Somewhere over the rainbow, skies were actually blue!

This past weekend, Gavin and I went on a trip down to the Republic of Ireland. It was by far one of the best trips I’ve taken this semester thanks to the people we met and the places we saw.

We started things out right on Thursday (Nov. 21) by taking a double decked bus to Dublin and sitting in the front on the top! We had a fabulous view for the two hour drive.

When we got to Dublin, we booked a room with Isaac’s Hostel, which was a really cool old building that used to be a wine cellar. They have the basement all set up with each little cellar as separate hang out spots; one is a library, then a computer room, a sauna, a pool table, and a tv/movie/playstation room. The main thing we did that first night however was the Guinness Factory. We hopped on Dublin’s tram system (which is an above ground subway, basically) and it was very easy and clean to use. Actually, all of the public transportation here has been awesome. But we almost missed the last entrance time to the museum at 5 o’clock as we speed walked to find the big Willy Wonka looking gate to the factory.

Obviously, we made it in time. The ticket got us into the storehouse, which was shaped like a giant pint of Guinness that would have held 14.3 million pints, but they brew more than that in 5 days! We walked quickly through the brewing process information. It was interesting, but the same basic stuff like here is the clean water we use, then the barley, then the hops, then the barrels. We also went through the tasting room where they tell you exactly what you taste and smell when you enjoy a pint of Guinness. It was a bit theatrical, but I do feel like I know a wee bit more about how to enjoy a good “pint of the black stuff.” The more interesting facts were about the history of Arthur Guinness himself and the factory.

In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for the same land the factory is on today, for an annual rent fee of £45. A little ambitious you might say, but Guinness is guaranteed to be around until the year 10759. Arthur and his wife Olivia had 21 children, but only 10 of them survived.

Guinness was one of the first in the world to provide their employees with a pension and give paid vacations. Records from 1860 show pensions being provided, and on average, salaries were 10-20% above the rest of Dublin jobs. If a man died and left a family, Guinness would pay for the burial, provide money for the family and give the wife a decent job. Free medical care was also provided for employees starting in 1870. Free dinner was served for young boys of Guinness families to encourage them to attend school. Guinness would also loan money at low interest rates for employees to buy houses, and most importantly, each male employee would receive a beer allowance of two pints of Guinness daily.

For the full story of facts on employees: http://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/docs/Employee_Welfare_At_Guinness.pdf

I can’t find the actual quote from Arthur on his employees, but even recent chairmen of the company have been quoted saying things like ‘[Guinness] always felt that it was not only the duty, but to the advantage, of the company and its shareholders, that the company should bear its part in serving this civilization and this way of life in which we all believe.’

Truer words have never been spoken, and Gavin and I were both thoroughly impressed by their humane corporation philosophies.  

On Friday our actual planned trip began. We booked a tour with Paddywagon Irish touring company meant for backpackers like ourselves. We were supposed to meet and leave at 8 a.m., but our bus had a flat tire so we waited an hour for another bus to be driven into town. Altogether, there were 6 of us on the three day tour through Galway, Killarney and Blarney, and I would say all 6 of us are pretty good friends now! There were 4 Americans: Gavin and me, Jessica from Washington D.C. studying in London, and Meagan from California working for the Scottish parliament. The other two were from Australia, close to Melbourne, named Scott and Ben, and both had been traveling around Europe independently. Because of them, I have deemed my favorite accent to be the Australian one, FYI.

We also accumulated many inside jokes and random facts along the way, which I will add in occasionally.

#1: Marc, our guide, told us not to wear seatbelts on the back roads of Ireland. It would be more fun that way.

#2: Marc told us they let the sheep go paintballing on the weekends, and that’s why they come back with paint splotches on them to work during the week.

#3: They have mussel farms in Ireland. 

 Once we got on the road, we stopped in a little village called Cong. Anybody know what it’s famous for? I didn’t, but Gavin knew that John Wayne filmed The Quiet Man with Maureen O'Hara there. They have a statue of him and everything. We walked around the old monastery they had, as well as some beautiful wooded areas. There was a restored castle back in the woods on the other side of town, but we didn’t want to pay to get in, even though the guide showed us where we could hop the fence to take a free tour. Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina have stayed there before so it must be nice. We also saw a sign on a large, green industrial fence saying not to climb it because it had been painted with anti-climb paint… Does anybody know about that, either?

We only spent about 40 minutes there before getting back on the bus and driving to Kylemore Abbey. The abbey was originally built in 1867 for a single family. Mitchell Henry built it, along with an extensive Victorian style garden for his wife (which ONLY she was allowed in), and a church. It was eventually turned into a Benedictine monastery and later boarding school for girls until 2010, and now it is being restored back to its original home state and run by the nuns. Talk about a BEAUTIFUL place. The pictures just don’t do it justice, but we were also very lucky to have sunshine throughout our entire trip! That NEVER happens in Ireland.

#4: I burned by mouth probably worse than I ever have before gulping down potato and dill soup from the abbey.

From the abbey, we made our way through some never ending, movie like scenery, with the sun shining over the mountains. We also stopped along the side of the road to look at a tree which had all of these things tied to the branches. Apparently, it’s the local car park for teenagers looking to get in the backseat with someone, and afterwards they tie something in the tree. When the tree is full they use the fence, and when the fence is full some unlucky soul takes them all down and they start over.

Our main stop for the day/night was Galway. They had a quaint Christmas market where we enjoyed the music and Christmas punch. We also walked down their main shop street with pubs and stores and enjoyed a coffee with Bailey’s Irish Cream. Dinner was fish and chips in the Skeff Bar right off of the main Eyre Square. The pub crawl for the night started there as well, but don’t worry, we didn’t get crazy. It was basically just a walk around town showing off Galway’s variety of pubs.

#5: I lost one of my favorite earrings in Galway. Gavin also wound up losing his scarf on the trip. The Aussie Ben lost his towel, and I think at least one other person lost something to the black hole of Ireland.

The next morning, we headed out to the cliffs of Moher with a few stops along the way. First we came to Dunguaire Castle. Apparently it is open part of the year, but we couldn’t go inside. It was still cool from the outside, though.

#6: If you walk counter-clockwise around the castle, they say you get your virginity back.

#7: Doctors used to/maybe still tell pregnant women to drink Guinness due to its high iron concentration.

#8: ABC stands for Another Bloody Castle/Cottage/Creek/Church. We saw so many of these places, this is how Marc said people start referring to them.

 After Dunguaire castle, we went on to another abandoned monastery called Corcomroe Abbey. It was built in 1210 and looked like it came straight out of Oblivion the video game.

#9: Marc loved his one liners, and would occasionally tell us to get back on the bus to “make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here,” or “make like a hockey player and get the puck out.” It made life a little more interesting.

#10: The small stone walls and abandoned houses that litter Ireland are called Famine walls or Famine houses. The Irish would go to work for 12 hours a day building property barriers with these stones, no mortar, and receive a penny a day or a small amount of food during the potato famine in 1845.

#11: Across the street from a famine house, we stopped at a fresh water well/spring that was filtered by the mountain it came down. The water was very cold and nice.

The next stop was a frightening photo op at the baby cliffs of Moher. No railings, just a 100 foot sheer drop down to the rocky water below. (Mother Teresa, if you are reading this it was actually just 10 feet).

 We grabbed lunch at Fitzpatrick’s Pub in the middle of nowhere. Apparently their seafood chowder is famous and has its own website. I must say it was pretty good.

Then the Cliffs of Moher! Harry Potter’s scene with the horcrux in the cave was filmed there, along with the Princess Bride. And I said we had a beautiful day before, but we also had the COOLEST rainbow I have ever seen in real life, maybe even in pictures. It came all the way from the distant horizon, straight down to the water below us and made more than a 180˚ curve. Gavin dared to sit on the edge but I was content to crawl.

 

After the cliffs, we headed out to Killarney. We stopped at a quaint pub with Christmas lights done really well. I have this nostalgic memory of it being the coziest place, but that might have just been because I was asleep on the bus and wanted to keep dreaming.

Also on the way to Kilarney, Aussie Ben looked out the window as twilight was upon us and said very animatedly, “WHAT IS THAT?!” We all turned to look out the right window and I would have sworn that a daemon was in the nearby field. I have never in my life seen something hover above the ground that way. It was two huge black blobs, floating above the grass in characteristic fog, moving very fluidly and constantly changing shape. I mean this ghost was like the size of a tractor and truly looked like a dementor, as Meagan said.

#12: Flocks of birds can sometimes look like dementors.

Once we made it alive to Killarney, we found some Chinese dinner and kicked it at the hostel for a break before we went back out to meet Marc at the Grand Hotel. It was more like a pub with a club attached to the back and rooms upstairs, but we certainly did have a grand time that night! There was live Irish music in the front room and a live, but not as good, American cover band in the back.

#13: When listening to native Irish language speakers, you find out how they pronounce ‘th’ differently. Tree means three and third turns into turd. We laughed about this for a good while. Urinal is also pronounced ur-anal. That was the one that made our abs sore the next day!

#14: Kiwi jokes were also part of Marc’s one liner repertoire. (Apparently they like to shag their sheep as well as shear them, in case you didn’t know like me). How do kiwis find sheep in tall grass? With a great big smile on their face. We also wanted to get out and pet the alpacas and horses, so Marc commented that it’s a good thing we didn’t have any kiwis because they would want to pet the sheep…

The main attraction on Sunday was the Blarney stone, which I kissed, so watch out speech circuit! How many more of you can say you kissed the same stone as Winston Churchill who became possibly the greatest orator of the 20^th century?

The other cool thing about the Blarney castle was the gardens. They didn’t have ordinary gardens, they had poison gardens! Everything in this garden had some kind of hallucinogenic or deadly trait to it. This included marijuana, ricin, wolfsbane, hemlock, poison ivy, and wormwood. The most interesting one to me, however, was the box bush, which I’m pretty sure we all have in our yards!!!

 

 

This plant was said to keep witches away from your house because witches know the number of every twig and leaf of every plant. When they get to a box bush, however, they lose their place when they count the leaves and therefore get stuck looking at the bush before they can enter your house. It is also poisonous to eat.

#15: This was our other inside joke, because we frequently say witches be flockin to ____ (fill in the blank, ex. The beach, meaning girls love the beach), and in this case we could say Witches be flockin to the box bush. We thought it was funny =D.

#16: I also got to hear an Australian use the phrase “she looked a bit dodgy” which made my life. Thank you, Ben.

#17: Being hip, meaning cool, comes from opium dens where “being on the hip” meant you were lying on your side smoking, and this was considered cool. I learned that in the poison garden.

#18: Scott and Ben made Jessica and Meagan really excited by telling them they can ride kangaroos. They seem so exotic to us, but for them they are a nuisance like deer. You can’t really ride a kangaroo, but the girls looked up kangaroo saddle anyway…

#19: We also looked up where baby corn comes from, and it is as cute as we thought it would be! Just think of an adorable little ear of corn that you have to shuck. We did this as we ate our Chinese in Killarney.

After we all kissed the stone to get the gift of gab, we made our way from county Cork back to Dublin. We stayed in Jacob’s hostel this time, which was run by the same people with Isaac’s and it was just as nice. But yet another small world story: two other Americans came into our hostel room and we started talking to them. We found out they were studying together in England for the semester, but they go to the University of Colorado Boulder. The girl, Rachel, was from Chicago originally, and when we said we were studying in Coleraine, Northern Ireland she said she knew someone else from Chicago living there.

“Oh really? Who do you know?”

“Kate Pfau.”

“WHAT?”

It was one of those moments where you’re not sure you heard them correctly because what are the odds this girl we happened to be assigned a room with in Dublin would know our other close friend we have lived with all semester?? But anyway, after we excitedly talked about Kate for a while (all good things, of course) we had a fantastic night on the town with Rachel and David and looked at Christmas lights in the city.

We ended our trip by doing some Christmas shopping in the Belfast Christmas Market and eating Kangaroo burgers in honor of our new Aussie friends. They were quite good!

#20: Northern Irish people are outrageously friendly and helpful. An older man saw us looking at a map in the Belfast train station and offered to walk us all the way through the city to our destination! The world never ceases to amaze me with its plethora of angels.