So I have gone through my first week of being in Ireland. During this first week there wasn’t a whole lot that I really did, for the most part I stayed at the cottage because the weather has been kind of crappy. The weather has brought rain, hail, wind, and even snow making it really cold and kind of miserable to go outside. The weather has also made it kind of cold inside of the cottage as well. At first we couldn’t get our heaters to really work and no matter how long you stood in front of the gas fire place you couldn’t get warm.
The rain started Saturday while I was on a walked with a group coming back from Spiddal. Marta had taken us to see what Spiddal is like. It is a very cute little village. The walk itself is not bad at all either.
The walk is kind of long to Spiddal but the path is very beautiful. So I enjoy the walk because of that. The cottages where we are staying also have a really pretty view of the ocean. It’s about a five minute walk from there. There is this road that you follow across from the hotel that leads down into a path like driveway. It becomes a grass path that leads down to the rocks by the shore.
When I reached the part of the path I was just amazed. The view was so gorgeous. I think that if you would come here early in the morning that it would be even better. There are rocks that block the way to the water. When I reached that part of the path there was a “trail” off to the right side. I put trail in quotations because there really wasn’t a trail. The rocks were a little more flatter but it was still a struggle to walk on.
The girls from my cottage went with me to the ocean so we decided to follow this “trail”. As we walked we came across this little tower of rocks that someone had put there. It was very cute. One of the girls suggested that we build our own. We wanted to make it bigger than the other one. I think we did pretty good.
The next couple days after going to the ocean I really didn’t do anything. The weather was really cold so I stayed inside the cottage and worked on my spring break plans. I also worked on homework a little. Classes have been really interesting. I have enjoyed each one so far. The culture class has been cool. I did learn a few words and I feel like I might have the hang of them. We will see in the next couple of weeks how it goes.
This week we also went to Galway for a walking tour. This tour was really cool. It was about Galway during the medieval period. The tour guide had this map from the 16th century and we followed it all the way around town. My favorite stop was the St. Nicholas Cathedral.
This place was so cool. To enter the church you had to walk through these bright red doors. When we first walked in the tour guide stopped us by this big round stone. It was a baptismal craved from one piece of rock. It was huge and it was very old. We walked around the church and he took us to the other side where there were some graves. If you had enough money you could in fact be buried in the cathedral. Then your stone slab would be craved with either their name or a picture of what they did for work. On the Lynch side of the cathedral was three tombs. One was in the window and it was decorated all up. Here the tour guide pointed out the what would have been beautiful statues that would have held candles. These statues had been vandalized by Puritans when they fled through the country. There was one however that didn’t get destroyed.
The rest of the tour was good, but this was my favorite stop. So far this first week has been really good. The only thing that I would change about this first week is the weather. We have a total of two big storms in this first week, so it would be nice to have different weather. Overall, I am super pumped about the rest of this trip! 🙂
Journey To Ireland 2020 