Traveling all over Ireland

I’ve been fighting with my advisor since the day I got here about getting my classes approved back at ND and I’m FINALLY making some progress!! He is working on making my marine zoology class a science elective and my coastal dynamics class an environmental engineering elective which I can get an exception to count as a general science elective for my major (I’ll take what I can get!) Other than that, nothing much new to report on school-wise. I have an essay due next week in marine and ocean politics and this is the first real assignment I’ve had in over a month of school- how wild.

Last weekend was a less fun program trip than usual because it was heavily lecture based but it was still fun to explore more of Ireland! We got to Gort, Ireland on Friday night just in time for the kick off dinner for the Lady Gregory Festival (she’s a really famous Irish poet and playwright that we had been reading about all week leading up to the festival). We quickly realized we were the ONLY ones without grey hair in the entire place though…. On Saturday the “festival” took place in Coole Park (in Gort). We listened to four different lecturers talk about Lady Gregory and the themes in her writings. The one on Irish fairytales and folklore was pretty interesting but everything else bored us to death. The only thing keeping us going was the coffee/tea and cookies break between speakers. Even some of the old people were falling asleep during the lectures… that’s when you know. The night really turned around when we had a fancy dinner back at the hotel with the Lady Gregory Festival. Another incredible three course meal with fun Irish music and lots of people that were so intrigued that we were from ND and wanted to talk to us! We went out afterwards to explore the town of Gort and we met so many Irish people that were shocked we had American accents because it is not a touristy place at all so they never get to talk to Americans.

The next day we woke up early and took the bus to Doolin to hop on a ferry to Inis Oirr, the smallest of the Aran Islands. Here, the archeologist Michael Gibbons gave us a full walking tour of the island! There are so many historic sights because the islands are so well preserved and very few people live on them. For example, we saw a 15th century tower house and lots of ancient rock walls that separated farm land. There was also a really cool ship wreck that we got to see, and it was low tide so I obviously spent a ton of time climbing on rocks and checking out all the tidal pools which was so fun! It is the smallest of Aran Islands so we definitely saw the entire island in an afternoon and then it was back to Galway.

Paige came to visit Wednesday night to Friday afternoon and it was SO fun!! We get a program dinner in town after our literature class on Wednesday nights so the timing was perfect! Her bus got in right around the time we were finishing dinner so I scooped her up at the bus stop and then took her back to our apartment to drop off her stuff and then I showed her a fun night on the town! The next day we got traditional Irish breakfasts (which is rashers, sausage, eggs, beans, toast, and chips) and then walked around the Galway City Museum. Lots of history about Galway and the top floor is all about their developments in marine science which was so cool, I had no idea the extent of how much Galway is known for its marine research- such a good place for me to study it! We also walked around town a bunch and Paige got lots of souvenirs from touristy shops and we also did some mall shopping hehehe. Hurricane Lorenzo started to hit around 6pm so we decided to have a huge family dinner with all 12 of us (plus Paige). It was soso fun! We moved our apartments kitchen table and chairs into the other apartment and half of us cooked this time and the other half will cook next time. Paige and I made a salad, Micaela made risotto, Rachel made this yummy cauliflower dish, talia made cookies, and it took all three boys to make garlic bread hahah. We then moved the other apartments couches into our apartment and spent the whole night watching movies. The storm was quick so by Friday morning it was a beautiful day by Ireland standards (only light drizzles here and there) so Paige and I walked back to town for brunch, listened to street music and walked around the river, and then she sadly took a bus back to Dublin to spend the rest of the weekend with one of her friends from college.

Perfect timing again for me though because I had just enough time to walk back to my apartment, throw some clothes in my backpack, and hop on the bus for our program trip to Northern Ireland. The bus was over FIVE HOURS. I slept for a bit but it was still way too long. We eventuallyyy made it to this hotel in Belfast where we walked in and immediately felt out of place as a bunch of rowdy college kids. It was such a nice hotel, the type of place that had monogrammed robes with a sign on them that if you took them you’d be charged £100… (also interesting that Northern Ireland uses pounds and the republic uses euros). We got dinner at this place called Pizza Punks and it was so good, such an interesting vibe in there as the name suggests though hahah. We came back and took advantage of these robes; all of us put them on and watched Gossip Girl in Tommy and Jack’s California king bed (basically the Newport cloud bed). Well, first we sat in the hallway for a while talking because we thought we had the wing to ourselves but we got yelled at for being too loud when people were trying to sleep, whoops!

Saturday we went to the Titanic Museum because it was built in Northern Ireland! It was super cool- lots of interesting facts on how it was built and testimonials from the few people that survived the Titanic sinking. I’ve only ever watched the end of the movie but one day I really have to sit down and watch the whole thing! Then we had a lecturer from Belfast University speak to us about the conflict between the north and the republic and how religion played a major role in it (the republic is predominantly Christian and the north is predominantly Protestant). Afterwards we did a walking tour of Belfast and you could really see the division between unionists and loyalists. We walked by many activist murals and signed our names on the peace wall that divided the parties. After that we had another yummy dinner in Belfast and then drove a little farther up north to Ballycastle where we were downgraded to a hostel- we diddd have the whole place to ourselves though! Good thing because again we were obnoxiously loud watching ND football destroy Bowling Green 52-0.

We technically were supposed to wake up the next morning for a 7am sunrise walk on the beach but only two people did and they said it was so cloudy they couldn’t even see the sun rise so it worked out well for me that I didn’t miss anything! We rallied at 8 for the bus ride to the Giants Causeway in Bushmills though and it was honestly one up the coolest places I’ve ever been (way up there with the Cliffs of Mohr). There are over 40,000 interlocking hexagonal basalt columns that lead into the water. Science says it’s because of an ancient volcanic fissure eruption but legend has it the columns are the remains of a causeway to Scotland built by the Irish giant Fionn Max Cumhaill when challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. It was amazing being able to climb all over the rocks and we took such cool pictures! Ireland is an insanely beautiful country. We went to the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Ballahy afterwards for our ND literature class since he is another famous Irish poet. Obviously the Giants Causeway was a hard act to follow so it was definitely less fun than exploring the nature of Ireland but oh well! Then it was off on our 6 hour bus ride back to campus, during which we resurrected our inner children and played games like M.A.S.H, 21 Questions, and the Alphabet Game. Serious FOMO missing Caroline’s bachelorette party this weekend but I guessss Northern Ireland was fun too…

Tons of famous people have signed this tree in Coole Park- including Lady Gregory and WB Yeats who we’ve been reading about in class!

Picture with Marina Carr (between the guy in the grey sweater and girl in the red dress). She’s a really famous modern Irish playwright!

Me posing on a rock by the lake in Coole Park

And everyone else got jealous so we fit as many as we could onto my rock

Heres a group pic

I ended up making it in a paper about the festival!

15th century tower house on the Aran Island

Closer view

Lots of rock walls splitting the land by family

Me petting some Irish horses!

Lots of cattle, horses, and sheep wandering around everywhere.

Look at how cool these tidal pools are!!

Here’s the rusty ship everyone else was looking at while I was in the water

But I obviously joined in the fun eventually!

Group pic on our tour of the Island

With a quick picnic for lunch

Paige visiting!

More of Paige 🙂

Our FEAST for family dinner

All snuggled up on one bed to watch Gossip Girl

There was essentially a roller coaster in the titanic museum that took you around what was supposed to be the basement of the ship and made you feel like you were one of the coal workers down there (heaters, loud clanking of hammers, etc.)