Ireland

This past weekend I went with a group of 5 other guys to Ireland. (Damon Fereshetian, Dan Utley, Eric Anderson, Chris Allebach and Nate Brunk) This all came about because I was just browsing the airline's website and saw we could fly round trip for 29 euros. So why wouldn't we go to Ireland? We flew into Shannon and spent that night in the airport because we arrived after 11pm. That wasn't the most pleasant night I've ever had. I think they turn off any kind of heat the building may possibly have at night. Plus the ground wasn't the most comfortable thing I've laid on. Regardless, we made our way to Galway on the 7am bus. Once we arrived, we booked a tour of the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren countryside. The Cliffs of Moher were the best thing of the whole trip. If you haven't been there and you're going to Ireland, you better go there. They're absolutely amazing cliffs off the west coast of Ireland that stretch to almost 700ft at their highest point. Pictures don't do it justice, you just have to be there. On the tour we got to see just how rocky the Irish countryside is. The reason they have the stone fences everywhere is just because there are way too many rocks. If you had a plot of land, you move all the rocks to the outside of it so the animals can graze. They also make nice walls to keep in the animals. We spent the next two nights in Galway at a really nice hostel, the Kinlay House. Then on Saturday, we booked a ferry to Inis Mór, the largest of the 3 Aran Islands. They're located just off the coast near Galway. We rented bikes and biked all over it. There are also cliffs on one end of the island. These are "only" 300ft high yet they're still very impressive. Especially when you can just stand by the edge, a foot from death. We talked to a local lady that knitted sweaters. She was quite a talker, but we found out more information about the area. It was pretty interesting to find out how many people actually speak the celtic language still. Quite a bit of rural Ireland still has it as their first language. On Sunday we went to church with some people Damon knew. He spent 2 summers previously in Galway on missions trips. We went over to the pastors house and had an awesome lunch there and had to meet some local Irish folk our age. Real cool. In the afternoon we took a bus to Dublin. Dublin was kind of a letdown. Whenever someone thinks of Ireland, they usually think of Dublin too. It's really not that cool. The city itself is nice overall. It's got a canal going through the center of it, it's got a nice "hangout district" called the Temple Bar, and it's got quite a bit of history as well. The thing that's most disappointing is that there are so few Irish people around. I'm sure there are plenty of Irish people in the suburbs and elsewhere, but downtown, there were so many foreigners. Just walking around you had maybe a 25% chance of overhearing an English conversation. There are just a lot of tourists and a lot of immigrants into Dublin. If you want a real Irish experience, go to Galway. It's a nice, smaller city that feels Irish. We then got up Monday morning and flew back to Nantes, ready to sleep in our own beds again. And tomorrow we leave forParis. Voilà

Me at the Cliffs of Moher















One of the sights on Inis Mór















Looking down a few hundred feet