Ireland, fo' realz

Okay, sorry about the excited and abstract post from Thursday. Here's something real:

I just got back from a long weekend backpacking extravaganza to Western Ireland. My friend, who's studying in Cork for the semester, and I decided, on a whim, to head up to Galway, which is about a four and a half hour bus ride from Cork. Buses, which I have never been fond of, are no longer my friend, or weren't for that ride up anyway. The roads are narrower here, and not as well maintained, which basically means it felt like we were on a coach bus and/or wooden rollercoaster, bumping up and down for hours on end. I ended up taking Sea Legs (my new favorite drug!) for the trip down, and was completely fine, though. Whew.

Moving on.

Galway is a lovely city, and we used it as our homebase for Thursday through Saturday. It has a fantastic green space at its heart, called Eyre Square, which is about a 2 block by 2 block square (I know, that part is blowing your mind, right?), and has a children's playground, benches, etc. and is surrounded by pubs, hotels, restaurants, a bank or two, and a fair amount of traffic. It was a nice concept--I know, I know, it's not all that original to have a village green in the middle of a city, but it was refreshing, okay?--and the grass, even in the end of January was a vibrant green. I've been told before that Ireland is certainly not lacking in chlorophyll, but there have been times so far that the greenery around here (mostly the grass at the time of year) borders on Technicolor.

The first full day of our weekend trip we took a bus (another bus! gah!) out to a small village in Connemara--a boggy region in Ireland--called Oughterard. We were going to visit a series of mines that we'd discovered on a tourist pamphlet, but when we got off the bus, we were informed that they were, of course, closed until March. Bummer. So, instead, we went for a hike through the Irish countryside, the first of many throughout the weekend. See below for--you gots it!--pictures of our adventure in Oughterard. The primary adventure, as you'll soon see, was attempting to still follow the trail we were set on taking (we'd gotten a kinda shitty map from the ever-friendly Oughterard tourist information), even though it was very, VERY flooded out (The rain in Ireland this year, I guess, has been prolific, although, miraculously, it didn't rain the entire weekend up in the Western Ireland, and we even got some sun yesterday.). Hilarity ensued as we began to off-road via a pasture that ran parallel to the trail that was presumably drier. It wasn't.

The next day, we went to the Aran Islands and biked around Inishmore, the largest of the three. It's covered with walls upon walls upon walls--all built in stone, and all used, at one point, to house livestock. Today, there are few animals there, and all of them seem to have a slightly bored, yet observant, manner toward any who, say, bike past them huffing and puffing up a hill. We visited the remains of an absolutely astounding fort dating back to the Bronze Age called Dun Aonghasa. It was built on the top of a massive hill (we had to ditch the bikes and hike up to it), and has enormous cliffs on one side that drop at least 40 feet down to the ocean below. Of course, being Europe, there are no safety fences or anything, so you can walk right up to the edge of the cliffs (and man, was it windy) and peer down at what is sure to be your last view before a long and painful fall/death. It's awesome.

The following day, after quite the adventure to find a bed the previous night, we awoke in a charming little bed and breakfast in Gort, hometown of poet William Butler Yeats. We--and by "we," I mean "I" at this point--decided to go see his old home, which is, incidentally, a Norman tower and adjoining cottage he purchased in 1916 and renovated. Yes, that's right, a tower, as in the tower, as in The Tower, his famous collection of poems. And yes, it's the very same on--it's even on the cover of the book! I almost peed, at least twice, in excitement. I mean, the very same tower! Too awesome.

Well, getting to said tower was a little trickier than we initially imagined. The friendly woman who ran the Woodley B&B, Dierdre, said it was about a mile and a half walk, but she also said this after widening her eyes in disbelief when we informed her we were going to walk there. It wasn't a mile and a half, we soon learned, after walking nearly 45 minutes, and bumping into a sign that said, "Yeats' Tower 5km" with an arrow pointing us forward. Eventually, we made it--we made it, dammit!--after walking at least 5 miles and It. Was. AWESOME. All that I imagined and more, baby.

Next stop on our Gort adventure was going to visit Coole Park, a nature reserve and the former estate of Lady Gregory, a close friend of Yeats'. This was also a place where Yeats chizzled a lot, and he commemorated it in many a poem (see: W.B. Yeats' The Tower for more info). Getting to Coole Park did, of course, involve a fair amount of walking, but we'd made it this far, and it was a gorgeous day, so we started our trek once again. Well, the road was flooded out. And I mean flooded out. Anything we'd encountered in Oughterard quickly became pocket change compared to the great lake we were now peering out upon. We attempted to go around it, but the thing was endless. So, perturbed but not completely dissuaded, we went back to the Ballylee Tower (its Christian name, not everyone calls it Yeats' Tower; I know, I found this hard to believe, too), and asked a local for directions. That's the thing about Ireland, though: It seems like everyone who doesn't live here gets lost and everyone who does loves to give directions.

So, we ended up taking the long way to Coole Park--only another 6 miles or so winding along a country road, another country road, ANOTHER country road, a highway, and then another country road and then...Coole Park! Awesome! They have great trails for hiking, among other things, but by that point, we had already walked about a dozen miles (with heavy backpacks on, mind you), so we weren't all that keen on the idea of hiking. So, we sat, ate an orange, and enjoyed the day instead. It was lovely, but the lake, famous for its swans throughout the year, was, shockingly enough, flooded out, so we mostly spent our time in the old walled garden. The walled garden houses a very unusual copper beech tree, called the Autograph Tree. In its bark, a group of friends carved their initials long ago. Among these friends are--here's a curveball in the day, I'm sure--William Butler Yeats, and, even more impressive, George Bernard Shaw. And thus ended our Gort adventure, and our adventure throughout Western Ireland. Cool, huh? No? Well, whatever, for this book nerd, it really, really was.


Click on the church to go to the album:

Western Ireland

Ireland

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Some travel thoughts OR Yeah, yeah, I'm posting again...Happy now?

Okay, I'll work on finishing up on my London adventures with Wade...but first: In response to several complaints re: this here blog. Hmph. Thank you, kind readers, for all of your concerns, but I frankly am doing the best I can as far as updates, font sizes, etc. Pictures have yet to appear, this I realize, but when one is terribly busy gallivanting around the world, it gets damn hard to post nearly a thousand pictures up here for your viewing pleasure (which, of course, won't be happening, because no one has the time nor, well, the motivation, to sift through some of the drivel I've shot over here).

Also, incidentally, I've noticed that time (i.e. individual days) seem to pass both more quickly and much more slowly over here. Maybe it's the time change, which I, of course, weeks later, have completely mastered (God, I'm awesome). But, to follow-up on such an elusive thought, it seems like, without a set schedule or any sort of forced habits, mornings can easily be spent a-snooze, while days can still be packed with, say, a stroll or two around a major world metropolis, including spotting a world-famous fountain, sampling some of the local vendors' products, stopping by a fruit market, poking into a couple of small, "modest" Baroque churches and exploring a two thousand-year old temple. Sorry, that was just last Thursday, and yes, that day started at about noon.

It's an odd concept: to be surrounded by so much human history, and artistic beauty, when it feels like our country has so little of it. As we were heading from the main train station in Rome, Roma Termini, and to the Rome's airport, via the cornily-dubbed "Leonardo Express" this past Saturday (2 days ago now, and I'm attempting to keep things chronological, but I just don't think it's going to happen), the tracks were just lined with old ruins. There's no marble or anything around there, mind you, but there were crumbling walls of the thin, deep red Ancient Roman bricks. Wade and I began discussing (which forced us to put on pause our heated talk about the glory that was hit pop singles of the mid to late '90s. Prominently discussed were diddies from really talented artists like Britney Spears, *NSYNC, BSB, etc. Somehow, this made the discussion, how do you say?, a bit shallow. Still, later on, as we picked up the topic again, we both felt the need to provide our own musical renditions of these tunes, a capella no less, in order to to fully reminisce, so the chat became a little bit more dynamic at that point. --I'm sure we drove the thirtysomething Italian guy sitting behind us, eating potato chips, just nuts for that half-hour train ride. Moving on...) how odd it would be if the US treated its ruins in the same way. As Wade put it, rather correctly, I think (My God, he's so brilliant, isn't he? (That one was for you, Joe)), if there were ruins like that in the US, there'd be a national park around them--in Rome, there are train tracks, a few patches of graffiti and a Fanta can or two strewn about. I'm not saying the Italian government treats its history disrespectfully; on the whole, it's far from that, but God, there's just so much of it.

What's more, it's really damn exhausting to try to go see all--or hell, any--of it. After about 2 days of sight-seeing, all I really wanted to do was take 'er easy (and, as a Ritchie, I've quickly come to realize and appreciate how inherently lazy I really am. Sigh...doing nothing: it sure feels good). Both Wade and I have realized the value of downtime so much more, when you really don't have the time or space to have it--this is among many revelations we've had in Italy, which I'll detail later. A few other lessons learned are, as a preview: the Collesium is a nasty place in which to weather a thunderstorm and, from our friends, the ever-cautious Italian drivers, if the car looks too big for a parking space/alley/main thoroughfare, chances are, it'll still fit.

End thoughts, back to the regularly scheduled programming...

Actually.

Okay, I lied. I'm going to try to post pictures up, and I can explain some of what I've seen from those, because, well, I think I've already typed about a thousand words...and that whole picture=1k words equation just popped into my head. I'll post the above blog entry, and then see what I can manage in a moment. Patience, please.

A bit about London

Hello, hello, my happy little blog readers (thus far, I think there are two of you),

Greetings from London.

Wade and I landed Sunday, tired yet oddly awake (I had watched Scarlett Johansson's newest masterpiece, The Nanny Diaries on the plane, and was invigorated from the experience). We met up with my friend, Mieke (who for anonymity's sake, and because I like to think of her as my own personal Madonna, shall remain last-name-less), who has been so kind as to let us invade her guest room in posh, posssssh "Hello, Hugh Grant, is that you?" Chelsea. That day was spent, utterly wasted, really, with a three-hour nap--well, more like four, but man, we were tired!--and some four-cheese pizza.

The next morning, I woke with a migraine--something I've only experienced once before in my life--and was utterly miserable. Poor Wade, after dragging his own jet lagged body around a 3-mile loop a few times on the bank of the Thames, had to tolerate my pain and/or laziness before we finally made it out of the flat--at last!--at about 1 pm. We headed to the Tower of London, and took a tour with a beefeater. He told absolutely terrible jokes--my favorite being "Now, let's head off!" as he ushered us to the next stop on the tour, after just telling a few stories about decapitation--and was definitely the most entertaining part of the Tower, which cost a whopping thirteen pounds (ahem, that's twenty-six dollars--I've stopped converting, because it's just too painful) to get in to as students. We wandered around the Thames and then across the extremely windy Tower Bridge (not to be confused with London Bridge, although, with its distinctive blue suspension and Victorian-esque towers, it often is.).

Tuesday was spent first at Covent Garden, where Wade and I wandered around, taking obnoxious pictures--mostly of ourselves, in terrible poses, near things like a red garbage can that proclaimed "Litter" on its side--before we headed over to Trafalgar Square. Now, hate me if you must, but, despite its overwhelmingly touristy nature, Trafalgar is really fun. The square, for those of you unfamiliar with it at home, is dominated by an impressive monument with four huge iron--or are they bronze?--lions. You have to climb up (the ever-chivalrous Wade hoisted me...awww) to get anywhere near the statue, but once you scramble (and/or are hoisted) up, it has quite the view. In front of the lions spans the National Gallery and behind us, lit up like in Peter Pan, is everyone's favorite clock tower, Big Ben.

So, as any two nerds would do, we salivated in the direction of the National Gallery, and went and checked out the art. The National Gallery, besides being one of my favorite words--free--is chock full of paintings, portraits, etc., from 1250 to 1900. We saw works from Boticelli, Da Vinci, Van Gogh...you name it, it's there.

Hm, well, looks like we're off to the Tate Modern, to see the second installment of Britain's collection of paintings--anything post-1900, before exploring the Globe, perhaps, or St. Paul's Cathedral. Next time, I'll try to update you on Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and cute little St. Alban's, all of which we saw yesterday. Yeah, whatever.

Oh, and pictures will get up here eventually, too, worry not, friends.

Welcome & Happy New Year

Welcome to the journal of my European adventures. Be sure to check back here in the coming weeks and months to get updates on all of my tomfoolery in the Old World.

For those of you following along at home...
Departure date from MSP: January 5, 2008
Arrival back home: June 1, 2008

And if you want a postcard sometime in the next six months (as if you aren't already getting one...), e-mail me your address. I'm at mritchie@macalester.edu. Oh, what fun!

Happy 2008!