Crazy Days

I had the most ridiculously exhausting weekend. For 20 euro, the International Education Division and the International Society managed to keep me competely entertained over the two day period, from the time that I woke up until the time that I stumbled back into my bedroom here in Kilmurry Village. However, I'm only going to tell you about Saturday in this post. Mostly because I don't have most of the pictures from Sunday yet, as they were taken on my cell phone.

So the bus left from the University of Limerick at the ungodly time of 7:30, which meant that I had to be up at 6 in order to get everything ready to go. I was not a happy camper, but I was a hyper one. As the tornadoes ripped through Tennessee this weekend, I was here worrying about my family. Particularily my father, who is a truck driver, as he made his way home. The early hour combined with the lack of sleep to turn me into Miss Talkative, which I'm sure annoyed my roommate Sydney to no end. Once we made it onto the bus and we were on our way, I began to think. I gazed out the window and marveled in the spectacular beauty that is Ireland. Every day, I fall more and more in love with this country. I know deep in my heart that I'm supposed to be here. I could spend every day here for the rest of my life and always find something new to fascinate me. The thought of leaving makes me sad, but I know that if it is right, I will find myself back here in the future. I feel so at peace here, both the land and with myself. I've never felt this way before. After feeling empty for so long, I finally feel like I belong somewhere. It's a great feeling.

The waterfall that the hotel takes its name from.

After that revelation, I finally started to drift off into sleep, only to be woken up when we arrived at our first destination, the Ennistymon Falls Hotel. Here they provided us with some tea (which was fantastic) and raisin scones (which were good once I picked out the raisins) before they made us dance. Yes, we are officially dancing bears. It was difficult to force our feet into the right patterns, but once you got the hang of the steps, you were good. It was a great workout too, which made me really happy that I brought a change of clothes. Once we finished dancing, they stuck us back on the bus and headed off to Lahinch.

As you may remember, Laura, Sydney, Steph and I had already been with to Lahinch with the OPC. Since we had some more time this go around, we ventured away from the sand and the sea to the cliffs in the distance. No matter how many times you see something, the site of such a beautiful place will never fail to take your breath away. Of course, since it rains so freaking much here, the cliffs were kinda muddy. Being the clutz that I am, I of course had to slip in the mud and end up with one leg entirely covered with the brown gook. This made me doubly glad that I packed an extra set of clothes.

After we were done at Lahinch, we all stuffed ourselves back into our coach buses to head back to the hotel, where they plied us with quarter sandwiches, soup, and our dubiously dubbed "yellow drink." None of the people at our table could figure out what it was, but it was delicious. The sandwiches weren't half bad either. Of course, we were one of the few tables who thought so, as almost everyone else still had sandwiches on their plates. Of course, since we couldn't let food go to waste....we brought their plates back to our table where the rest of the sandwiches were quickly devoured. Yes, we are pigs, and we are proud.

The shiny rock in the picture is exposed limestone.

It was then time to get back into the buses and head for the Burren. Which I have also been to before, but we headed to another side. The OPC trip focused mainly on the cliffs, while the International Education department trip headed more inland for a more nature based experience. Each of the four buses got our own guides, who told us more about the history of the area as we drove through. Originally, Ireland was mainly underwater, which left huge deposits of limestone at the bottom of the sea. As time passed and the water receeded, these large fields of limestone were revealed at the Burren, which is the largest collection of limestone rock in the world.  Forgive the quality of the picture, it was taken from a moving bus.

At this point, I was thoroughly exhausted, and kept drifting off. However, I did wake up long enough to take pictures of Mary O'Brien's Castle. We had to take pictures from the bus, which explains the random handicapped sticker floating in the frame. Legend has it that, when her first husband died, she married another man the next day because women weren't allowed to hold land. When she birthed her first male heir, she supposedly pushed her husband off of the roof of the castle in order to be able to control the castle as the proxy for her son. Female empowerment at its most violent.

A bear pit and some remains believed to be 2,000 years old.

The trip took us further into the Burren until we arrived at Aillwee Caves. They were discovered in the 1940's by a local farmer when his dog disappeared. He found the dog at the entrance to the caves, which had been covered for millenia. Remains of brown bears and indentations of their nesting sites were discovered close to the entrance, which is understandably exciting, as brown bears have not been seen in Ireland for nearly 2,000 years. They are a third of a mile long and have some really impressive natural cave formations present, including one that looks like a pair of hands in prayer. There are also several waterfalls in the caves.

Once we were all through the tour of the caves and had done a little frivolous shopping, we headed back into the bus for the remainder of our tour of the Burren. We came across the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb created 4000 years ago as a grave chamber in a cairn of stacked stones. This dolmen is believed to be the oldest set of stacked stones in the world, even older than the more famous Stonehenge. This picture was taken from Wikipedia, as I was too slow to catch a picture of it from the bus. I wish we could have actually seen it this close, but maybe some other time I'll get the opportunity.

Once we were out of the Burren, we headed back to the Falls Hotel and Spa to eat some dinner. I ordered the chicken in a mushroom sauce, and it was absolutely delicious. Honestly, I think I could have eaten two or three more plates, even though I was completely stuffed by the end of the meal. It was that good. Plus, they served ice cream in a waffle bowl for dessert, which was amazing. By the time we were all back in the bus and headed home, I think we were all in a sort of food coma, as it was very quiet. The majority of people slept, but I just couldn't get comfortable. Overall, it was one of the best 5 euro I've ever spent!

Well, that was my Saturday. Sunday was slightly more exciting and a little more tragic. I'll explain that comment in the next post, however. As always, more pictures of this trip are available on my Facebook page, though quite a few of them are mysteriously blurry for some reason.

Best,
Brooke