Okay if you have made from part 1 congrats cause it probly took you about an hour to get through all that info. If youre just seeing this for the first time this is part 2 of the Ireland post so jump back one blog entry to see all the pics and info about my trip up to this point.
Now a few pics of Galway during the day and then well get to the Aran islands.
This guy made the same sand sculpture, in the same position every day. Honestly I thought there was gonna b some originality to it but same dog, same spot everyday.
Just a cool statue near Eeyre Square.
This picture was taken specifically for my good buddy back home Aaron. One of his many nick names for me was Druid and so when I saw this sign I had to jump on it and snap a pic.
This is what remains of a building built in 1627 that is right near the center of the city. It blows my mind that I was standing next to something that has existed for centuries.
A close up on the plaque.
Now begins the trip to the Aran Islands. Unfortunately in the morning I was feeling tired and lonely and I was preoccupying about how much money I had spent so I wasn't sure if I wanted to go but I just said, Brian youre in Ireland just do it. So I went ahead and did it.
This picture I took specifically for my Dad. It was a golf course we drove by that was bordered by the ocean. Some of the greenest greens I've ever seen and I'm sure my dad would have been drooling at the chance to play on a course in Ireland. For those of you that don't know my dad is an avid golfer and anywhere we go my parents have a running joke where my dad will say to my mom, "Golf course Jan" whenever we see a golf course and mom will pretend to be excited and interested when she doesnt really care about golf at all. Every time I mention my family I get so happy knowing they will be here in two shorts days. I love them all so much and I cant wait for them to be a part of this experience that I am having.
The Ferry where I got about forty minutes of the best sleep Id had in days.
So when you get to the Aran Islands of the coast of Ireland you have the option to either take a bus tour or rent a bike and explore the island. My brother recommended the bike so you can stop where you'd like and do what you want so I went ahead and rented me a bike.
It literally couldnt have looked more like what I expected Ireland to look like. It was really beautiful but as I said there was a lot on my mind that day and when Im alone I just stew about my thoughts and run them over and over in my mind so this alone time was tough at times. Because on this bike there would be times where I didnt see anyone for 30 minutes. It was just a man alone with his thoughts on a bike.
Here's my hog from the Aran Islands. Me and this bad boy biked over 10 miles alllll over that island.
When you blow this picture up you can see the swan in the picture. Now this guy was MASSIVE, all the other ducks and swans in the lake were tiny this guy probly weighed like 100 pounds and could have eaten any of the other birds around it. He was the middle linebacker of this group of birds.
The seal colony on the Aran Islands. If you wanted to get close you would have to waded through that black sludge and I frankly didnt have the equipment for that and also I dont know if thats allowed.
A nice beach and something I didnt know, surfing is actually huge in Ireland. At the cliffs of Moher people surf all the time and apparently the waves are really good. If you had asked me I never would have guessed surfing would be a big sport in Ireland.
Unfortunately I didnt take this pic but just to give you some perspective on how nice the surfing is by the cliffs.
Big ole cow. Just wanted a picture of this guy cause it was the first living thing Id seen in about 40 minutes at that point.
This is something they called the "7 Churches" its the remains of seven churches from hundreds of years ago.
Wasnt sure if you were allowed to go in but the gates open and to me that says come on in.
I wanted to have proof that I touched a building that is over 800 years old.
They had what looked like tombstones covering the floor all over the floor of the church.
A very stereotypical Irish sheep dog. He was just chill watched my go by and continued doing doggy things just hanging out. He was one of two dogs I saw and the other one I saw in the street while I was biking and he ran up to me tail wagging big ole doggy grin on his face and then when he saw there was a car coming he walked over casually and jumped over this huge stone wall. It was pretty awesome.
Gaelic signs are really easy to understand. Fortunately the map was in English and Gaelic.
Now what just looks like a hill actually is a historic landmark on the Aran Islands. If you blow this picture up you can see a structure at the top of the mountain that people are hiking to that is over 3000 years old. And I heard the cliffs were amazing so I decided to hop off the bike and make the hike.
As the hike began the weather changed and became very stereotypically Irish. Wet and rainy. Fortunately I had my hiking pack with a rain cover and my rain jacket but as time went on I got SOAKED.
I forget the name of this but it was a massive cliff face and looked sooo cool.
Heres the cliffs edge, not as big as the cliffs of Moher but very impressive nonetheless. The water seemed a lot more active and violent the way it crashed against the rockface.
If you look close you can see the little cave at the bottom of the cliff.
The big island of the Aran Islands in all its glory.
A popular thing at all the cliffs I visited was to lie down and look over the edge and it was truly humbling.
I have a running joke with my friends that I say when were looking at something beautiful or incredible or if people are saying "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" I like to say, "Okay God, we get it, you made some pretty awesome stuff, you don't have to keep one upping yourself like this." But on a more serious note God has made some truly incredible things and I'm blessed to have this opportunity to get to see some of His wonders firsthand.
Looking straight done over the edge.
The colors in the water were breathtaking. For some reason I was under the impression that you could only find beautiful water at the beacches or in the Caribbean, oh how wrong I was.
Soaked. Tired. And utterly burned out at this point but still making the effort to keep working for the experience.
A better shot of that ring I talked about earlier.
The stones we walked up were a lot more threatening when they were soaking wet and slippery. They said at the entrance to allow 20 minutes to climb up and an hour to get down. I couldn't imagine why but after seeing how slippery it got I completely understand.
What the cliff looks like from the ocean.
So after visiting the cliffs I had to bike all the way back to town. 5 freakin miles. Pouring rain the whole way and a man alone with his thoughts is one thing but a man alone with his thoughts in piss pour weather, well that doesn't do much for your mood. After an arduous bike ride back to town I finally made it. And this wasn't a casual driving miss daisy bike ride, there were hills, I was sweating, pumping it out. My legs were so burnt out by the end of this. So I get back to town and return my bike because I knew I didn't have anymore energy to bike that day and I still had 2 hours left of the 5 hours they had given us on the island. So I just tried to find a place that was warm and dry. First I went and got some food at a super market because I was starving then went to the "American Bar" to wait out the rest of my time there. Unfortunately I wasn't the only weary traveler with that bright idea so there was nowhere to sit. So for the next hour and a half I stood, soaked to the bone, jeans soaked through, tired and cold, with my pack on my back in the bar. Fortunately the rugby match was on and that was awesome so that distracted me from the bad stuff.
Finally got back to the ferry and the Ireland vs. I think England rugby game was on and these people love their rugby so it was so fun to watch. And naturally the boys in green pummeled the other team and brought one home for the Emerald Isle.
So I got back to Galway and was not really looking forward to the rest of the night. It was gonna play out a little something like this. 2 hour bus ride back to Shannon airport and another rough nights sleep in an airport terminal. And still in a bad mindset about a lot of things really was just wishing I had a friend to share all this with but I had to go at it alone. I dried off completely about 2 or 3 hours after the islands and got to the airport around 10pm, my flight was at 9am. Alex was gonna come back around 7 because Limerick was about 20 minutes from the airport so I found a bench and I was pleasantly surprised to find their benches were not only comfortable and padded but also they didnt have bars in between the seats. This may as well have been a king size bed with a temperpedic mattress and sheets made out of Egyptian cotton at this point in my journey.
I cant tell you how happy I was to see this. And after a few modifications....
It was so damn comfortable. I know what you're thinking, sleeping on shorts, a t-shirt, and a Penn State hat sounds freakin perfect and it was lovely. I slept straight through till 7 am and honestly it might have been the best sleep I got through the whole trip and I was comfy.
So 7am its light out and we have reached the final day of our journey and I wanted nothing more than to be back home in Granada. I realized at the end of this trip how quickly Granada has become home and I missed it. At the beginning of the trip we were saying how happy we were to be taking a vacation to a place where they speak English, at the end I couldnt be happier to be going back to all Spanish. I had hit that point where I just wanted to be home where things were familiar and I was in contact with my laptop available. Sounds funny but its the creature comforts that you miss the most when you're abroad. And most importantly, I wanted to be in my bed.
So we get through security grab some food..
It was called the party platter and consisted of fries, wings, sausage, onion rings, and a couple different sauces. 8 30am yup that is a great way to start the day.
We got a great view of some of the mountains near Madrid during our flight.
Spanish countryside.
So finally we set down in Granada and go to the bus station and we had about an hour and a half to kill so we went to the nearby mall to get food. We got a kebab which is one of my favorite foods here in Spain and we get back to the bus station only to realize our bus had left 3 minutes before we got there. Another hour to wait and 3 more Euro to change our tickets and we were both just burnt out at this point. Oh and we had actually already spent 3 euro to change our tickets originally cause we were back earlier than expected and we ended up just having to pay 3 euro again to switch it back to the original time. So finally an hour and a half later we arrive back in Granada.
And I gotta say I have never been happier to see those beautiful mountains. Which by the way I will be in tomorrow, I'm going with my friend from Belgium up into the mountains for a day of snowboarding at the place which apparently has the best snowboarding in Spain so I cant wait for that. After my snowboarding trip in Colorado I rediscovered my love for snowboarding so I plan on tearing it up tomorrow.
So finally I get back to my house close to 7pm, tried to study for a bit, then decided I just needed to rest and went to bed. I did a lot of reflecting after my trip (as you can probably tell from the length of this blog entry) and I really learned a lot about myself in this trip.
There are times when things are bleak and nothing seems to be going right but you learn about how strong you are and how much you can really do when you push yourself. It is amazing what we are capable of as humans and with the right drive you can do just about anything. When your cold, wet, tired, and trying to find a place to stay and you want to just lie down right where your at things can get kinda sucky but if you push through you find out you can end up at a nice hostel with some cooky girls from Australia. Although I wasn't in the best state mentally for some of my day trips I'm still very happy I did them. You can't let a bad mood keep you from doing what you want to because then your letting that bad mood dictate your actions, sometimes you just gotta suck it up and go for it.
Overall Ireland was incredible and I couldnt be more proud to be Irish after all of this. I saw some incredible things, reuinted with old friends, and had me a bunch of Guinness. Now there was a song that I had found a few months before this trip and I kinda had it on loop in my head throughout the trip. The beginning reminds me of the music I heard in Taafes that first night but it is kind of a rap song so Im guessing the adults who read this blog wont really enjoy it but if you just listen to the beginning you'll know what Im talkin bout.
This song will forever remind me of my time in Ireland and bring up all those wonderful memories.
Ive found that your perception of situations and experiences is very much in your control and because of that Ive been trying to change my way of viewing things and focusing on all the positives from an experience. In the past I like many people I know have had a tendency to focus on the negatives from an experience even if they were minute. But here in Europe I am going to hold onto all the good, the stuff that builds me up, that makes me a better person and Im gonna do my best to let all the bad go.
Something I haven't addressed in my blog yet is God's influence in my life and my time here in Spain. For those of you that know me you know I am Christian and God is a very big part of my life. Although I haven't been to church in quite some time I pray almost everyday and try to continually thank God for all the blessings he has given me in my life. Here in Europe he is raining blessings down upon me, he has gotten me through some very tough times and picked me up when I was at my lowest lows. Everyday I am in awe of his creations and thankful for the opportunity to be able to see them for myself. So to finish up this blog entry I will just thank God for everything in my life and for the fact that my family will soon be here to share in this with me. I love them and cant wait to see them!
To close I want to take a line from the song that I posted above that I think brings in a lot of my experiences in Ireland.
"We put our glass to the sky and lift up, and live tonight cause ya cant take it with ya, so raise a pint for the people that arent with us, and live tonight cause ya cant take it with ya."
