Exhausted from our night out in Cork, Becky and I boarded our next 4 hour bus ride to Galway on Wednesday morning, expecting to pass out and catch up on sleep. I've decided that the reason I can sleep on planes but not buses is that when I'm on a bus, I have things to look at. I couldn't really bear to fall asleep and miss driving through Ireland. The only time I DID fall asleep, Becky started tapping me on the head to tell me that she just fell out of her seat. This is still kind of a sore subject haha.
Looking back on my financial ruin, Galway is probably where the worst of it happened. First of all, we splurged on a private room (our "honeymoon suite") at the hostel. I still think this was a good choice. But anyway, we wandered around the town (they call it a city...) for a little while, bought some unnecessary hoodies for ourselves and a bunch of gifts for other people (YEAHH that's right I spent my money on you all!) before ultimately crashing at the hostel for what turned into a 3 hour nap. We managed to gather the energy to get crepes & ice cream for dinner (nutritious, right??) but ended up right back in our beds for the rest of the night.
In the morning, we took an all-day tour to the Cliffs of Moher, and other attractions along the way. I took a ton of pictures, but none of them really do it justice. I was surprised to see how much of Ireland is just completely uninhabited/untouched. They claim to have something like 40 shades of green in their landscapes, and I believe it.
Looking back on my financial ruin, Galway is probably where the worst of it happened. First of all, we splurged on a private room (our "honeymoon suite") at the hostel. I still think this was a good choice. But anyway, we wandered around the town (they call it a city...) for a little while, bought some unnecessary hoodies for ourselves and a bunch of gifts for other people (YEAHH that's right I spent my money on you all!) before ultimately crashing at the hostel for what turned into a 3 hour nap. We managed to gather the energy to get crepes & ice cream for dinner (nutritious, right??) but ended up right back in our beds for the rest of the night.
In the morning, we took an all-day tour to the Cliffs of Moher, and other attractions along the way. I took a ton of pictures, but none of them really do it justice. I was surprised to see how much of Ireland is just completely uninhabited/untouched. They claim to have something like 40 shades of green in their landscapes, and I believe it.
The wind at the Cliffs was CRAZY. I have never experienced anything like it. Like there were legitimately points where we couldn't even walk. Some random other tourist informed us in his broken English that he had taken pictures of Becky and me trying to walk along the Cliffs because we were struggling so hard it was hilarious. I kid you not. Snot rockets were flying and all that good stuff. But aside from that, the Cliffs were really amazing. It kind of reminded me of the Napali Coast in Hawaii.... but in an obviously less tropical/more Irish way. We decided to be rebels at one point and hop over the fence that you're not supposed to cross (tourists have died haha) but the wind was SO strong, we didn't want to venture too far. And as always, we ran into a couple people we knew, 2 kids from my core class. We also saw Sam and Libby from Gburg in Dublin, further proving that it's a small world aaaafter allllll!
The Napali Coast
The Cliffs of Moher
A little wind
That night we went to a pub that was on our list of recommendations from Mike and Bridget, and watched some more live music. And danced kind of embarrassingly to the live music. Needless to say, we failed at getting boys to buy us drinks once again, but the band was pretty good. We did, however, meet another random solo traveler named Nick, a photographer from Vancouver... so he awkwardly tagged along with us for a while. I'm impressed that this many people have the guts to go out and travel Europe by themselves. I don't think I'd be too good at it, but they all seemed to be pretty good at latching onto Becky and me.
The next day, we took the bus tour to Connemara, which was BEAUTIFUL. We were easily the youngest people on the bus, with the next youngest being the bus driver, but hey. It was worth it. Connemara kind of reminded me of scenes from "The Land Before Time," or something like that. I really half expected to see a dinosaur walk by... but all we saw were sheep. (Though the bus driver told us they were killer sheep.) Once again, we saw some other sites along the way, but this time we were less interested in the castles and more interested in taking pictures of Becky with cows (her new favorite animal).
A view from Kylemore Abbey at Connemara
The Cow
I think we probably got more fish & chips for dinner, and enjoyed our last night in the honeymoon suite. We got up pretty early and "took a whirl 'round the salthill prom" before heading back to Dublin in the afternoon for one more night (only because that's were we had to fly out of the next day). In Dublin, we pseudo-randomly met up with RACHAEL (!!) for dinner, and then went to bed because we had to be up at 4 a.m. to fly to Rome. We had to take a cab to the airport, and since we were with Rachael, I had her make the arrangements for us. Don't know what I'd do without her.
And so, after an epic week, we kissed Ireland goodbye (SO SAD, Galway was definitely our favorite) and left for Rome......or should I say, Brome? Kind of a huuuge change of pace, but excellent none the less. Stayyyy tuned!
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