The Tart with the Cart

Sorry for the late update. It has been a crazy few weeks but I will try to get up to date with everything I am doing.



Galway

Galway was amazing, Simply amazing. I arrived Friday night and booked into my very first hostel. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and actually was a great chance to meet people. While I was waiting around in the lobby I ran into the Dan, the guy I sat next to on the plane ride over the Atlantic with. He was staying at the same hostel as me with his brother, his friend, and a girl they met in Dublin. They invited to go out with them that n

ight and I had a fantastic time.

For the next two days I became a diehard tourist. I took a bus tour up in the Burren and along the Cliffs of Moher. The Burren is one of the national parks of Ireland and is home to very rare flora and fauna. It also contains dolmens which are ancient burial tombs.

The Cliffs of Moher were by far the most beautiful place I visited. The cliffs rise from 400 to 700 feet straight out of the Atlantic Ocean. The

y have been used in many popular movies including “The Princess Bride” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”. At this point of the tour I also got my first taste of Irish weather. As we arrived I was able to get a few photos of the cliffs before it started to pour rain. The other tourists and I quickly went to the tourist center for shelter to wait out the storm. While waiting for the bus we wandered around the center which was built into a hill like a hobbit hole. As we left the fog had fully set in and I could no longer see the cliffs from the center. It amazed me how quickly the weather changes on this Island.

The final stop of the tour was at Aillwee caves, which means yellow cliff in Gaelic. The caves were any different from caves in the US and there wasn’t any “wow” factor that I hadn’t seen in other caves. The one interesting nugget that was in the caves were complete skeletons of European Brown Bears that have been extinct in the UK for ce

nturies.

The next bus tour I took showed me Connemara. This area of western Ireland is home to the Twelve Pins, Maumturks Mountains and Killary Harbour, Ireland’s only Fjord. We stopped at Kylemore Abbey, which was built as a honeymoon estate by Mitchell Henry for his new bride. The abbey was fairytale like set into the mountain side and had an elaborate walled garden.

Connemara is also home to the Connemara pony. These little ponies are known for being extremely hardy and good tempered. We were able to spot a few while we were traveling up to the coast.

Dublin

Living in Enfield has been great because I am so close to my work, but man, its in the middle of nowhere. So I hopped on a bus and fled to Dublin for the weekend. I booked a hostel in Temple Bar area of the city which was the perfect location. I just down the alley from The Temple which although it was loud, I got to listen to music till I fell asleep.

I did not have a plan of attach to see all of Dublin so I jumped on a tour bus and saw it all. My first stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was built near a holy well where St. Patrick himself might have baptized early Christians. Jonathan Swift was a Dean of St. Patrick’s and this is the location of his grave.

The next stop on the bus tour was the Guinness Storehouse. This place was absolutely amazing. I myself do not like Guinness but drinking that stout at the top of Dublin was the best drink I have ever had. The storehouse is the original site of Sir Arthur Guinness’s brewery. He rented the land in 1759for 9,000 years with an annual rent of £45. The brewery has been producing their well known stout ever since. The museum now sits on the original location of the brewery and has a 7 story “pint glass” that you wind around as you go step by step through the brewing process.

After leaving the Guinness store house I wandered over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a medieval manuscript created by Celtic monks around 800 A.D. I wasn’t able to go in and see it but I was told that it has magnificent illustrations.

I went to Marrion Square which is home to a famous Oscar Wilde statue. The houses that line this park have the famous Georgian style townhouses which have many famous residents.

I wandered through the National Museums of Ireland. The Natural History museum is also called the “Dead Zoo”. It is very similar to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. except the animals are not placed into “scenarios. It was also interesting to walk around the natural wildlife of Ireland and finally be able to name the annoying birds nesting outside my window.

For my last night in Dublin I hung out with two Kiwis I met at the Guinness Storehouse. We began our night at Putry’s Kitchen and listened to an Irish band perform covers of American Music. I never thought “Sweet Home Alabama” could be sung in anything other than a Souther drawl, but an Irish lilt gave it an interesting twist. The guitarist was by far the best musician I had heard in Ireland. After the band finished their set, we moved on to Oliver St. James Grogarty which is known for its traditional Irish music. We stayed there until 2 AM listening to these guys play. They were absolutely astounding and the atmosphere was perfect.

My last day included epic wandering around Dublin and finding a little piece of home in a cup of Tim Hortons Coffee. I walked around St. Stephan’s Park. Dublin Parks are very different from city parks in the US because they have these elaborate ponds with bird islands in the center. I joined a free tour of Dublin and learned some history of the uprising and of the Vikings that called Dublin home.