Holy Moly I'm in IRELAND!

Well I know you have all been desperately awaiting my update on my travel to Galway and pretty much the title sums it all up! On this trip I got to travel through the Irish countryside and I had so many moments when I realized . . . wow I'm in Ireland! I know I've been in Ireland for more than a month now but I've been in Dublin city and the nice seaside village of Malahide neither of which really remind me of my longheld image of what Ireland looks like . . . well on this trip I went through the country side and I saw so many green fields and sheep galore and very cool stone walls separating fields! Now that was my image of what Ireland is and I really felt like I was in Ireland. Of course the constant grey and frequent drizzle and rain also added to my realization that yes I am truly in Ireland! So that was exciting to finally feel like I was in Ireland and not just in some place far from home where the people speak with funny accents!

I had a couple of other real cool realizations on my trip as well. As I was brushing my teeth in my hostel one night and looking at my toiletry kit and realizing how ugly it really is it struck me that I have had that toiletry kit for more than 16 year! For my 9th birthday my mom had the idea that instead of goody bags with candy at my birthday party we should get little toiletry kits ad fill them with nail clippers and I can't remember what else, but kind of girly toiletry items . . . I thought the idea was great and my toiletry bag was the one I received from that birthday party! So then I started taking note of how ratty it is which makes sense since it is more than 16 years old and it hits me that this bag has been with me everywhere! It has come on every overnight trip with me since my 9th birthday! It has been to camp, youth retreats, friend's houses for sleepovers, family vacations to Port Alberni and even twice to Edmonton! Of course it has also been to the more exciting places I've been like Guatemala, Ucluelet, Australia, Mexico City, London, Dublin, and now Galway! This bag has been everywhere and seen everything and I can't help thinking if only this bag could talk and remind me of the adventures it and I have been on that I can't even remember! Eventually it will be time to retire this bag, but I'm glad it is with me here in Europe and gets to go on all my weekend adventures with me and add more countries to the list of places it has been while I add them to my list!

My other very cool realization came my third day when I was on the Aran Islands. I was climbing down the hill I had trekked to reach more amazing ruins and was struck by what I had just done. I was impressed enough that I made it up that big hill with no problems (I love the way I am able to stretch myself physically and feel so proud when I accomplish things with little problem when last year it would have been a problem!), but I explored these crazy ruins! And that's really what hit me, I have done some very cool things in my short 25 years. I have always kind of thought that I have lived such a slow unadventurous life and have really been waiting for "life" to start, but that is not true at all! I have definitely not had an unadventurous life . . . yes there were seasons that were downright dull, but I took that opportunity to think through what I have done. I have hiked mountains in Guatemala, pet koalas and kangaroos in Australia, visited thousand year old pyramid ruins in Mexico City, visited downright dangerous areas of Mexico City, traveled across the world on my OWN twice so far, now I've personally seen cliffs which are in the running for the new 7 wonders of nature, wandered through ruins on the top of a cliff on the Aran Islands, and that's just the beginning of my adventure! I know I have a lot more to see and do on this current European adventure, but I have done a lot already for 25 years and a lot that not a lot of other people would necessarily get to do! So I was very enlightened on my weekend getaway! I realized I have not led as boring and sheltered life as I thought and it was really cool to actually think back and list all the amazing adventures I've had (and I'm sure I've had others that I missed, but those were the ones that immediately came to mind!).

Now for the details of my trip (I'll try to keep it short since it's almost my bed time!). I was really happy that everything went off without a hitch! I love to travel, and it has always been a desire of mine to do a lot of traveling, but I also get so anxious before I travel! There is always so much that can go wrong (and plenty did on my way to Dublin!), and I have the type of brain that lists everything that can go wrong and it can be difficult to convince myself that everything will be ok and to trust that just because it could go wrong doesn't mean it will! So I always get that hit of anxiety before I set off on a traveling adventure and this time was no different. As I was riding the train to Dublin City where I was catching a bus to Galway I just kept thinking I wished I was in my room in Malahide chilling in front of the tv (I was EXHAUSTED!). I was anxious about travelling and I knew I wouldn't even get to Galway until 11:30pm and I was hoping everything would go well with checking into my hostel. Fortunately I slept a lot on the bus ride to Galway and when I say a lot I mean I slept the whole time! I actually wished the bus ride was longer because I didn't want to leave the bus as soon as I did! Fortuately I was able to easily check into my hostel and I took such care to be quiet and keep the lights off when I was setting up in my room since it was midnight and I didn't want to wake people up . . . well I later found out no one was in the room at that point so I took all that care for nothing! Oh well!

On Friday I woke up earlier than I wanted to, but got up when my alarm (and about 5 other alarms ) went off and managed to get ready with time to spare! So I made my way down to the bus station where I was supposed to meet my tour and ended up being there 45 minutes before I needed to (well I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the bus!). The tour for the day was to the Cliffs of Moher and it was great. We made some smaller stops at a birds of prey sanctuary and a cool cave called Ailwee cave, which I really enjoyed and definitely got some cool pictures of, but the cliffs were by far the highlight for me. They were spectacular! And I later found out when I was in the visitor center that they are being considered as one of the 7 new wonders of nature, so that's how spectacular that really are! I was really pleased that the weather cooperated so nicely for that visit, though it did start to rain on the way home! On the way home I also started to feel like I was run over by a truck (the results of a late night/early morning combo with little sleep in between!). I snoozed a little bit on the bus on the way back since it was a road we had already traveled so I'd already seen it, but I was still so exhausted when I got back to my hostel that I lay down in bed and rested for about 2 hours then decided I didn't even have the energy to go out and get dinner, so I decided to just get ready for bed and went to bed at like 8pm (as I'm sure my roommates made great fun of me for, but whatever, I needed it!). I didn't end up falling asleep until nearly 10, but it felt so good to just rest in bed and I felt a MILLION times better the next day than I did the day before!

The next day was a tour to the Aran Islands. They are pretty famous islands, so if you don't know them you should look them up because they are spectacular! Since I had so much time to spare for my tour the day before I decided to stay in bed longer and stop for an actual breakfast instead of grabbing a muffin at a convenience store! Of course what I didn't realize was that this tour actually left earlier than the one the day before. I found 2 departure times . . . 1 was 9:30 and the other 9:45 . . . I figured we meet at 9:30 and then leave at 9:45 . . . in reality the tour leaves at 9:30 and it was a different tour entirely that leaves at 9:45 (you'd think they could have made that more clear!). So I wander into the bus terminal at about 9:32 and tell the guy in front of the tour sign that I'm there for the Aran Islands tour. His eyes get big and he repeats me then says to follow him and hurry . . . I had no idea what was going on, but I followed him outside and we arrived just in time to see a bus pull away! The man said that was my bus. I didn't even really have time to stress out at all tho because the man got on the phone right away and then told me to get in this other bus, then he personally drove me across the city to meet up with my tour bus where they were picking up people at some hotel! I felt awful and apologized to the man and thanked him, and he was really nice about everything! The tour guide was really nice too! We didn't talk as I got on the bus, but he made sure to some find me on the ferry to chat and he told me how glad he was that I was able to make it and seemed really relieved when he confirmed that I was the one who had emailed him because I had difficulty booking the tour online, so he told me he'd put me on the list and watch for me, so when I didn't show up he felt bad that things hadn't worked out. But then I did show up and it all worked out. I had to remind him tho that I still needed to pay him (since the online payment didn't work when I tried to book the tour either) and when I tried to pay him he said he'd catch me later. I didn't end up paying until just as I was getting off the bus at the end of the day and he seemed surprised by it! I could easily have gotten a free tour, but that is not the way I operate! But the point I'm trying to make with that is what a nice guy and a great guide Michael was!

The Aran Islands themselves were beautiful! I wasn't at all confident the weather was going to cooperate for us tho. When we left Galway it was pouring rain and if anything it was raining harder when we arrived on Inis Mor (the Aran Island I visited!). But the rain ended before we even reached our first stop and it actually cleared up beautiful to become a nice sunny day! The landscape of the island was pretty special . . . it reminded me a lot of the landscape around the cave we visited the day before (the area is called the Burren). It was very rocky and that's about it. Michael was telling us that originally the island was all rocks like we were seeing on the more rugged parts of the island, but people worked very hard to chip away a lot of the rock, drag sand and seaweed up from the shore to cover their "fields" and try to create something capable of growing grass. Their hard work paid off nicely because there were a lot of fields on the island now which were home to cattle and Connemara ponies and the occasional donkey. While the Aran Islands are known for their knitwear (Aran sweaters are famous worldwide!), they don't actually keep sheep on the island anymore because they are too destructive! So they import their wool from the mainland now to make their knitwear! One of the most striking things about the island is the overwhelming amount of stonewalls! Michael told us that if there were to line up all the stonewalls on Inis Mor end to end it would total more than 7000km which is enough to travel across the Atlantic to Canada and back! Pretty impressive! What is also impressive is that the walls were all hand made and are dry rock walls which means they don't use mortar or anything, the rocks are essentially stacked one on top of the other and they just stay! While on the island we got to tour some great ruins (as I already mentioned) as well as the ruins of the Seven Churches (all destroyed by Cromwell when he took over England and destroyed a lot of people's stuff!), and we spent time at the beaches! I am pleased to say that I stuck my hand in the water and was splashed all over by a very big wave, so I have now official been "in" 3 of the world's 4 oceans! A trip up to the Arctic may be in order when I get home! There are still many continents before I've set foot on all continents, but I'm only 1 ocean away from being complete!

The rest of my trip to Galway was rather uneventful because it was so wet! I had purposely booked an evening bus back to Dublin on Sunday so I would have all day on Sunday to tour Galway as a city. There were a number of walking tours I could take and even an open top bus tour, but if you could have seen how hard it was raining on Sunday you would understand why I had no desire to either walk or be on an open top bus to see Galway. So instead of seeing much of the city (I did a bit of a walkthrough as I looked for breakfast that morning and had seen some as I wandered around the night before!), I instead toured Galway's cinema center and went to the movies so I could stay out of the rain! Then it was a wet and cold bus ride back to Dublin which took far longer when I wasn't asleep, and a wet and cold wait for a train back to Malahide since the delightful weather apparently followed me to Dublin. I didn't get back to Malahide until 9pm, but I immediately soaked in a warm tub and thawed for about an hour then went to bed knowing I would have a full week ahead of taking care of the girls!

So all in all my trip to Galway was a success . . . I had some fantastic tours and it was nice to be on a tour since then I was with other people too! I met some nice and interesting people on my tours (a lot of Canadians toured the Aran Islands with me!). I think this trip will hopefully help keep my travel anxiety down a little bit more in the future since it was such a success, but anxiety or not, I have the travel bug and I can't wait for my next weekend adventure!