Spring break 2013 was the approximate week and a half between the end of classes and the beginning of finals that sent the APA participants scattered throughout Europe, seeking out new adventures, scenic spots, and general fun. For me, this break signified the opportunity to get in touch with some of my roots and visit the place that I've jokingly referred to as "The Homeland" for a number of years now: Ireland.
As my roommates were preparing for their departure to Greece, I packed up my backpack as space efficiently as possible (because suitcases are for wimps) for my tour through Ireland, taking me through Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Limerick. Although traveling to different countries is pretty much business as usual for the group at this point, this trip was going to be a little bit different from the rest for one key reason: I was to travel alone for the first time. Granted, I was to meet up with the man of many names, Brandon Victor Paolo (BVP) and two of his friends the night that we all got to Dublin, but on every flight that I had taken throughout my life I'd had at least one other friend with me to help navigate through the airport and to whatever hostel was our destination. This time, that was not the case.
On Tuesday morning I got up early (at least by a 20-year-old's standards), grabbed some croissants for the road, and made my way to the bus station, where I proceeded to wait in a state of severe paranoia that I had misread the bus schedule and that I was at the wrong stop, I'd already missed my bus, or that this bus wasn't going to take me to the airport at all. Eventually, though, the bus rolled up to take me to the Nice airport.
Things rolled pretty smoothly from there as I went through security, flew to Ireland, and took a bus that delivered me into the heart of Dublin city. Having eaten only a couple of croissants throughout the day, at this point in the evening I was definitely ready to try some Irish food. I walked around for a good minute or two until I found a promising pub, where I ordered myself some fish and chips with a Dublin staple, a Guinness. There was only one unforeseen problem.
I had been excited to go to an English speaking country for the first time since New Year's, expecting that the common language would make it easier to get by than in the other countries that I've been to where they speak various other languages. As I discovered at this pub, though, I don't understand thick brogues. As opposed to when I was in Italy, where I could understand at least part of whatever I heard in Italian, I didn't catch a single word of what this pub worker dude was saying to me.
Since I had already conversed with Irish people in the US and France, I figured that I understood the accent pretty well, but I had neglected to take varied accents from different parts of the country into account. I'm not sure what city this chap was from, but I didn't catch anywhere near as much of what he was saying as when I spoke to pretty much anybody else in the country. I looked like an idiot for a moment while somebody with a gentler accent had to translate his English into Also English for me.
Observations from during that meal: fish and chips are nummy, there is a condiment called "brown sauce" in existence, and pints are ENORMOUS.
After my first Irish meal, I made my way through what had turned into a significantly rainier Dublin to my hostel. While waiting for BVP and his friends whose names I had not yet committed to memory to show up, I killed some time by partaking in the hostel's wine and cheese portion of the night, making the acquaintance of a Canadian chick who had been spending the past several months with family in Sweden (Canadian count: 1), which turned into a conversation about American and Canadian sports, attracting the attention of the remaining American and Canadians in the room (Canadian count: 3). I kind of knew what I was talking about for most of the conversation. I eventually gave up and turned in for the night, retiring to the hostel room where my travel buddies were still MIA.
At approximately 1:30am, their arrival was glorious. It consisted mostly of them shuffling around to get settled in for the night, and me mumbling with my eyes closed.
In the morning, more thorough introductions of Nathan and Liz were issued, and so our Irish adventures together began. With only one full day in Dublin, we made the most of our time by getting around on the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city, hearing witty quips from different guides and taking in as much scenery and information as we could. Our time on these buses turned out to be preferable to off, because, as it turns out, it rains a lot in the British Isles. Who knew, right?
We quickly discovered that Ireland has two weather modes:
1) Sunny, warm, and beautiful
2) Freezing cold rain and wind
It alternates between these two modes numerous times throughout the day. This is not pleasant for somebody that's been spoiled by the consistently warm and sunny weather of southern France. It's not pleasant at all.
After our daytime sightseeing, the group quickly established an evening ritual of stopping by a local pub for a pint and some euchre. Prior to this trip, I was about as knowledgeable as the average irishman of the game of euchre -- that's to say not at all. Regardless, my comrades were patient with me as they showed me the ropes of the card game, and I was soon addicted. In fact, I'm currently experiencing a case of the shakes from withdrawal. I'll be checking into the rehab clinic tomorrow.
Most of our transportation throughout the week-long trip, aside from walking, was by bus, whether taking us on a tour through a city or taking us on a three-hour ride to our next destination city. In contrast to car and bus rides in the midwest of the US, I did not see a single ear of corn. Instead, I got great views of green fields of grass, rolling hills, short stone walls reminiscent of The Quiet Man, and tons of sheep. My first major dose of this came as we headed over to Cork city.
Cork has a much smaller town feel to it than Dublin, which I really liked, and houses the greatest pub to ever exist, the Welcome Inn. As we went on a desperate search for food one night, looking for someplace that was still serving food by 7pm (a rarity that shows a stark contrast to France, where most restaurants start serving dinner at 7:30 or 8pm instead of finishing well before then), we stopped by this little pub asking whether or not they still had food. Alas, they didn't, but the bartender standing outside made the friendly gesture of pointing us in the right direction to the best of his ability. We ended up having a humble meal at Subway because it was the only place that was still open, then decided that this little pub had earned the honor of being our pint destination for the evening. As we returned to the Welcome Inn, we saw two doors right next to each other, both supposedly leading in, so Liz took the role of our fearless leader by walking into the door on the left.
As it turns out, the door on the left leads behind the pub counter. Much to the bartender's amusement, we panicked, rushed back out, and made our way in the proper door. At this point, though, the bartender invited our fearless leader back behind the counter, instructing her to pour our pints.
"Look here, we've got a new bar maid!"
The bar full of old irishmen was wildly amused by the scene, and the bartender seemed to get quite a kick out of it as well. As we were all paying, Liz was getting ready to pull out a €5 note, but the bartender stopped her, telling her that her pint was on the house.
And so the excitement in the pub settled down for the most part as we sat down with our pints and began to play some euchre. This strange and foreign game caught the intrigue of one particularly drunk irishman, who eventually had us take a break from the game as he taught us some card tricks. It's lucky that these tricks by "Drunk Irish Grandpa," as I like to call him, were explained most thoroughly in a visual manner, because I couldn't understand a darned word he said in that slurred brogue of his. When continuing conversation with the man became too difficult and awkward, we put an effective end to the convo by switching to French for a little while, then called it a night. And so concluded our experience at the greatest pub ever.
Fast forward to the morning, and it was time to head to the Blarney Castle! The castle itself was relatively small, but the grounds were enormous, beautiful, and parts of it were just straight-up cool.
Of course, we made the obligatory stop to kiss the Blarney Stone at the top of the castle, which I informed the group as we entered the grounds was the #1 thing from the entire trip that I needed a picture with. We made our way up the narrowest possible spiral staircase, clinging for dear life to the rope in the middle due to the lack of any handrail, and found ourselves in the presence of a wholly underwhelming and unspecial-looking stone, but that was it. I took pictures for the group as Liz, BVP, and Nathan took their turns kissing the stone, and my turn finally came, so I handed my camera to BVP so he could get a photo of the event, sat down, grabbed the rails, and literally bent over backwards to reach and kiss the stone.
As I got back up, feeling victorious, I went to retrieve my camera from BVP, who had a slightly guilty and vaguely bewildered look on his face.
"I just got so distracted that I forgot to take the picture," he said.
Ha ha, very funny. I took my camera back to look through the pictures to prove that he was just lying to screw with me.
Nope. He really didn't take a picture. And neither did anybody else in the group. All that was left was the overpriced souvenir photo taken by the Blarney Castle employees, which BVP offered to pay for. He didn't pay for it, though (What's up with that, BVP? I say you owe me a pint, at least).
After that, we made our way around the grounds, starting with the gardens. At this castle, there were two different kinds of gardens: Irish and poison. Yes, poison. They grow various toxic and mind-altering plants, including poison ivy, yew, and marijuana. That was the first time I've seen a pot plant in person. The Irish garden was significantly less interesting, filled with flowering plants that are out of season at the moment, so we didn't get to see a single one of the flowers.
Our next stop was Galway city, the last city that we would visit together. With a rather condensed city center, we were able to make our way around on foot, getting to the city museum, cathedral, river walk, and a local street market. My favorite part of the city, though, was probably the street performers. Especially along the main shop street in the city, there were musical performers abound, doing anything from electric guitar and vocals to traditional harp and accordion.
After our relatively brief time in Galway, the time had come to part ways, and so I was on my own for the remainder of the trip.
I started my solo trip by taking yet another bus your, this time taking me through Connemara and Cong villages, one containing a famous abbey, and the other housing the cottage from the movie The Quiet Man. I was super pumped about the latter. The bus driver was a pleasant old irishman who made witty and lighthearted quips along the journey, also teaching us a lot of interesting tidbits about the sites that we went by on the 7½ hour tour.
The Quiet Man house was the highlight of the journey for me; it still had those iconic green doors from the film (pronounced "fillum" by many Irish) and faced a quiet stream that, perfectly enough, carried a swan along its waters, being the first swan I can recall ever having seen. Ireland must have planned that out for me. They knew I was coming, so they were like, "Hey, let's just place a perfectly white swan in this pleasant stream. Then let's hide a whole bunch more in Limerick for her."
And yeah, I ended up seeing two more families of swans when I was in Limerick, my destination immediately after the Cong and Connemara tour.
During my full day in Limerick, I had planned on walking through the medieval quarter and spending most of the day at King John's castle and the city museum. As it turned out, though, those main two attractions were closed for remodeling until June, so I found myself with a lot more time to kill than I had originally anticipated. I wandered around the quarter for a bit, feeling a little let down by the city, then noticed the swans. There had to have been a good 30 swans there, split between two separate groups that were about 15 meters apart from one another, and it was certainly the most swans that I had seen in my life. I picnicked with the swans, enjoying the sun and their company, and wrote a limerick about Limerick for one of my brothers that requested one once upon a time.
I passed my afternoon at the thoroughly creepy Hunt Museum, got some dinner, and then realized that there's not much to do in Ireland outside of pubs after 7pm unless you're with friends. It didn't make for a very interesting evening, but at least I got some reading in.
Next day: back to Cork to fly back to France! But I have bad aim, so I wound up in Nice for the night instead of Aix. I was too tired of traveling to really do any more sightseeing, so I immediately retired to my hostel, where I socialized a bit with some of the others that were there for the night (Canadian count: somewhere around 15), and headed to bed. The next morning, I had breakfast with some Americans from the hostel, then headed to the train station to finally get back home, hoping to avoid any more human interaction than absolutely necessary, and consequently got asked out multiple times by a creepy middle-aged frenchman, asked for a meal by a random woman, and asked if I was Italian or Irish by another frenchman. Eventually, though, I made it to the train, where nobody else bothered me, and got home in time to take a long relaxing shower and a good nap. I had survived my senior year's spring break.
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