Friendship, Love, and Loyalty

Here's the next installment of the Great Irish Saga!!!

Friday, March 16, 2007

Like I said in my last post, I was up way early. For some reason, I think it's perfectly acceptable to get my butt out of bed at ungodly hours when I'm on vacation, but not during the regular week. Go figure. Anyway, after being shivering cold the night before, I made sure I put on a lot of layers and added my fleece jacket under my grey trench coat. Since I don't really believe in wearing socks, and only had my little brown shoes, my feet were cold a lot of the time. And wet too, because even though it never actually rains in Ireland, it's misty pretty much all the time. Either way, my feet survived.

The walk to the bus station was very pretty and took a lot less time than finding the hostel had taken the night before. I swear I saw the sun coming up, and took a couple of pictures to commemorate the fact that I was up that early. One of them was of a streetlight that was decorated with a shamrock. Another was of a random building that had an interesting statue on top and some pretty sunrise-colored clouds behind it.

Once I was on the bus, I contemplated napping, but I didn't want to miss a thing and I ended up writing down notes of what I had done and looking out the window at the scenery. Ireland reminded me a bit of Virginia because it had a lot of rolling hills and pastureland. The stone walls helped with that whole image. Did you know that they don't use anything to actually hold the stones together? It's all just how they stack them. Meghan says they just pile rocks very well. At least the Irish are good for something! And I feel totally justified in making fun of them since I happen to be more than slightly Irish.

I also saw a ton of sheep and cattle with their babies. They were so incredibly cute. And Meghan told me that seeing a lamb is good luck, so I figure since I saw a bazillion of them, then I should have pretty good luck for a really long time. I also saw some horses, but they seemed stockier than my fourleggers. Two of them were pintos and when the bus stopped in the middle of the road so the driver could talk on his cell phone, they walked over to their fence and said hi. They kind of reminded me of the Gypsy horses.

Finally, we arrived in Galway. It seemed to take forever, but that might be because I expected the trip to take three hours and it actually took four. When I met Meghan and mentioned it, she said that that was typical. This was another one of those times where I missed Germanic efficiency with public transportation. It was really awesome to see Meghan and she told me all about Galway as we walked to her apartment so I could put my stuff down. We'll be traveling together in Rome over Easter break, so we talked about that a bit too.

Meghan's apartment is more like a townhouse. She lives with five other people -- one girl and four boys. Three of the boys are Irish, but most of them were home for the weekend. That's the thing with students in Ireland. Most of them study at a university within three hours of home (which is most of the island, in all truth) and go home on the weekends. Anyway, the apartment was REALLY nice. It had three floors and Meghan lives on the top floor. I dropped off my stuff in her room and added another layer because Galway was rather damp. It was the theme of the weekend, but really, as much as I'll pretend to complain about it, I really didn't mind the mist because it kind of goes along with being in Ireland. At least it wasn't snow.

Just a quick sidenote: There seem to be a lot of blue doors in Ireland. I don't know if it's a symbolism thing, but I think it might have to do with keeping the bad spirits out. Ireland is also known for it's Georgian doors that have elaborate door frames and brightly colored doors. They had a lot of calendars with pictures of them.

On the way into town, we took a different route than we had going to the apartment. I got to see where she goes to school, and the administration building there has a courtyard that reminds me of Hogwarts. The whole area is really pretty, like wow. Meghan also showed me some of town on our way in to the restaurant for lunch.

I don't remember the name of the restaurant/pub, but if Meghan is reading this, she can add a comment with the name so I can put it in the final edition of my blog before I make it into a lovely book. They have lunch specials there, just like we do in Austria. Since it was a Friday in Lent, Meghan skipped the meat, but I had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, which I had been dreaming about for the previous few weeks. We both got the vegetable soup and Meghan got fries too. The sandwich was good, and the soup was glorious. It was really thick, like a stew, and very orange, so I thought they put something in it like pumpkin. The soup also came with all different sorts of breads, and I liked the brown bread the best. It tasted/felt homemade and they even have salted butter in Ireland, which is really cool because they don't have that in Austria. And since I was in Ireland, I drank tea with lunch. It wasn't as good as the Irish Cream Tea at Am Moos, but it was wonderful with milk and sugar in real sized mugs, not the tiny bitty ones we have in my apartment here.

After lunch, we walked through town a bit and Meghan pointed out different things like churches. We visited a chruch that was somehow tied to Christopher Columbus (? - Meghan can you clarify that?) and saw a memorial from back in the day. There was once a man convicted of murder whose father was the mayor of Galway. Since he was the mayor's son, nobody wanted to be the one that hung him, so his father had to do it, and the Irish, being the slightly morbid people they are, kept the wall where the man was hung.

During our wanderings, Meghan introduced me to the place where the original Claddagh rings were made. The store had been in business since 1750 and had a mini museum in the back. The signs were very pretty and they had a stained-glass claddagh in the window of the door. We also walked to the shore and we saw the Claddagh district, which is an area of Galway. The houses here are very pretty colors and we took lots of pictures of them. We also met a swan that I named Harold, and he walked with us for a few meters. Let me just get this out here now, swans are huge! And since I was kind of intimidated by Harold, I made Meghan get close enough for a picture with him. After taking some pictures of the shore, we walked back toward town.

Sidenote: In my pictures is an image of a license plate. The first number on it is the year the car was bought. The letter(s) in the middle represent the town the car was bought in, and the last set of numbers is how many cars had been sold from there. I wonder what they do when the car is sold as a preowned vehicle. Do they change the license plate or is it stuck with it until it hits the scrap yard?

When we were back in Galway proper, we stopped in the non-original claddagh place. I was kind of leaning toward getting an original ring, so we didn't spend too much time there. On our return to the original claddagh shop, whose name I have to look up, the lady behind the counter sized me for a ring. I took off the claddagh that I've worn for the past few years and she picked out a ring of a similar size. She also examined the ring I had given her and asked me where I got it. I replied the United States, and she said it wasn't made in Ireland because it hadn't gone through their offices that stamp them. When something is made in Ireland, it has to be inspected to make sure it is as it is advertised, and my lovely little ring from QVC didn't have the stamp. The lady said it was probably made in Mexico, and Meghan explained to me when we got out of the shop that the Irish blame everything that's kind of strange to them on Mexico. And I mean really random stuff too, not just manufactured items. Anyway, the ring needed to be resized and they could take care of it that afternoon, we just had to come back in about an hour or so. So we continued our adventures through town.

Meghan took me to this little candy shop that one of her friends visits every day to buy two pieces of chocolate. She's working on tasting every kind they make. Meghan said I should try the Bailey's Creme Fraiche (I know I murdered the spelling of that, but you all know what I mean) because that's her favorite. And let me tell you, it was a little bite of Heaven. It was incredible! Like whoa. It's like I found a new addiction, but they don't sell individual types at their online store because I already looked (I was going to have boxes of that luscious candy sent to me in Vienna).

Afterward we had gotten the ring, we walked back to the apartment to meet the others for dinner. Meghan had a friend from high school visiting her and one of the friend's friends from college. They had been on a tour to the Cliffs of Mohr that day. I got to meet Leah (Meghan's other friend), Ashley (Leah's friend), Kathy (Meghan's neighbor), Lauren (another neighbor), and Phil (Lauren's boyfriend who was visiting over his spring break). They're all really awesome people. For dinner, we went back into town for fish and chips, which was really good. Then, since St. Patrick's Day was the next day, we ran to the store to stock up on the necessary items (hard cider and Bailey's for me, beer for the others). Afterwards, we just relaxed in the apartment for a bit because it had been a long day and I was kind of tired. When it was time for bed, we stole the cushions from the chairs and couches in the livingroom area and took them up to Meghan's room to sleep on. She had enough pillows and extra comforters for us all to have our own, which was really nice. All in all, it was a wonderful first day in Ireland!

Next chapter: St. Patrick's Day, due out later today.

Love,
Amanda