Monday, June 20, 2016
Current State
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| View from the ferry - bye, Ireland! |
As I write, I’m sitting on a train from Warrington Bank Quay
(pronounced “key”) to Edinburgh – about 20 minutes into a nearly 3-hour trip.
This morning, I took a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales, where I spent a
little over an hour before catching a train to Warrington Bank Quay (pronounced
“key”). Then, I waited just a few minutes for the train to Edinburgh. The ferry
was great – it was a quick two-hour trip over the Irish sea. I sat at a table
by a window and watched the coastline of Ireland slip into the horizon and out
of sight before turning my attention to reading Yes Please by Amy Poehler. Upon arrival at Holyhead, I had to show
my passport to a gentleman greeting us after baggage claim. I was expecting to
go through some kind of customs process as Ireland and the UK are different
countries, but the man just glanced at my passport to check if I looked like
the picture and waved me through with no stamp. I was a little confused by this
because I think usually you have to go through customs in each country even
when coming from within the EU. And I won’t lie, I’m a little disappointed I
won’t have that extra stamp in my passport. The train I’m on now, operated by a
company called Virgin Trains, is really nice. I’m seated at a table facing
forward. Technically, I have the window seat, but since no one is seated next
to me, I’ve put some of my things there and am sitting in the aisle. The train
technically has wifi, but you have to pay for it and I was having some trouble
loading the page where you enter your credit card info, so I’m going wireless
for this trip. My first train was older and not as comfortable. However,
instead of a little convenience store-type stand at the end of the car (coach)
like this train has, they had a snack cart. The guy would come through every
20-30 minutes and say “Anything off the trolley?” just like in Harry Potter!!!
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to between arriving in
Galway and sitting on this train to Edinburgh…
Bethany
I stayed at another Airbnb in Galway, which the hosts call
Bethany (not really sure why). Mary and Tom, the homeowners / hosts, were
wonderful and their house was the perfect set-up for an Airbnb. They are a
middle-aged couple with four grown sons, so they turned all four of their
upstairs bedrooms into Airbnb rooms. Two have twin beds and two have double
beds so they can have up to six guests at a time. The room was small but had
its own TV and sink, which meant the bathrooms were never crowded. I liked
having the TV because I could watch little bits of the Euro Cup and see Irish
news when I was getting ready or winding down.
Mary and Tom live on the first floor and the only time I saw
them was at breakfast each morning. They called it a continental breakfast and
Mary made it sound very simple when we spoke at check-in. I was very pleasantly
surprised to find that they did a full set of the table and had a variety of
cereal, cheese, bread, and fruit to choose from. Each morning, they offered me
either tea or coffee. (I always chose coffee because it’s very hard to find
non-espresso coffee here – when you order a “regular coffee” in a café, they
give you an Americano. I don’t have anything against Americanos, but they’re
not the same as a drip coffee.) They would then bring out either a French press
of coffee or a small pot of tea for each person. Mary usually stayed to chat
after bringing the coffee while Tom generally went right back to the adjacent
kitchen. The first morning, I ate alone and had a nice conversation with Mary
about her kids, traveling, and her experience as an Airbnb host (basically, she
loves it!). The next two mornings, I ate with the Swedish couple staying in the
room next to mine. They were very friendly and well-traveled, so we had lovely
conversations both mornings. The third morning we were also joined by a young
man from California who had just arrived the night before. I really enjoyed the
breakfast, both for the food and the company.
Wednesday Evening Through
Thursday Afternoon
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| Picture of the kitchen window at The Cellar. "If your girlfriend is an Irish soccer player, she's definitely a keeper!" Go Ireland! |
I arrived around 4 pm on Wednesday and stopped by the
tourist office across from the bus station to get a map before walking to the
Airbnb. The man who helped me was very friendly and suggested I try a bus tour
to either Connemara or the Aran Islands while I was there. I didn’t really
intend to go on either tour, but I took the brochures he gave me anyway. He
also gave me a Galway city map, which had sites of interested highlighted and numbered.
I attempted to use his instructions to get to the Airbnb but ended up missing
my first turn and ended up on completely the wrong street. After a brief
consultation with the map, I realized my mistake and backtracked to where I
needed to be, wondering why I couldn’t have just brought a tiny backpack
instead of a duffel bag.
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| Traditional Irish Breakfast |
Mary greeted me at the door and showed me around briefly,
then I got settled and started researching places to go to dinner. I decided on
a pub because I knew Northern Ireland was playing in the Euros and I thought it
would be fun to be able to watch the match while eating. The game turned out to
be a really good one, and Northern Ireland won! To eat, I chose a traditional
Irish breakfast, which included two rashers, two sausages, two fried eggs,
black and white pudding, chips, and toast. I wasn’t really sure what all of
those things were when I ordered, but it was a delicious choice. As it turned
out, rashers are just ham, the puddings are some kind of grain stuck together
with some kind of dry syrupy type thing, chips are (of course) thick French
fries, and the beans are most similar to the baked beans people eat at BBQs. I
was pretty skeptical about having beans with my breakfast food, but they turned
out to be a great compliment to the eggs, sausages, and toast. After dinner, I
walked around a few of the nearby shops before heading back to the Airbnb for a
good night’s sleep.
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| Store where the original Claddagh ring was made, featuring an explanation of the symbolism of the hands (friendship), heart (love), and crown (loyalty). |
On Thursday, I decided to do a self-guided walking tour
using the map from the info center. It had 15
different sites marked, and I got
to a little over half of them while also making frequent stops in the various
city centre shops. It was a very leisurely way to see the city and has been my
favorite day so far – Galway is really delightful. The main area of the city is
a handful of streets and side streets full of shops, pubs, cafés, etc. All of
the businesses are inside these old buildings with cool architectural features
and many of them are brightly colored. I was wandering through this area for at
least four hours and still felt like I could have stayed longer. I even got to see the store where the original Claddagh ring was made!! |
| Shop Street* in Galway's City Centre. (*might be called something else entirely, street signs are impossible to find.) |
While
exploring, I fell in love with Irish sweaters – they have them in tons of the
shops and they are beautiful cable knits. I didn’t bring any warm clothes with
me and had been feeling fairly cold since arriving, so I thought I might like
to buy one before leaving (especially thinking ahead to going on the ferry!). I
spent the rest of my trip going back and forth about styles, colors, sizes, and
prices, but eventually I decided on one I loved literally an hour before my bus
left Galway – it’s merino wool with a pretty blue and purple dye pattern, knit
in the traditional “Aran” style. (Fun fact: on the Aran Islands, there is a
knitting pattern for each family!) It’s beautiful and I wore it for two
straight days.
For lunch on Thursday, I went to Cupán Tae, a traditional
Irish tea shop. I ordered afternoon tea, and it’s exactly how you would picture
it. A beautiful dish set and a little tea tray of egg salad sandwiches (cut
into crust-less triangles), a scone, and miniature desserts. I got Galway Cream
tea, a flavored black tea made especially and exclusively for the shop – the
server recommended it, and it was delicious. I loved every minute of this and
definitely want to go to another tea shop while on this trip.
I will share the highlights from my walking tour, with tons of photos, in a separate post.
Thursday Evening
Through Friday
On Thursday evening, I had dinner with some of our Irish cousins
who I met 10 years ago at a family reunion. Margaret, Aideen (daughter), and
Lauren (granddaughter) suggested we meet at Milano, a nice Italian restaurant
in the city centre. We had a delicious meal and it was wonderful to catch up
and share updates about our families. Aideen’s boyfriend met us toward the end
of the meal as well. They were all so nice and welcoming. This dinner made me
incredibly thankful that my aunties found and maintained this connection.
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| One of our photo stops in Connemara. |
On Friday, I took a tour bus to Connemara, which is a rural
area of County Galway. This is known as
the center of the Irish language,
Gaelic. Apparently, many of the citizens in this region of the country use
Gaelic as their primary language and I did notice that some of the signs only
had the Gaelic names for locations, rather than both Gaelic and English. Apparently,
there are also some camps in this region where teens are not allowed to use any
technology or speak any English for a few weeks so that they can be fully
immersed in Gaelic. There is quite the movement happening to make a significant
number of the children in Ireland fully bilingual. Aideen and Emmett (her
boyfriend) are sending their daughter, Lauren, to a Gaelic language public school
when she starts kindergarten. Aideen said it’s very hard to get into because
people want their children to grow up knowing Gaelic.  |
| Panorama of Kylemore Abbey grounds. |
Connemara is, in a word, stunning. It is some of the most
beautiful scenery I have ever seen, and I grew up less than an hour from the
Columbia River Gorge. It is the area of Ireland that sees the most rain, and
you can tell because everything is so green and lush. There are also a lot of
lakes and streams in this area that add to the beauty. One of the biggest
industries in the region is producing wool, so there are lots of sheep grazing
in the fields along the highways. They would look like they were just roaming
the wild except that they have paint splotches on their backs to help the
different farmers keep track of their flocks. The tour guide told us they’re
allowed to wander all day and then dogs are sent to shepherd them back to the
farms. Another key industry of the area is mining and producing green marble,
so lots of the gift shops we saw featured jewelry and artwork made with Connemara
marble.
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| Panorama of Kylemore Abbey from the front. |
The big highlight of the bus tour was a two-hour stop at
Kylemore Abbey. Originally built as Kylemore Castle in the 1800s, it’s a
stunning stone building on top of a hill in front of a lake. It’s truly
incredible to see. A group of Benedictine nuns bought the Abbey in the early
1900s and started running a girls’ school there. The school was in operation
all the way until 2010, featuring a mix of boarders and day students –
apparently there were even some Indian princesses who attended! The nuns still
own the property and use most of the Abbey, but some of the rooms on the first
floor have been restored with furniture and history plaques describing their
use. The rooms they have open are very reminiscent of Downton Abbey,
particularly the dining room and sitting room. The property also features a
beautiful garden about a mile from the Abbey, but I didn’t make it down there
because I spent too long reading all the info in the restored rooms! I did get
to see the Gothic Cathedral, which the original owner built as a memorial to
his wife after she unexpectedly passed away.
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| Panorama of Kylemore Abbey grounds from the front. |
Our last stop on the tour was in the village of Cong, which
is on the boarder of County Galway and County Mayo. I don’t think it’s
technically part of Connemara, but it’s a popular tourist destination in its
own right because it’s where the movie “Quiet Man” (featuring John Wayne and
Kathleen O’Hara) was filmed. Also, there is a beautiful historic building
called Ashford Castle, which currently serves as a hotel and wedding venue. It’s
probably very lavish and expensive because both Pierce Brosnan and Courtney Cox
both had their weddings there!
That’s all for now, I’ll post soon about my last days in Galway
and Dublin, as well as my first few days in Edinburgh!
Love,
Colleen
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