My Ireland Journey: Experiences on an Island and a New City

Hello, hello everyone who are you all doing? How has your week been for you guys? It is that time of the week where you get to find out new adventures of mine!! I’m very excited about the topic I will talking about in this blog, so let us get started!

So about a week and a half ago we had our first field trip which was to the Aran Islands! We traveled there by bus from where we are staying at, then we took a ferry ride (or otherwise known as a boat ride) to the island itself. It was my first time traveling by a ferry, and boy was it kind of rough (but a very interesting experience). But when we actually got onto the island we took a bus to a little grocery shop to purchase anything to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom etc. Afterwards we went to our hostel to drop off our bags before our tour around the island. The tour was very interesting such as, going into a graveyard (which was actually pretty neat to be able to walk around that, and see all the different kinds of tombstones). We also learned about how people on the island built their houses (which the foundation is made from limestone) and their fences (which is made from stone), and the people would build their fences their selves, which is intriguing because if they had to lift and build their fence that would be a lot of hard work to get done. After our bus tour we got off the bus, and hiked about 7 (or so) miles on a rocky, muddy path to get up to Dun Aonghasa, and the long, slippery hike was worth it by the time we got up to the top. When I reached the top I went over to the edge of the cliff to take a gander of the ocean below us. The view was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful! The way the waves violently crashed against the rocks was amazing! Every time the waves would crash it would be like listening to thunder like back at home, I have never seen the ocean like that before, and I honestly loved it so much! Then we hiked back down where we were at (it was more slippery going down!), and went down to the village. Fun fact about the Aran Islands there are three islands that make up the entire Aran Islands, but the one we had gone to was the largest island out of the three of them, and I did not know that until we were informed before our trip. Anyway when we left the island we used the same transportation back as we used when we came (so ferry ride and bus ride).

After that excursion we had one day to rest and had class then we had to pack up and leave again for another field trip, in which we went to Dublin! The capital city of Ireland. When we traveled to Dublin before we got into the city we had stopped at a Monastery museum, and that was really cool to see all of the crosses (and the meaning on them, like there were symbols on a cross that described death of Christ and other symbols) around in the graveyard, and to be able to explore the grounds that was fun. But when we finally reached the city of Dublin we first went to Kilmainham Gaol (jail) museum. Kilmainham was an old Irish jail, and its structure was different from jails back in the day in the jail they believed in silence and separation. Back then they had everyone in a cell by themselves, and it was always quiet. The jail had a lot of people that were Irish revolutionaries that were involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. When those people were taken to the jail many of them were executed. After being killed their bodies were taken away to be thrown somewhere and decompose, which made people angry back then. This jail was one of the most striking things that I had seen in Dublin, because it had so much history within it and the story of the jail was so compelling it never got boring. On the day we were leaving Dublin our class was able to visit the Parliament which was empty (because it was voting day for Ireland), but we got to learn about how Ireland’s government works and toured around the building which was interesting to see. It is also fascinating that Ireland’s government structure is almost like America’s but they do a lot of things differently (for example voting). Before we got back to Galway we stopped in Trim and went to trim’s castle. That castle was so awesome to look at, and we also got to tour inside of it (while listening to the history of it). I found that castle to be very historical (it also looked kind of old which I love old places) it has not been used in a very long time but it still had a medieval look to it which looked pretty cool. I have to say the view from the top was quite amazing how it overlooked the city of Trim definitely loved that part of the tour.

In the end looking back at both field trips I loved both of them so much! They both were a lot of fun (though I think I liked Dublin a little more because of the big city feel) as well as had a lot to learn from, I love how much I am learning so far. It is crazy to think that I have been here for a little over a month! That is so mind-boggling because it feels like we have done/seen so much in a short amount of time. Soon enough (like in a couple of weeks) will be spring break, and that’s crazy but I’m excited for the break. Thank you all for reading my blog! Until next time slán! (Goodbye!)