Western Ireland

Last weekend our entire class went to the west of Ireland! We piled, once again, into the giant coach bus and made the trek across the country toward Galway, making several stops along the way.

First we stopped at a fairy ring, which is actually the remains of an ancient ring fort, but legend says that if you step inside you'll be cursed by the fairies.

We also stopped at the Burren, a wide open area covered with limestone and scattered with ancient wedge tombs.

Then we stopped in a small town called Lisdoonvarna, the home of Europe's biggest matchmaking festival, so that the teachers could buy breakfast supplies. although it would have been cool to see the festival, we were lucky it wasn't going on at the time we were there--apparently some Champlain girls got proposed to 6 times last year!

Our last stop before reaching the hostel was the Cliffs of Moher--definitely one of the coolest things I've seen since coming to Ireland!

Our hostel for the night was in a small town called Doolin. After hanging out on the beach a bit, we ate and hung out in one of the local pubs where there was some trad music being played by a couple of musicians and Hannah and Andy asked if they could join in. They played a couple of songs that everyone recognized, so, as Champlain had kind of taken over the pub, everyone was singing out loud and having a great time.

The next day we took a boat to Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands. Ian and I chose to rent bikes and travel around the island that way. The whole place was completely covered in stone walls for farming, and we passed through the Ghaeltacht, a place where Irish is still everyone's first language.

On the boat on the way back to Doolin, we passed right under the Cliffs of Moher and got to see another spectacular view.

After the Aran Islands it was time to drive to Galway. When we got there we explored for a bit, walking down the main shopping/ restaurant street. The city was small enough to remind us of Burlington and it was cool to see another urban area of Ireland that was so different from Dublin.

Chilling with Oscar Wilde

We split up for dinner, and Ian, Patrick, and I went to an Indian restaurant called Kumar's. The food was fantastic and I'm glad we tried something different because I was getting a little tired of traditional Irish food; it was nice to have some spice and different flavors.

The next day it was time to go home, but we had a little bit of time for shopping and lunch before we left. We hung out by the river in the sun for awhile before getting back on the bus and making our way back to Dublin.