Lep-a-chons, slippy streets, and great craic! Galway 12/3-12/5

Traditional Irish music performed by foreigners

After such an exciting weekend of not surfing, I needed a week to recover and recuperate- something I didn't quite succeed in! Monday was filled with Deal or No Deal, lectures, and a visit from Ruby's parents! Dinner was a blast and started out on a good note when Ruby's parents picked us up and saved us from the long, cold walk into town. We went to a pub called Reidy's where a little old lady runs the bar. Since it was my first and only time eating in a pub I figured I should really Irish it up and ordered Irish stew and a Guinness. After filling our bellies with warm stew we drove down to An Spailpin Fanac where we caught the majority of the UCC Trad Society's weekly session. I just love a good trad session, definitely an experience unlike any other live music performance.

Our boots at the Cliffs of Moher

The next day instead of getting a good night's rest I allowed myself to be convinced by my friend Hannah to go to the Surf Club party. We started out in the New Bar on campus where men with bad mustaches were flocking to celebrate the last day of Movember. Movember is a campaign to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research in Ireland. Basically it's an excuse for men to grow horrible mustaches, but at least it's for a good cause! From campus we headed down to Bourbon St. a bar on McCurtain, all the way across town! At the pub we all gathered, schmoozed and listened to some great student performers. When Bourbon St. closed we trooped over to An Brog as usual and danced the night away!

Some great craic in Taaffes

I spent the rest of the week recovering from my surf club induced fun and finally started studying for my microbiology/immunology exam that Friday. Studying for that test was tedious and nerve-wrecking, not only was my hypochondria flaring up but I was struggling to memorize all the information about the million diseases we studied! The test ended up not being as hard I had anticipated, but I also think I got lucky and studied the right stuff!

From the test taking room I headed straight into town and boarded the Citylink bus heading towards Galway to meet up with Emily. The bus ride took longer than usual due to wintry conditions and I wandered lost around Galway for 25 minutes before calling Ruby to ask for directions to the hostel. But it was all worth it when I heard Emily's voice in the hall of Sleepzone (what a great name for the hostel!)

The Cliffs of Moher

First thing we did in Galway was to decide where we would explore that evening. Luckily for us, the Irish are both really helpful and knowledgeable about craic and people who work in hostel are notoriously friendly. So you can imagine how nice the reception workers were! One employee took it upon himself to draw us a map of clubs, pubs, and general areas of interest and then color code them: traditional pub, dance club, late bar, or regular bar. First stop was Taaffes, a traditional Irish pub known for their pint of Guinness. Inside the pub was packed and in the furthest corner four musicians belted out Irish traditional music. The youngest member (looked a bit like McLovin) who was wearing a shirt that said "where's my pint?" in Irish switched from playing the spoons to the uilleann pipes and then even stood up for a little dance number. Basically, no more craic could have fit in that pub!

Yoga at the mini cliffs!

From there we headed to another traditional Irish pub called Tig Cóilí where the atmosphere was a bit more subdued. We bought pints of Guinness and sat next to the musicians to absorb some more trad. Unlike the other group, two members of this trio were not even Irish! One was Canadian and the other a Dane! At midnight when the pub closed we were enticed by some promoters to go into a dance club called "Club K" where half of the 20 people inside were over the age of 40 and definitely should not be dancing the way they were! Hungry after all of our Irish culture we went to McDonald's a bought 2 euro double cheeseburgers and chicken wings for the walk home. Outside of our hostel we ran into a group of Spanish men who, as many Spanish men do, gave us a mild harassing. And that concluded our first night in Galway!

The next morning woke up early, bought breakfast sausage rolls, and boarded a bus for our tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher! The tour lasted all day and was quite the good time, although it had to be modified due to the weather conditions. On the bus we found ourselves reunited and even sitting next to our crude Spanish friends from the night before, who in the light of day were much friendlier and even gave us some potato chips! Our bus driver did the best he could with the conditions telling us lots of fairy stories and what life was like growing up in Galway. We stopped at the Cliffs of Moher, the mini cliffs, Leprechaun head, an O'brien towerhouse, the Burren, and the Ballyalban Fairy Fort!

craic is all about. My Irish friends will argue with me on this, but it seems to me that craic after a night out consists of talking smack in the cold while eating fried food. We met some characters that night and made some realizations about Irish culture upon walking through the late-night crowds at Supermac's. After midnight the Irish cease to be modern humans but revert to pirate culture where drinking, swearing, and random violence become the norms.

Ireland loves Christmas!

We woke up way to early the next morning to check out of the hostel and decided to spend the day exploring Galway city. Most of the morning was spent wandering around town and exploring the Christmas market in Eyre Square. The day passed quickly and suddenly it was time to board the bus back to Cork!