Ireland

(Just an early morning delivery of Guiness to the local pubs in Dublin)

I slept in today, recovering from our vacation to Ireland. My three friends, Anna, Jeff, and John and I just devoured Ireland in five days, running from coast to coast. Our unsupervised independent travel started when we were dropped off in Shannon airport and picked up in Dublin.

Between these cities we somehow managed to teeter off the Cliffs of Moher, crawl to the top of Mt. Croagh Patrick, ride wooly horses, crashed someone’s pancake party, sneak into castle gardens, and still have time to run through Dublin’s art museum. In short, sleeping was pretty far down on the list of things to do in Ireland.

Mt. Croagh Patrick was an absolute spectacular experience. It was said that St. Patrick climbed to the top of the mountain and fasted and prayed for all the snakes to leave Ireland. Now Ireland does not have any snakes in it (literally). Now this 2,541 ft. mountain is used as a pilgrimage. Pilgrims would climb bare foot through the sharp rocky trails, stopping at three stations along the way. At the top was a small chapel. The day we climbed, the peak was covered in a cloud and it was not long before the whole trail was a whiteout. Suddenly, in the final assent to the top, the trail turned into a pile of endless loose rocks. It was hard getting our footing as the trail turned into a shifty field of stones. This was the most difficult and exhausting part of the climb. Just when I thought we would never reach the top, out of the mist appeared the lonely form of a white church.










Too exhausted and relieved for words, we huddled beside the side of the church as the wind whipped over the peak. I felt such pride for having made it to the top. It was absolutely like nothing I have ever experienced.

The people of Ireland are more relaxed and rural then Englishmen. Nearly every pub we went in to had some sort of live music that started at 10:00 at night. The band I remember most was in Westport at a little pub down the street from our hostel. Jeff was able to snag some video of their music. As you can hear from our commentary, we had just climbed down the mountain and were relaxing with some hot chocolate listening to music.