September 12th: Weekend in Galway

Following our week of orientation mainly spent in the Dublin city center, I felt it was time to branch out and start crossing off some touristy destinations. On Sunday September 7^th, we ventured to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour and “free” pint. The storehouse was pretty cool, it takes you through the brewing process step by step for the 1^st few floors. At the start it felt much like a museum. After the process and historical background you start the fun stuff.  They had a tasting room where they gave you a mini pint and taught you the correct tasting protocol. The protocol was pretty comical, something like keeping your arm parallel to the ground when drinking Guinness which would get your weird looks in any pub. They teach you how to pour your own pint on the next floor us which sounds complicated but amounted to pulling a lever, waiting, and then pulling another lever. The gravity bar was probably the coolest. It’s the highest floor in the complex and gives you a good view of the area around Dublin while you enjoy your pint. It was definitely a tourist destination and very commercial (big gift shop) but it was a good thing to do once.

Up this point, everything in Dublin has been a blast. Just walking and performing mundane tasks like shopping for towels is fun because I get to explore new areas in the city and see new things. That being said, my appointment with the Garda scheduled for 4pm on Tuesday and this place is hell on earth. It was like a more depressing, less organized DMV. There were about 40 UCD students who were told to sit in the waiting room immediately.  All of us figured someone would come in and take us in at some point.  After waiting for about 2 hours, an off duty security guard told us we should have gotten tickets from the window when we got here. I think our jaws collectively dropped as we realized we had waited 2 hours for no progress.  But we got our tickets, and I went out to lunch and a walk with some of the other Holy Cross students. Slowly but surely, the line moved along and it was my turn to register. Not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous going up to the booth. I had all the correct documents, but the fact that this lady could reject me and make my life a whole lot tougher was weighing on me. I handed her the documents and waited nervously as she asked me questions about study and my documents. The conversation lightened when she noted my Irish middle name “Patrick” on my passport and I talked some about my family history in Ireland. Long story short, I was approved and received my GNIB card. It was a huge weight off my back.

On Thursday we left for Galway for our first weekend trip.  At this point I should mention one of my best friends from home, Won-Ki is studying with me in Dublin for the fall semester. Anyway, one of our friends from home is studying in Galway and said he would put us up for the weekend which saved us a decent amount of money. We arrived Thursday night, did some drinking, and went out into the city. Galway is actually considerably different from Dublin.  Our friend lives with 3 Irish students and the town has a more Irish feel where Dublin is much more international/Americanized. We checked out a couple different pubs which were very cool and gave a nice intimate setting in a unique way. We came relatively early for our journey planned for the next day.

The next day (today as I’m writing this) we took a trip to the Cliffs of Moher. As a disclaimer, the cliffs were probably the single most impressive and exciting sight I have seen and the words and pictures I post likely won’t do it justice but here goes. Just the vast size of the cliffs was insane to me, it was hard to take in everything at once. The cool part was you could walk right along the cliff edge which was amazing and terrifying at the same time. In America, there would surely be a fence there to prevent safety accidents. Each cliff has some much detail, and watching the water crash against the side rock just made me feel so small. Another cool aspect was the beyond the cliffs is pretty much water and the visibility was great. It was just majestic.  Hopefully the pictures below offer a better explanation of the cliffs than my text. Tomorrow we’ve planned a ferry ride to the Aran Islands, where we’ll probably bike around the island until it’s time to head back. Apologies for the amount of text, there’s been a lot to document. Until next time,

Ryan

here’s a pic of alex, wonki, and myself

Picture of yours truly at the cliffs

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2014 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.