Hiking and Hitchhiking

"Do Not Climb on Wet or Foggy Days" yeah...but this is Ireland

Before leaving Ireland I figured it would be fun to go on a hike.

Cliffs with the Consumption Ward

Thursday we took a tour to the Cliff of Moher and the Burren area, despite all my visitors' terrible coughs which sounded like the consumption-ward-choir. We took the same company: Lally Tour (and still got the same driver Martin that we've now had five times on tours of two different regions-- I'm beginning to think their guides are an army of clones) Instead of stopping at the Allwee Caves first like we did when I went with Emily and Katie last month, we stopped at a farm; I think because we had a group on the tour from Dublin for a day-trip to the west coast of Ireland, it was pretty exciting. At the family-farm-turned-family-farm-with-tours-and-fresh-pie-to-boot.  We got a nice little tour of the farm, and a fun walk up the hill behind the farm-house so we could see more of the burren landscape. Burren comes from the Irish for "rocky-place" which is a ten-points-for-captain-obvious sort of name. Yet, despite how rocky it is the limestone covering the area holds in heat and water allowing a huge range of plants to thrive. Everything from Alpine-wild-flowers-like-blue-genetry to palm-trees can grow in the Burren since it nearly never frosts. Our guide explained the fairy-tree where you tie something to a branch and leave your problem behind, and ruins of seven churches and the famine walls-- stone walls you can see crossing over all the mountains dividing nothing from nothing and keeping nothing out of anything, they were built for woolly-brained-land-lords in exchange for soup during the Great Famine.

Good Day, Bad Weather

After the Aran Islands with Jamie and Jessie, it seems like a fun trip to go on with my family guests as well. The forecast for the entire week was heavy storms, but we decided to chance it. The weather got the best of us in that wager. It started out with extremely choppy water all the way over. On the ferry to Inis Mor we confirmed that McCormack-genes do not come with sailor-stomachs standard issued.  Having already taken my turn with puking on the ship, I braced myself by the railing with the sea spray while everyone else fought or gave into the puking. At least the little boy sitting behind us enjoyed the ups-and-downs-and-side-to-sides with glee-full-giggles and happy little squeals.

Blogging from a bus

Both GoBus and CityLink have direct Galway to Dublin routes, complete with not only bathrooms, but also free wifi, what more could a traveler need?
So although today is not done yet, I'm going to post, cause I find it pretty cool that I can connect to the inter-webs while rolling down the road at some-amount-of-kilometers-an-hour. And it's the 15th so I've officially Blogged-Half-The-Month-of-April! Yay for BEDA milestones.

Friday the 13th

Last time I visited Dublin with Jamie and Jessie it went ...so...so...well. Therefore I returned to Dublin visit with my brothers and sis-in-law and all on Friday the 13th, a day known for it's luck-y-ness right? No? oh... dear me.

Regardless, after my day of rest on I got up early on Friday and took the GoBus back to Dublin were I met up with everyone at the hotel. We got some fish and chips for lunch and headed to Trinity College to see the space-alien-sphere and the Book of Kells. We stopped along the way at the General Post Office where the 1916 Easter uprising started.

The Book of Kells s quite impressive and it makes me wish I had handwriting that nice.  I've decided that if I could just move in a back corner of Old Library to live, I would be quite content for the rest of my life. So many rows of gorgeous books! And beautiful  arched ceilings! And slidy-beauty-and-the-beast-library-ladders! And spiral staircases!!!  On top of all that amazingness there was even a book on display from the 1600s with a picture of a Viceroy Tulip that pretty much made my day. (Yay for Fault in Our Stars!)

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

Star's face is cause she is in the middle of
Looking for Alaska, Monique's is cause
 we've been traveling a lot. a lot a lot. 

The five of us spent one last night in in mega-bed. Then we had a wonderful breakfast with our splendid hosts Wednesday morning. It was quite sad to leave them (and Italy as a whole as well.) We packed up all our stuff (plus a handful of new scarves) and hit the road around 12:20. We walked briskly, but not full-on-panicked-ly to the metro and then took that to the Turino train station, Porto Nouvo. Having mastered the ticket machine in Rome we quickly purchased our ticket and were able to board at the very closest platform (karma was trying to make up for Rome).

On our first train from Turin to Milan, the Italian girl across the aisle from us was being bugged by two gypsies and it turns out they stole her wallet and all out of her purse which really sucked. But I have to say that the half a dozen guys who jumped up to defend her pretty much made my day, the guys also helped her out when she realized she was robbed. It was really nice to see them help her out. I had a slight run-in with a meany-pants-train-ticket-guy who charged me for having my feet on the seat across from me, just because he could (sticky out tongue face)

Highest point of the smallest country

Today we spent the majority of the day at the Vatican. First we went into the Vatican Museums and saw the Sistine Chapel.  Although there is far too much to see in one day, we looped through most of the museum rooms to see an abundance of icons, paintings, sculptures, and all sorts of impressive art and artifacts. While in the courtyard for a snack we were highly entertained by a couple of Japanese boys who just hopped over the chain-fence-ring-thing in order to spin the alien-sphere-with-in-a-sphere-thingy. The Italian security guards disapproved in a "Hey don't do that, but, you know, stop whenever you want, no rush."   Even better, was the Japanese girl who sat down behind me on the bench really fast while her boyfriend snapped a picture of her with my hair. Red hair is apparently a bigger deal for Asians than it is for the Irish.

In addition to the wonderful tourists to watch, we loved all the art and especially the Basilica of St Peter's. As soon as I caught sight of the inside of the Basilica my pulse started pounding like crazy with excitement. I was just as impressed by St Peter's as I was the first time I saw it -- if not more so.


I spent a good deal of the day recalling as much as I possibly could from our amazing tours with Dr Connell and Liz, during my semester in Rome. A couple of my favorite facts are that there is actually not a single painting in the St Peter's Basilica, they're all mosaics. (In large part, because mosaics are easier upkeep and the Basilica is built to last until the end of the world.) Most of the mosaics are so incredibly detailed that it's really hard to tell they're not just painted on canvas. Once you are in the Cupola on the way up to the top of the Dome you are right-up-close-next-to some of the mosaics, which one would swear from farther away are carved and 3D.

After a full day exploring the Vatican and a short fight with numerous ticket machines at Termini, we took the bus and tram to La Fate's for dinner. Our food was yummy, but the best part for me was definitively catching the Erasmus students coming to dinner so I got to see Dr Connell and Miss. Bonifield again. That was really really wonderful, being back in Rome does make me miss my Thomas Morons a lot. Back at the flat we enjoyed more yummy food along with wine, laughter, and to top off the amazing day: tiramisu.

Roma Ti Amo

I fell in love with Rome when we came to visit my brother and I knew I'd study abroad there as well. My semester in Rome was incredible. So I am thrilled to pieces to be back to visit the Eternal City. Completely worth the near-total lack of sleep. The lack of sleep was a by-product of this morning/ last night Star, Monique and I had to head to the bus /coach station around 1:30am to catch a bus to Dublin; where we caught a plane to Roma Ciampino Aeroport; where we caught a bus to Termini; where we caught the Metro to a stop right down the street from the condos where Star's-god-parents'-son-and-his-wife live. Right in the back yard of the Vatican! It's so amazing to be able to stay with them here. We found the address alright, then got some help from the nice desk girl at the Candia hotel, then Monique completely outsmarted us all by a long shoot when she realized that our calls weren't working because we were not including the plus sign. Silly European cell numbers. After we dropped off our luggage and were treated to a welcome-to-Rome-cappuccino, we set out to explore and hit some of the highlights. I can barely contain my excitement to be back in Rome again.Combining this extreme level of giddiness with the caffeine of a cappuccino made it quite hard to keep from literally running to show the girls St. Peter's.

 We walked all over the city from the Vatican to St Angelo's Castle to the Victor Emmanuel to the Colosseum to Trasevere for pizza and then Old Bridge for gelato. Then we even got an amazing dinner back at the flat as well. I'm loving soaking up being back in Rome.

I've missed good ol' Belli in Trastevere 

Real pizza!!

Cliffs of Insanity

*This blog post is out of order, since we went to the cliffs the Thursday between Helen's birthday party and the weekend of St Paddy's Day. To make up to the out-of-order-ness it is full not only of epic cliffs, but also Princess Bride quotes.

"He didn't fall?!? INCONCEIVABLE!"

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."  

I went with Katie and Emily (Grove Cityers) to the Cliffs of Moher while they were visiting from Italy where they are studying abroad. Since we didn't have a giant to carry us up the rock face on a rope, we took a bus. Although buses are not as cool, we did at least have our favorite driver -Martin- who we've now had on 4 tours by pure chance.

The first stop was at Allwee Cave where we got coffee and tea to help us wake up after our rather late night and early raising, plus a doughnut which was yummy, but nothing compared to Saturday-morning-market-doughnuts-from-Dan.  

Rain on my lens, and wind winning the battle
of the hood with my great travel buddy Emily

 "I don't suppose you could speed things up?" 
 "If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do." 
"I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you."
"That does put a damper on our relationship."

We drove through some great Irish countryside and Connamara, then we arrived at the cliffs and managed to snap some photos before the fog set in and blocked the view. The cliffs are impressive and well worth being soaked by the rain and wind since we got a clear view for at least a little bit.

Unlike the Aran Islands, there are walls and warning signs abounding at the Cliffs of Moher. I liked the nice touch of a memorial plaque "To those who have lost their lives at the Cliffs" at the end of the path were all the "Danger" and "Do not enter" signs were ignored. Although the people-die-when-they-ignore-our-nice-warning-signs-memorial was mostly ignored as well. Don't worry we stayed safe though. I think our poor cameras were in the most danger with all the mist, fog, and rain honestly. They had to leave the safety of our raincoats for photos though, cause there were cliffs! They gave us some blurry photos as pay back, but in the end came through unscathed. 

There was a tower built a couple hundred years ago for the tourist to have a better view. Clever idea. Sadly there was no Man-In-Black or dueling Spaniards.  Cliffs of Insanity/ Cliffs of Moher are still wonderful and made me realize that it's been far too long since I watched The Princess Bride, so that has to be remedied. 

See mom I'm staying a good safe distance form the cliffs this time ^_^

After checking out the cliffs and tower we stopped in their new state of the art visitors center. It is almost impressive how much mascara you can get on your face when you have cliff winds and rain combined against you. And that is to say nothing of the hair situation. 


We were (very slightly!) late to met back at the bus, but our fellow tour-mates forgave us and we headed to a little pub for some warm food. We got yummy (and not food-poisonous) seafood chowder and some of the amazing hearty brown bread for lunch.

We stopped along the way back to Galway for some more photo ops. At the coast and one of the castles built right by the water around the 15th century. By the coast we also got some photos sitting on one of the huge boulders dropped there by the glaciers a long time before the 15th century.  

I have it on good authority that the Cliffs of Insanity are also amazing when you see them from the water, so I'm scheming a bit to see if I can work out a way to go back and see them from a boat as well.  The Cliffs of Moher (Irish Gaelic name)/Cliffs of Insanity (other name of awesomeness) were really fun to see and we had good weather --by Irish at least since it only actively rain on us for part of the day. And we were even mostly dried out by the time we made it back to Galway that evening. 

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia - but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha h..." 

Wonderful travel buddy, Kaite, in the Invincible-Tomato-Rain-Coat which was quite appreciated in the rain and mist 

Forgive the not good photo, we were too excited about eating to pose

When the three of us got back to Galway we met up with Monique and Star for an epic Girls Night. It started off with wolfing down six dozen wings at Scotty's and ended with eating two Tesco bins of ice cream while we watched Ocean's Eleven. Very very wonderful all around. I can't wait to visit Emily and Katie in Italy next!

"Once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and then it's nothing but work, work, work all the time."
"You mock my pain!"
"Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Connemara and Kylemore Abbey

On Friday Star and her roommate Monique joined Jamie, Jessie, and I on a day trip to Connemara.  Taking a bus to a couple miles from Kylemore Abbey cost 14euro, but taking a bus tour to lots of places and right to the Abbey only cost 15euros, so we took the bus tour and it was well worth it. Along with great commentary and some crazy Irish music we got to stop off at some beautiful spots to enjoy the Connemara scenery.

The Connemara region is where a lot of Irish movies were filmed like The Quiet Man. (Which is now top of my list of movies I need to watch while I'm here, along with The Field and The Wind that Shakes the Barley because those have been recommended to me by Irish friends.)

Knocking on the Quiet Man's door 

In addition to sites from the film, such as the cottage and the bridge and other things I will appreciate much more once I've seen the films we saw breath taking Irish countryside.

The mountains are mostly barren and very rocky with lots of sheep wandering around.  Our bus driver said he has never hit one yet, even though he has had close calls since the sheep pretty much roam wherever they want.  The rocky landscape also means the super cute Connemara Ponies are quite sure-footed and great jumpers.

Kylemore Abbey was built by Mitchell Henry in the 1860s for his wife Margaret as a honeymoon gift. (Note to future husband: You are welcome to follow suit). It's right at the foot of the mountains with the lake and amazingly beautiful Irishness. There is a Victorian Walled Garden as well which has been restored in the past few years.  As cool as it was though, its well-trimmed-perfected-shaped-and-trimmed-ness was not really as charming as the basically-over-grown-and-very-enchanted-seeming-Rock-Close-garden-deal-at-Blarney-Castle.  In a lot of ways it captured more of the Henry's British roots than the local Irish charm. 

Still a really pretty garden, just not an overly Irish-looking one

When his wife Margaret died of Nile Fever while they were on a trip in Cairo, Mitchell Henry was heartbroken and built a Neo-Gothic chapel in her memory. It's a short (and beautiful) walk down the lake from the Castle-turned-Abbey. After a few generations in the 1920s the family sold Kylemore to Benedictine nuns who turned it into an Abbey and ran a school for girls for many years. Can I just point out how much I want to go to high school in a castle? In mountains! On a lake! In Ireland! In a castle!!! I might even consider becoming a nun if I got to live in a gorgeous abbey like this.

The nuns who took over at Kylemore were super hardcore. As in their abbey in Belgium was bombed and destroyed near the beginning of World War One the hard-core-Benedictine-nuns grabbed their few things and left on foot then walked for days until they bumped into some Red Cross workers who helped them get to England. Then they purchased Kylemore and began the school and tours.  It's a particularly wonderful place to tour when one has recently started watching Downton Abbey which is a particularly wonderful show.

My knee was doing its very best to communicate extreme dislike for me
so I'm slightly slanted in all of the photos from that day.

Kylemore Abbey and the Connemara were phenomenal and it was fun to see them while Jamie and Jessica were visiting, even if it lacked any cows to milk or hills to roll down (at least hills that were more grassy and less pure muddy). 

Paris for a Day

Last week I took a quick little WONDERFUL trip to Paris. The main reason was to see Rei, since Paris is about half-a-world-closer than Hiroshima.  And how much of an excuse does one really need to go to a city as great as Paris?

I played the oh-so-fun game of find the best plane tickets, and ended up with flights out of Dublin into Paris on Aer Lingus. It was not much more expensive and was much more convenient than Ryan Air.

CityLink's bus route map

My flight out of Dublin was at 18:10 (I switched my phone to military time so I would stop confusing myself, cause 18 does not in fact mean 8pm - very important). I took the CityLink bus literally across the country from Galway to Dublin-- such a cute tiny little country they have here. Only took about 3 hours from coast to coast and there was some very-Irish-looking-country-side to see.

Once I got to the Dublin Airport I went through their very-speedy-and-not-overly-serious-security. At my gate I got to watch the breaking news on the TV about a Mr. Goodwin who had just been stripped of his knighthood - scandalous!

It's a short flight, we got up in the air and had a great view of all the lights in Dublin at night, then the dark of the Irish Sea, then the night lights of London, then dark of the English Channel then pretty soon you could see the glow of the City of Lights. I stayed at The Oops Hostel again. When Jamie and I were in Paris after our semester in Rome we stayed at a couple different places, some of which were significantly sketchy, but Oops was really nice. The rooms are really nice, plus they have free internet and breakfast!

Rei and Masami 

Wednesday morning I took the green-ish-blue-ish-Metro-Line-6 and met up with Rei and her husband. It was really super-dupery-duper-wonderful to see Rei and to met her husband again. We got lunch at the Deux  Magots which is for 1920s Paris, what the Eagle and Child was for the Inklings -- Hemingway, Sartre, Picasso, and pretty much all of their crazy and talented friends were regular costumers. We enjoyed some amazing food and chatted about our regulars from work and such. Rei got to switch between English with me, Japanese to translate for her hubby, and French with the bow-tie-clad-fancy-French-waiters.

We then headed off to find Notre Dome, stopping into St. Germain's on the way. Walking along the Seine was incredibly cold with nearly-non-stop-freezing-wind, it was beautiful though and feeling your fingers and toes is overrated. Galway has generally been sweat-shirt-cold during the day, so the real winter cold of Paris where it snowed the night before was quite chilly. We looked though some shops and enjoyed Paris and catching up-- along with some Crepes ^_^

My dear Aubry got me a super awesome travel book, one of the sections entertained me with its fitting title:

This book already knows my adventures so well

Before I left I jotted down my confirmation numbers and metro routes and all, I wrote a little list of 

4 out of 8 ain't bad right? Just means it's a real adventure

things to do while in Paris. As I wrote said list I thought, "Well there's no reason I would deviate form this itinerary." Haha my brain is so cute sometimes.

It's all good though, cause the important things went really smoothly and the rest is the adventure of traveling. I had a book to finish and one to start on my Kindle, but then my darling Kinny decided to freeze up on me-- so that postponed a couple of the things I'd jotted down, not a big deal at all. I did: stay at Oops, eat crepes, make my wish, and see Rei so I got half of my list :)

The other things on my list were to go to the top of Notre Dome. However the entrance for the tower had this sign saying it was temporarily closed "Due to the climate". Then I walked over the bridge and found the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, however it was also temporarily closed that week because the owner had just passed away at age 98 after having run his bookstore since 1948.

Awesome bookstore which hosted just as many famous authors as Deux
Magots as well as passing writers who worked and stayed as well.
"Be not inhospitable to strangers
Lest they be angels in disguise"

Although I still haven't gone up the towers yet, we ended up getting to Notre Dome right before Mass began, which was really neat to see -- can't beat the smell of incense while you explore a cathedral. Unplanned details can be the best part of adventures.

After I parted ways with Rei and headed back to my hostel, I decided it was too early to go to sleep, but too late to wander the city by myself. So I went one of the multiple "Cinemas" on the Blvd Goblins near Oops. Though it was funny to watch an American movie with French subtitles, the theater was really nice and the tickets were cheaper than back home, which was nice.

In the morning I managed to get my train ticket to Charles De Gaulle airport despite the fact I don't speak French beyond "Merci", "Paris", and "oui" and the fact that French people say "CharlesDeGaulleAeroport" really really fast and not at all like we would pronounce it. I was pretty proud of my smile-and-apologize-and-speak-english-while-they-speak-french-communication skills. The rest of the traveling went well and was topped off with Irish pot pie and Japanese cookies on the bus ride back across country home to Galway.