorelines and ancient Celtic ruins. I was there just before the start of peak tourist season, so the island felt awesomely remote and authentic. I was also the only person in my entire hostel during my first night (and one of three the second), and it was great to have a whole room to myself--plus extra room to dry out my soaked clothes when I got caught on the opposite side of the island in a rainstorm. I was able to bike around the whole island in a day while stopping at all the major ruin sites. The most well-known, Dun Aonghasa, consists of the walls of a round stone fort perched on a 500 ft. cliff face. It was originally home to the ruling family of the islands and dates to around 400AD. Other more modern (and by that we mean Dark Ages and Medieval) ruins come from Celtic monasteries built after Christianity spread throughout the country. There were also two seal colonies! In the evening, I got a great Irish pub music experience while eating Irish lamb stew and drinking a Guinness--about as Irish as it gets. Finally, I stayed up late to live stream the OU men's tennis team playing in the NCAA championships (the wonders of technology!); we lost in the final but it was a program best and concluded a great season. As I was walking back to the ferry to head back to Galway, a relative hoard of tourists was disembarking and heading to the tour buses and the first bike shop off the pier that charged twice the price of the one I rented from, and with that I knew I had absolutely picked the best time to visit.

From there, I bussed town to the Cliffs of Moher for some more vertigo-inducing experiences. I got there in the late afternoon and the sun was actually peeking through the clouds, so there was great contrast on the west-facing cliff faces. I hiked along the cliffs for a few hours, and by the end completely understood how so many people have had fatal falls here--the trail is just a rut in the grass that runs only a foot or two from the edge, and at certain points you could see the thin layer of dirt on the ledge had given away after a heavy rainfall. The views sure couldn't be beat, though. I was also that tourist who was frantically running to the bus stop while carrying all their worldly possessions to catch their departing ride. That night, I stayed in the colorfully named town Lisdoonvarna (best known for its summertime matchmaking festival) and had some of the local specialty salmon.

Since then, I have been in Dingle Town on the Dingle peninsula in the far southwest part of the country. I had to take four separate buses to make it here, but everything ran on time and the buses here make the journey pleasant with wifi and coach bus seats. Plus Bus Ireann is also super cheap and the drivers are happy to drop you right at your hostel if you ask nicely. So even one of the EU's poorest and most mismanaged countries has vastly superior public transportation to the US. 'Murica. Anyway, Dingle is a nice little town on the coast, known for having one of the highest per capita pub concentrations in Ireland (over 50 for 1,500 inhabitants). One of the pubs we went to masqueraded as a hardware store by day; another was also a music and record shop. There is live music somewhere every night in Dingle, so I listened to some great harp, accordion, guitar, and banjo music. Some of the songs were also sing-along! I rented a bike for two days while in Dingle; on the first day I went west to cruise around the rest of the peninsula, and the second day I punished myself by biking up and over the Conor pass (an elevation rise of 1,200 feet), twice. Due to the weather I was unable to take the ferry out to the Blasket islands on the end of the peninsula, but I saw them from the bike ride and went back on my first night to catch a nice sunset over them (see pictures). The islands were abandoned in the 1960s after a spate of bad fishing seasons, but they contain the ruins of some of Ireland's finest Irish language writers. The wind was brutal (and freezing) on these rides, but since I haven't been running at all on this trip it's probably good for me. I packed lunches and cooked in the hostel kitchen, doing okay but not great versions of sweet potato mac and cheese and fried rice. Grocery shopping is vastly cheaper here than eating out, in a large part due to a restaurant tax, although they charge you for using the store's plastic grocery bags (hooray! The Europeans, at least, have finally realized those stupid bags have environmental and economic costs!) It has been nice staying in the same place for the last 3 nights, and I think I'm going to aim for something similar when booking hostels in Switzerland. For now, I'm overnighting in Dublin before hopping onto the continent on a flight to Geneva. Happy Memorial Day back home, everyone!

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Photos

Cliffs from Dun Aonghasa
View down the island from the fort on the hill. The fort directly abuts the 500 ft precipice.

The Worm Hole
A unique geological formation on the coast; the waves carved under the ledge on the downward left side of the picture, so the water surges inside the swimming pool-like hole.

Folk music at the pub
Banjo, banjitar, and singing

The Cliffs of Moher
Peering out over the ledge to see the cliffs up the coast.

Sunset over the Blasket Islands
Not the best sunset owing to heavy cloud cover, but great contrast with the darkened islands

Dublin
Calatrava bridge in the business district in Dublin. Keep it real, Ireland!