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Published: April 18th 2009
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Hey… so I know its been awhile since I’ve had any entries into my blog but its been crazy busy around here. After St. Patricks Day school got really busy and then before I knew it it was already Spring Break. So here it goes!
Kaelyn, Becca and I decided to go to Galway for St. Patricks Day. We headed there a couple days beforehand to travel around the area. The first day we did a bus tour of the Connemara. Its this really beautiful area of Galway that runs along the coast. There’s tons of mountains (not quite like the ones back home though haha) and bogs and interesting grasslands. The area is also pretty traditional and the first language in a large area of the Connemara is Irish. The bus tour lasted all day and for lunch we stopped at he Kylemore Abbey were we toured the area. The Abbey was originally built in 1863 by Mitchell Henry for his wife as a private home. After he and his wife died it ended up switching ownership until it was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 1920 and is used a all girl boarding school. We were able to
go into some of the rooms of the monastery and also walked around the gardens. It’s an absolutely gorgeous house (Henry Mitchell’s wife as lucky haha) and there is also this little neo-gothic church built on the grounds. After that we headed back on the bus (which was actually more like a seniors tour haha because we ended up on a bus with a group of seniors who were there for a bridge tournament. They would sing and clap (or at least try) to the music haha. And they kept asking me all about Canada and Montreal because they got it in their heads that I was from there and even when I told them I wasn’t they continued to ask me questions like “so how long does it take to fly here from Montreal haha) and we headed back for Galway. That night we kept it pretty low key and just went out for dinner and then headed back to the hostel. The next day we took a ferry to Aran Islands which are three islands (we went to one called inishmore). Irish living is completely different on these islands. They live very traditionally and apparently only recentely got
electricity. It was really interesting to go there and experience that. The boat ride over was an adventure in itself.. the sea was a little rough that day and Ferry was being knocked all over the place by the waves. You couldn’t even stand up without holding on to something. It was so rough they had the Irish Coast Guard follow the boat to the Island.
Once we got to the Island we rented bikes (as almost everyone does) and biked around the island and saw the sights. We went up to some cliffs which was really gorgeous (and, windy!), and also saw a colony of sea lions. We headed back to Galway around 5 and that night we went out to the Kings Head pub with some of our hostel roommates (who were also Canadian) and neighbours, who were all students from different areas of Europe doing exchanges.
The next day was St. Patricks Day so we decided to get up early and walk around the city before it got to busy with the days festivities because we hadn’t really seen the city yet. Around 11 we headed to where the parade to get some really good spots for
the parade that started at 12. The parade was pretty cool, but definitely not as big as I thought it would be, nor were there as many St. Patricks related things. There was actually a couple of Canadian groups in the parade haha. After the parade the city just became this huge party. People just drinking and partying on the streets! It was like the Red Mile but more like a Green Mile. After we got dinner we walked around and joined in on the fun! We went back to the Kings Head pub that night but it was way to busy so I left and ended up running into my roommates from school and hung out with them for awhile.
All, in all, it was a good trip. Definitely glad to experience the St. Patricks Day in Ireland!
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