So Im back from my amazing trip to ireland. it is quite an adventure, so far it has been the highlight of the trip (second to shaking Il Papa's hand).
So my adventure started before i even left italy. you know the saying mother knows best? well, its completly true.... My loving mother has dubbed me The Dumbass (due to various car accidents, inicidents with alcohol in high school, and losing my license/cell phone/wallet/ car keys on more then one occasion) back to the point. in true form i am a dumbass. The night before my flight i was checking my itinterary to see what time to get to the airport. Well what i noticed was that i was flying from roma to london and london to dublin. two seperate tickets because it was cheaper that way. well to my shock and horror, i realized that i was flying into london stansted and flying out of london luton.... TWO SEPERATE AIRPORTS. so of course i freaked out, it was nearly midnight the ngiht before i was to leave. I go to the girls apartment because they had internet to solve this debocle. There is no i can make it from one airport to the other without missing my flight. Well im going to ireland if its the last thing i do. so i find another flight straight from rome to dublin and buy it. Im bitter about my stupidity but no big deal at least i will get there.
I fly to Dublin on thursday morning and meet up with Maura. they called for rain and gross weather but we got out of the airport to beautiful sunny clear skies. a good omen. I was estatic, i was finally home. Mo and I take the bus into city center Dublin and find our hostel. It was in a great location right in city center on the river, a few blocks from trinity college. We went to lunch and living up to our heritage, had our first pints in ireland... even though it was only 2pm.
We explored the city most of the afternoon and plan our weekend.
((Mom dont get angry at the following few paragraphs))
Then we decided to make a rule, every pub we pasted on our side fo the street we would stop in for a pint. this idea sounded great in the begining and not so much after about 3. We met up with melissa and had dinner then decided there is no better way to see dublin then a pub crawl. logical thinking right? so we had a pub crawl through the city of guiness. great time.
well i will skip to the next morning for obvious reasons.....
Well we got up early because we had alot to see before we left the city. So we got up and decided to tour the Guiness factory, see Saint Patricks and go back to the Trinity College to see the book of Kells.
We took the Bus to Guiness for the tour.... well, haha, we step off the bus and smell of the hops and barley that were in the air was a bit too much for Maura and Melis who happened to have a touch of the Irish Flu. They proceeded to puke on saint james gate. the irony was too much to handle and they called me an ass because i was laughing so hard that it took me a few tries to take a picture. haha it was hilarious.
We toured the factory which was really interesting and it goes back to the begining when Arthur Guiness started the company and how it grew to the phenom that it is today. After guiness factory we went to saint patricks, then went to the train station to catch a train to galway. We happened to run into some of our friends, randomly in the train station. We caught the 4 oclock train for galway and we were on our way....a side note about the train, it was like a rolling party, they said many times not to drink on the train, as soon as those wheels started churning... everyone had a drink in their hand. gotta love the irish.
We got there like 4 and half hours later. It was dark out but we were excited to be there. Our hostel was right on Eyre Square which is the center of town. We went to an amazing dinner at a hole in the wall resturant and i had traditional irish stew which was awesome. it was nice and hot, because it was freezing out. We found a pub that had like no one in it but an irish band. awesome. drinking a pint in ireland, listening to traditional irish music, in the town that is my namesake. it was amazing.
i loved galway alot more then dublin, i mean dublin is dublin but if i ever go back i will most definatly go to galway. the sense of culture and community it was so warm and welcoming to an irish american visitor.
We met up with my friend brendan, and he was friends with a whole bunch of fairfield kids studying in galway so maura knew them. It was an amazing time. the most fun i have had in all of europe so far. a funny story, in one of the pubs i was talking to some irish girls and they were convinced i was from kerry. they didnt believe that i was american, that was a real compliment to me.. to think that even the locals thinks im from ireland!
the next morning we got up and took a bus tour to the cliffs of Moehr which were the most beautiful feat of nature i have ever seen. absoutely breath taking. We toured the coast and had lunch in Doolin which is a tiny town across the water from the Aran Islands. It was real ireland, stone walls, sheep, rain. amazing.
We got back late from the tour had to rush to catch the last bus to cork. We arrived in cork late and found our hostel. Cork was very different from both dublin and galway. it reminded me of Pittsburgh, very industrial on a river. and it was way bigger then the other two cities. We went to dinner and walked around a bit but then went to bed early because we had to fly back to our respective cities in the morning. We said our fairwells at the airport and thought back on our amazing weekend. We vowed to come back to ireland in the near future.
I travelled all day by myself to get back to rome, i flew to dublin then caught another flight to roma. i had alot of time to think back on the weekend and reflect on what it means to be an irish-american. This trip was very emotional to me, i felt a bond in ireland way more then any country i have been to. there is something special about going back to a country that three generations ago my family came from. the struggle to make themselves a better life for their children. They gave everything they had for a chance things will be better. thats amazing to me.
Also i felt the need to preserve the irish culture in america. We need to remember where we have come from in order to understand where we are going. We need to keep the traditions alive, we cannot forget who we are.
heres to an amazing weekend. and an amazing event in my life....
slainte,
matthew GALWAY wooters
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