Well, last night after I updated we headed out for dinner at a pub in this tiny town with a girl from New Zealand. The pub fed us soooo muuuuuch fooooood. Claire had beef stew that came in a bottomless bowl, and I had a giant and delicious cheeseburger. Then, we headed to the bar across the street to watch the America vs. Ghana world cup game. I had a bulmers irish cider (way yummier than Guiness ;-)), and we stayed through the rest of the game (and overtime). The Irish were mostly rooting for America, but the French were definitely rooting for Ghana. We met and sat with two Archeology PhD students studying Ireland over the summer who were great. Just as things started to get really bad for the Americans, one of the Irishmen magically materialized an American flag that he draped over the shoulders of the Archeology students. We got great pictures of all of us looking sad while holding the flag after we lost. It was a great time considering that we lost!
We slept well, and then had a delicious breakfast at the hostel of irish brown bread and soda bread and porridge and tea. It was great. They have puppies, kittens, and yummy breakfast here; I could move in. We rushed out to get to church (which is luckily almost attached to the hostel) where we sat through the actual fastest mass I have EVER heard. Seriously, Sunday Mass, with music- it was over in 30 minutes. They are not kidding around here in Ireland. The prayers were said so fast that I couldn't even keep up (and I know all the words!). It may have been because the priest has to say mass at 2 other parishes in the area in the same morning (or perhaps the Irish are just very speedy at praying). Either way, it was fun and I'm glad we made it to a proper Irish Catholic Mass.
We then considered going for a boat ride, but it was too windy (we considered again later, but that time it was too rainy), but it's totally fine, because tomorrow we need to take a ferry! The weather overall today was very Ireland- blustery with intermittent rain. BUT...we did not let the weather stop us, and we headed out to Kylemore Abby (probably misspelled). It's this beautiful old mansion/castle that was bought by benedictine nuns and turned into an Abby/girls' school. We saw the Abby, the church, and the very cool Victorian walled gardens. It was all beautiful and on a very picturesque lake. Castles in Ireland are awesome, because they're just like the castles we would draw as kids- apparently those really exist! We also had lunch and some amazing ice cream at the tea room in the gardens.
After the Abby, we decided to try and find an old ruined castle in a neighboring town. This would have been easy if we'd just followed the directions that the guide book gave, but we instead misinterpreted a no-trespassing sign, walked way to far, and then tried to climb through a sheep field (and failed) to get there. Also, this all happened during intermittent rain! Then we walked back to the original entrance, walked a while in a different wrong direction, and finally we asked someone who said she thought it was not trespassing to take the road (we eventually decided that the sign referred to the field). We got to the ruined castle, which was beautiful, and had a great view of a bay, which appeared to have a salmon farm in it. There were lots of cows (penned up) and sheep (not at all penned up) around the castle, and we also got lots of pictures of donkeys, horses, and ponies during our 2.5 hour (should have been 1 hour) hike. I think this is all part of Claire's plan to completely exhaust me while making it look like an accident ;-).
By the time we got back to town we were a little damp and STARVING, so we stopped for dinner at a rather nice seafood restaurant, and now we are back at the hostel (playing with the puppy and kittens of course)!
Tomorrow, we head offshore to spend a night on an island, so it remains to be seen if we'll actually have internet tomorrow.
Cheers!
-Emily
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment