Dun Laoghaire and Halloween!

When we got back from our Westport trip, Alex gave her friends from Ireland a ring and we were invited out to Dun Laoghaire for the afternoon to go on a boat ride! The weather was pretty moderate, but almost as soon as we arrived at their house (after taking the DART, a T-like system), it began to downpour. It looked like our boat plans were cancelled, but we waited it out and decided to go out a little later once the rain had calmed down. It was still a little overcast, but with our sweatshirts, scarves and ski jackets on, Alex, James, Niall, Mark (all brothers) and I got into the boat and went out to sea.

The ride was a bit choppy, but fun nonetheless! We actually saw a couple of porpoises in the bay area that we stopped and just floated in. The views from the water were absolutely gorgeous- beautiful houses lined the coast and Dalkey Island was really cool with old towers, churches and stone buildings.

We came back in from the boat and sat down for a nice dinner of Swiss Steak with the Rogers family. Alex and I actually ended up spending the night there after going out to a 21^st birthday party with Niall and his friends. In the morning, we had a traditional Irish breakfast, and because the weather was so nice, went out on the boat again!

This time though, we pulled up to Dalkey Island, tied up the boat and started exploring. The island was gorgeous and the old broken down stone buildings were really cool to wander through. I didn’t have my camera with me, sadly. It was cool to imagine what went on when this island was actually used too, because we found places where there must have been cannons situated in order to defend the area, an old church of sorts and a large tower that was used as a lookout. We got back on the boat just in time as the tide went out, and headed back to shore. Here are some photos Niall and James took from thier phones!

Again, we were invited to stay for dinner and enjoyed a Sunday dinner of Lamb, roasted potatoes, roasted parsnips, and spinach. Absolutely delicious! There’s nothing like a homecooked meal. 

This week has been Halloween week, with the DCU Halloween ball having been the 24^th. This year I went with an Army girl for a costume. Pretty easy to work with! We had a big party in my apartment before the ball, then all left together around 11 to get in. It was super fun and really awesome to see so many people dressed up in good costumes! Went into town last night too- sooo many people! All of the pubs and clubs were filled to capacity by midnight (which doesn’t happen until about 2 or 3 usually!). We had a really good time though.

Another update- I’m going to Paris from the 5^th-8^th to celebrate my birthday! Stacie and I are going to be staying 5 minutes from the Louvre for two nights and then at an airport hotel for the other one! I’m really really looking forward to it- Paris is definitely somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. The travel opportunities here are amazing. My weekends are pretty full with trips here, there and everywhere!

My 21^st birthday is on Thursday- yikess! Even though the drinking age is 18 here, they all celebrate 21^st birthdays as another big one, so it should be funnn!

That’s all for now- Slainte!

Western Ireland: Westport, Connemara, and Achill Island

For the ‘History and Culture of Modern Ireland’ course that I am enrolled in, we’re able to go on field trips to supplement the things that we have been learning in class. In the first few weeks, we covered a lot of information surrounding plantations, estates and cottages, and the potato famine and this trip gave a face to the things we were just hearing about in class.

On Wednesday the 20^th, we all boarded a bus at 8:45. Leaving by 9:00, the 21 American students enrolled in this class were on the way to the west! We drove for a couple hours and made our first stop at the Strokestown estate. The Strokestown estate was home to the Mahon family since it was built. The estate operated much like the feudal system used to- the ‘landlords’ lived in a big house inside a gated area of property that their family lived on. On the outside of these walls were smaller plots that were rented by the peasants who lived on the property and farmed their own food/raised their own animals. We got a guided tour of this house, which is one of the oldest of it’s kind and also one of the most well preserved. The tour guide gave us a pretty comprehensive history of the family as well. Here are some photos from the estate:

After we finished this tour, we were able to browse through the Famine Museum, which was on the same property. Western Ireland was hit the hardest by “An Gorta More” (The Great Hunger), so it was really interesting to see artifacts and read about exactly how the people of western Ireland dealt with the famine.

After we had a quick lunch of soup and bread, we boarded the bus again and were on our way to the Museum of Country Life. Living in Dublin, you get a completely different view of how things have grown and developed over the years because it’s a city atmosphere. The teachers of our class thought it was important for us to be exposed of all aspects of Irish life- hence the museum.  Walking around and seeing some of the rituals that took place, tools that were used, and materials that were made was really cool. Here’s a few highlights:

After this, we drove about an hour and finally arrived in Westport, where we would be staying for the three nights. We wandered around the little town for a while as we waited for dinner to be served, exploring little shops and nooks and crannies of a town vastly different from Dublin. We were served a full three course meal at the hotel (delicious!) and then got dressed and headed out to a few local pubs that were hosting live music. Matt Molloy’s was our first stop. He is a member of The Cheiftains and has much popularity both in Ireland and throughout the world. There are actually 2 Grammy’s that he won sitting behind the bar! The live music here was awesome- a cool setting too, because the guys who were playing were just sitting in the corner of the bar in a circle doing their thing. Actually at one point, an older Irish guy pulled me up into the middle of the floor and started to try to teach me ‘how to jig.’ I’m not sure how successful I was, but it was a funny experience! Then, we went over to the bar next door, The Porterhouse. There was live music here too and a really cool atmosphere so it was a lot of fun.

On Thursday morning, we were up and out by 9:30. Our first stop was Croagh Patrick, a mountain said to be where St. Patrick sat on the summit and fasted for 40 days in the fifth century. We were only able to climb up a small distance to a checkpoint because we had a lot more to do in our day. It was gorgeous though!

We walked across the street from Croagh Patrick to see the National Famine Memorial too. As I said, western Ireland, especially County Mayo (where we were) was hit particularly hard when the Potato Famine struck, so there is a monument to commemorate the famine here. The monument is an artistic replica of a coffin ship which is a ship that was used to carry peasants away from Ireland during the time of hunger that usually lost about 40-50% of the members on board by the time they reached their destination. The sails are made of skeletons as well, to represent the amount of lives lost.

After we left the National Famine Memorial, we got back on the bus and drove to our next destination. On our way, we drove through the ‘Famine Road.’ This was a path taken by thousands of peasants as they sought refuge and food from the rulers of the time. The views were absolutely breathtaking.

After this, we made our way to Connemara National Park where we were able to hike for a few hours. Our group did the medium loop around the park because the highest/longest one required more time than we were allotted. Here are some photos from that too!

After the hike, we got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel in Westport. Again, we had a lovely 3 course meal from the hotel and went out into the town for the night.

On Friday morning, our first stop was to Tom Hannigan’s house. Tom comes from a family of peasants who lived on an estate for most of their life. He has preserved the cottage that his family has owned for centuries perfectly, and uses it as a way to explain the way of life of the peasant. We’d already seen how it works in the estates, so this was a cool way to get both sides of the story.

We didn’t really have great weather for the day, but we went on to our next destination anyway. Achill island is a small island off of the West Coast, and we went on the Atlantic drive along the coast. We did stop to get out a few times, but the rain was pretty fierce so mostly it was just views from the bus!

Dinner that night- and then we went out on the town for our last night in Westport! Cosy Joes, a local bar/club, was having a 2.50 euro drink promotion all night, so I’d say that was a success J We took the bus home to Dublin in the morning and were back by about 1pm!

Amsterdam & Brussels!

Okay, so I really haven’t updated this in a while and a lot has gone down! There’s going to be a few separate blog posts to sum it all up..

First thing is first though- AMSTERDAM AND BRUSSELS! This was the first trip that my group of friends had planned to leave the country. Departing Friday morning at 8:00am, we were prepared for one of the best weekends of our lives. The night before, I had printed boarding passes, train schedules, shuttle tickets, etc. and we were set to go. After a small hiccup with the taxi that we ordered for 6:30AM- we were on our way to the airport with nothing but our backpacks (and several layers of clothing to make sure the bags were the right size!). At the airport, because we had done online check-in, we jumped right into the security line to go to our gate. Little did we know that we needed to get a visa stamp before clearing security, so after waiting in the line and getting to the front, we had to step out and go back to the check-in desk for this stamp. The stamp took little to no time, but because of the taxi delay, we were already behind schedule and cutting it close to the 7:30 AM gate closure. We got our stamps, jumped in the Business class line at security (totally legit mind you, the original security man said we could J), and began to run. Surprise! The Ryanair gates are at the very end of the terminal that’s about 2 miles long! (That might be an exaggeration, but at 7:30 in the morning with a huge backpack on your back, it seemed like it). We got to the terminal on time though, because Ryanair hadn’t closed the gate yet and/or even begun to board. After that scare, we were happy to be seated on the plane and on our way to Brussels. The flight was only about an hour and a half- not bad at all! We touched down in Brussels at 10:30 (with an hour time difference).

Friday was mainly dedicated to travel, as we needed to get to Amsterdam to check into our hostel for 2 nights before we came back to Brussels. Ryanair flies into the most inconvenient airports ever, so in order to get to center of Brussels, we left Charleroi at 11:45 and took a 40 minute shuttle to Bruxelles Midi- the main train station in the city. From here, we caught a train that would take us to Amsterdam. We got to Amsterdam around 5:00pm and made our way to the hostel we would be staying at, called Shelter City. It was a fairly nice hostel, with God Loves You paintings over all the walls (did I mention it was a Christian hostel?), great security and comfortable rooms. It was also very centrally located, right next to Nieuwmarkt Square!

Courtyard shots of the hostel!

Friday night, all of us went out to eat at a restaurant that was right down the road from our hostel. It was a great place to go- we split a delicious bottle of white wine, and I had roasted chicken, salad and chips. It was pretty fairly priced, especially for a city as expensive as Amsterdam! After this, we went back to the hostel, settled in a bit, and then ventured into the center of Nieuwmarkt Square to a coffee shop called “The Jolly Joker”. We went to bed relatively early because we wanted to accomplish a lot on Saturday so we didn’t want to be tired!

Saturday morning we got up early and got ready to make our way over to the Van Gogh museum. Not having computers with us, we had to rely on word-of-mouth to find our way to the museum. It was located across the city, but luckily, it was a great day out and we had no troubles with the weather! Along the way, we found a lot of little shops for souvenirs and also stumbled upon Dam Square, another central part of the city. It was absolutely gorgeous!

When we finally got to Museumplein (where the museum was located), we also realized that we had found the famous I Amsterdam sign! We had a lot of fun taking pictures with the sign too.

The Van Gogh museum was amazing. Unfortunately we  were not allowed to take photographs at all, but it’s understandable in order to preserve the one-of-a-kind artwork that the museum housed. The museum took us through Van Gogh’s life by floor, also showing artwork from people who he saw as major influences to his own work. It also guided us through many of the works of his contemporaries too, which I thought was really cool. The artwork was absolutely breathtaking- even moreso because we were there in person. You can’t see the texture and layers of his paintings from a photograph, but in person, you can see the thickness of the paint he was using, the way the ridges of dried paint help to form the full picture. It was a really amazing experience overall.

After the Van Gogh museum, we grabbed some lunch at a local restaurant. We walked around the city for a while, popped into a few coffeeshops along the way, and took in as much of the city as we could in such a short period of time. Here are some photos from the day:

On Sunday morning, we woke up early, packed up all of our stuff from the hostel and checked out. We got on a train at about 10 that got us back to Brussels by 1:00, so we still had a pretty full day. We browsed through a local flea market right outside of the train station for a little while and then made our way to the biggest thing we had on our list: Grand Place. This city square is cobblestone from corner to corner and on each side of you, some of the most ornate buildings rose about 6 stories. The architecture here was amazing, and the buildings took your breath away.

We continued to walk around the city, and took in the best that Brussels had to offer- waffles and chocolate! The particular place that we stopped to get waffles was absolutely amazing- there was a layer of melted sugar on the inside of the waffle- topped with Raspberry sauce it really couldn’t get much better!

We also went to a few chocolate shops and picked up some goodies! My favorite was the coconut truffle from ‘La Belgique Gourmande’. We finally stumbled upon Mannequin Pis- the famous statue of a boy peeing into a pool. It was a lot smaller than we imagined!

We continued to walk around and take in the sights- stopped by St. Nicolas’ Church and passing some street art on the way! A few of us actually took home a canvas for only 15 euro. Mine is a gorgeous red and orange abstract picture of African figures- I can’t wait to hang it on my wall when I get home!

When it started getting dark out, we hopped on a shuttle back out to Charleroi, where we stayed in the airport hotel for the night so that we were closer in the morning to be able to catch our 7:00 flight! We made the flight with perfect timing the next morning, and landed in Dublin again at 7:35. Then it was time for me to go to sleep until my class at 1:00.

The weekend was one of the best I’ve ever had. I’m so glad that I’m getting the opportunity to travel as much as I have been/plan to in the next 2 months!