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Published: October 16th 2008
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Galway
the cathedral So originally I was planning on putting all of Ireland together. Great idea Kristin, not only will this help you save time by typing everything, but then everybody who wants to read about Ireland can in one easy stop. Eh, didn’t happen. Reasons are that Dublin took up a lot of space, I have a lot of pictures to go with everything, and I disagree with Daniel (he wants one paragraph about everything - If I went there it deserves a decent description). So here is my second entry on Ireland, but I find this leg of the journey more interesting.
Our next stop through Ireland was Galway. A brief geographical idea of where I’m going to in Ireland - Dublin is on the far east coast of the island, and Galway is on the far west coast of the city. Both are fairly south, but they’re more or less in a straight line from each other. OK, moving on! Galway is a smaller city, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s roughly Ames/Pella/Bangor sized. It does have a university, but the city has a very small town feel to it. When we first
Galway
life in the fat lane (on our walk out to the lighthouse on the windiest day ever) (we didn't make it either) arrived Tecwyn again took us on an adventure. This time we went to the cathedral in Galway. It was quite stunning, because everything is made out of marble and native to Wales. Also they had a little shrine to JFK. In one of their mosaics of Christ they have a picture of JFK on the left hand side. I don’t quite know why, but Galway liked the president so, Go JFK! After our quick tour Tecwyn took us out by the bay and talked about the claddagh ring and the origins of it being started here in Galway. In fact the original jewelry store (Thomas Dillon) that made the ring was still in operation, only now selling very expensive claddagh rings. Hoorah for economics demand and supply.
After this not much happened until after dinner. We decided to head to a pub where we had been told had live music and we were surprised. Instead of traditional Irish music we got an earful of Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Eagles, you name it (good songs) they played it. We loved it, obviously, and being the only American’s there we talked them into playing a couple more songs. After that we
Galway
right before we headed out to the dance club... to bad you can't see our amazing outfits for the night decided it was time to go dancing! So off we ran to the club, and don’t worry we dominated the floor. When I say dominated I want you to picture seven of us in t-shirts (some a couple days old b/c their luggage was lost), two week old jeans, and in our hiking shoes owning the dance floor. (We will later learn that this club was voted the hottest new club in Ireland, way to represent America!) Aside from our amazing apparel, we have moves, no big deal.
The next morning we went on a lovely little tour of the countryside. We started in a lookout tower. It was very small, and actually had someone living in it until 20 years ago. (?) But the view was pretty, and everybody’s just pretty excited to be seeing anything that’s Irish. Basically it was just nice to sit in the warm, dry bus and look at THE countryside everybody thinks of when they think of Ireland. The rolling, green hills with their stone walls marking up their fields just flow around and around until you run into a cottage or town. (Oh, don’t worry there’s sheep) We also took a trip
Galway
view from tower to the Ailwee Cave. I’m really glad we had a tour guide for this portion of the trip, because if left in a cave on our own I don’t think we’d know what to take notice and what isn’t important. Plus everybody is camera happy, and I think we’d end up with a ton of pictures of rocks, just rocks. As cool as the cave was I’m going to go out there and say it was actually freezing! I was pumped about going back to the top where everything was a bit warmer. We then went on a little trip through the Burren. Stopped for a picture op at a gravesite, and then hopped back in to go visit a museum of what we just took a picture of. I would highly recommend this museum but only if you like incredibly cheesy, fake things and love having to pay ridiculous amounts of money to see it. Don’t go.
That night we decided to call it a night, and stay in to play cards. Don’t worry though our new friend Christian (from South Dakota but a piece of his heart is still in Minnesota) was the entertainment. There is no
Galway
TECWYN!!! good way to describe him. He’s that one person you meet in your life and you know you will never meet another human being that could possibly be anything like him, and then you realize he has family (and then you hope to God he’s just the weird one). That all sounds harsh, but he is a really funny, means well kind of kid. I think by having him on this trip will only add to the adventure. (He stole a weed from the Burren because he wants to take it back to America to sample the dirt… that’s the kind of kid he is.)
I'm going to stop here and add pictures - where I should add that these are not my pictures. After traveling through France and Italy, my batteries where dead. So naturally I charged them, and naturally I left the battery in my room. So all photos were given to me by my wonderful friends!
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