Our flight from Liverpool to Dublin brought me to only the third country I'd ever stepped foot in. We got there in the afternoon and spent most of the time getting to our hostel and looking for food. We weren't planning on staying long in Dublin anyway...it's pretty expensive, and frankly I couldn't think of a whole lot of attractions there. The city seemed kind of touristy, much more international than an authentic Irish experience. I'm sure if I'd studied there I would've found plenty to do in Dublin, but our group wanted to make the most of our few days in Ireland.
So we took the train to a small town called Rathdrum. It was a nice place, very small but very picturesque. Our hostel was at the top of a large hill and was run by a strange old lady who seemed to laugh at every little thing; she did kindly inform us one morning that the country had switched to Daylight Saving Time and that we had only an hour to catch our train instead of two. Thanks, old hostel lady. Rathdrum was our stopover point for visiting Glendalough, an absolutely gorgeous park/valley in the same county. We must've hiked five or six miles up this "hill," but it was definitely worth it because of the views it offered of the surrounding geography, including a lake. We visited on a very sunny but also windy and cold day; I can imagine that it would be fantastic to visit Glendalough in the summer.
(Side note: Rathdrum was the town where they filmed a scene for the movie Michael Collins, specifically of Liam Neeson doing this, somewhere I had no idea I would visit when I brought it up in my last post. Kind of eerie. I attempted to imitate the pose in a picture.)
From Rathdrum we took a train across Ireland to Galway, a city on the western shore of Ireland. I loved it there. One, it was much warmer facing the Atlantic than facing the Irish Sea; and two, I feel Galway provided me with much more of an "authentic" Irish experience. The pubs we wandered into were great, with lots of live music and friendly Irish people who loved talking about Obama and how Ireland is really going through tough economic times. Galway's waterfront reminded me a bit of Milwaukee, and lo and behold, Wikipedia tells me Galway is a sister city of Milwaukee. Go figure. The Galway Museum is small but has some interesting bits, including a fairly large section on JFK's one-hour visit to the city back in 1963.
On the magic day of March 31, my friend Ben and I returned to Dublin so we could catch our respective flights out of there the next day. Seeing as it was my 21st birthday, we felt obligated to hit a few pubs. Now, this was both good and bad: I enjoyed celebrating my birthday in this manner, as I will forever be able to tell people I spent the big 21 gallivanting around Dublin. However, it was Dublin--pints were not cheap. Oh €uro, must you mock me?
Some general observations on Ireland: Despite what I've heard, the Irish are very friendly people. Even the drunk guy outside our hostel seemed nice, as one morning he very loudly offered that anyone who wanted money could come back to his house, where he had a printing press. I also noticed many similarities between Ireland and America, namely that they don't drive the eco-friendly cars that the Brits do, they say "Thank you" instead of "cheers," and they call football "soccer."
Coming up next: London during the G20, and Springtime in Paris!
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