Galway Girl

Galway City

Now that I have a computer at my beck and call (Tom, the 14 year old here has an awesome tiny laptop that he lets me use whenever I want), I can back up and tell you all about Galway a bit more. On my second day in Galway, as I mentioned before, I went on a full-day bus trip to the Cliff of Moher. That evening, I went on a walk over to Salthill, about a 30 minute walk up the coast from Galway, to check out the resort town scene. They had a leisure center with a ferris wheel and a ton of carnival games, but the highlight was this awesome pub, O'Connells where they had the most ornately decorated pub I've ever seen.

Salthill Leisure Park


O'Connells Pub



Later that night after I walked back into the city center, I went on a one-person pub crawl in search of some good music. I ended up stopping in at 4 or 5 pubs, and found quite an array of music. Galway is supposed to be known for it's great trad music, which I didn't really know what that was until I got to Galway. Apparently it's the type of traditional Irish music, except usually without the singing. So the type of music that I like, which is the traditionally sounding music, except with singing, that type is considered drinking songs. Either way, I still had a ton of fun listening to all the musicians and I even met another nice couple from America at one of the pubs.



My favorite pub, The Kings Head, had a cover band and a ton of crazy people dancing their feet off. It reminded me of a scene out of a high school prom the way they do it in the movies from the 80's where they're all having way too much fun. It was quite a scene.



The King's Head Pub (also happens to be the name of my favorite pub in LA)


The other cool thing about Galway is that it is the home of the Claddagh clan, who are famous for making Claddagh rings, which is also the ring that Angel gives Buffy on the show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although I don't remember Angel being Irish!!). I went to the 'original' makers of the ring and almost dropped €40 on a ring just to have one, but I didn't give in. Instead I went to McDonagh's and got some of the best fish and chips in the city. Yum!



Makers of the Claddagh Ring




Best Fish and Chips!



Overall, Galway is a nice city, but it's nothing like Dublin. Even the music wasn't all that special comparatively, but if Dublin is too big or too fast for ya, then Galway is probably just the right speed.

Official Return Date

On Tuesday I'll be traveling to Belfast, officially leaving the Republic of Ireland. This also means I'll be going to a new country, Northern Ireland, and techincally I'll need to get a new stamp in my passport from customs. I probably won't bother because I'll only be there 2 days, but from there I'm going to the UK and I'll definitely need a new stamp there. So in order to avoid all the hassle I got from the Irish customs officials, I finally decided it was time to book my ticket back, even though I'm still not quite sure how the rest of the trip will go.

But now I'll have to be in Lisboa, Portugla by November 24th to catch a flight to Dublin and then on to Chicago, getting me back home just in time for Thanksgiving, just like my parents wanted. I've been checking all week for flights and for a while thought I'd be out of luck because all the one-way flights out of Spain were at least $1,000, but then today I thought to look out of Portugal, and found one for just $440. Thank goodness!!!

So although the trip will be a little shorter than I wanted originally, I'll be back for Thanksgiving in the windy city which will be nice.

T----boy Farm

I have officially had a full day at my second wwoof farm, T----boy Farm in County Roscommon. It's quite beautiful farmland, not unlike Wicklow, although slightly less hilly. It seems I've ended up in the only really hilly parts of Ireland for both farms. Fun fact, T----boy farm is also closest to a town named Boyle, which is where Farmer Matt picked me up when I arrived, and is also the headquarters for the Ireland UFO association. Apparently there are a ton of crazies in this part, possibly including my hosts!

Farmer Matt sends his love to my family by the way. He runs the entire farm, without any staff, which is quite incredible. He reminds me a lot of Dick Van Dyke except a lot crazier. Along with Matt, is his wife Eileen, and their three older (14 and twin 18 year olds) sons. Also at the house is Matt's niece, Grania who is now my closest friend on the farm and is also 18. Finally, there is also another wwoofer here, Lizzy, 25, from Hungary. She's much quieter though, and she's working with the animals so I don't see her all that much during the day. As for the accommodations, Lizzy and I are staying in an adjacent house and we both have our own rooms. There are a tons of bunk beds because they have language camps during the year, but no one else is here right now so we have the run of the place. I did manage to get startled last night when at 2am the bed I had chosen decided to break and sling me onto the floor. Luckily I just had to choose a different one and all was fine.

As for the work, I'm helping out at the summer camp their having with 13, 5-10 year old kids. They are the most rambunctious kids I've ever seen, and Matt pretty much gives them run of the place. There is a ton of screaming, but I've learned almost all of their names now, and hopefully they might actually listen to me tomorrow. Today they got a tour around the farm, which is pretty much a GIANT petting zoo, and we also went for a terrifying ride across acres of farmland in a giant wagon with no seatbelts. Once the kiddies left, I then got to accompany Matt to go pick up a baby goat and bring it back to the farm, and boy was that an adventure. I had to sit in the back of the car with the goat while it screamed it's head off and prayed that it didn't bite me, but after a few moments, it just went silent and stayed still. It was pretty sad, but it will at least have a good home here.

The other excitement of the day was getting to see Matt try and breed two horses. I won't go into detail but it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. I can't even imagine what I'll be up to tomorrow, but I think it might involve teaching the 13 children how to fish, if that isn't the most hilarious thing anyone's ever heard.

The Wheeler Family

The Wheeler House

As promised here is a bit more about my time at the Greenan Maze and Museum Farm. Above is the amazing hand-built house by Will Wheeler himself that I've been staying at for the past 2 weeks. The house is made of completely recovered and recycled materials and cost the family under €10,000 to build I believe. It also took around a5 years and they just moved into the new wing jutting out to the right a few months ago.

These are my hosts for the past two weeks, Anita Davis and Will Wheeler. Will manages the Greenan Maze and Museum with his Dad, Jonathan, who just built his own house nearby as well. They've came up with the idea for the maze and museum and have been at it for about 15 years. Anita helps manage the farm as well, and is studying and teaching about environmental practices. Specifically she teaches about transition towns, which is a process that a town can go through in order to prepare for peak oil (when oil will become more scarce than it already is). She taught me a bit about it, and it's quite a concept. You can learn more here if you're interested: http://www.transitiontowns.org/ Anita is also a brilliant chef and at night she taught me a few Irish soda bread recipes and I spent some time perusing her large collection of cook books, so hopefully I picked up a bit.

Anita and Will

They have three kids, the boy Neiche (2.5) below with super blond curly hair. The other boy is his cousin Tai. A few days a week I would forgo my usual gardening duties to look after him. We mainly listened to the Jungle Book soundtrack, The Elephant (he pronounced as ambulance) Song was his favorite.

Nieche and Tai

Will and Anita also had two daughter, Abaihin (pronounced Awin, 7) and Alanna (Lanabell, 5). They're the two girls to the left, and the third girl was Abaihin's friend Laura. As you can tell from the picture, they were all super sweet girls.

Abaihin, Lanabell, and Laura

As for the house, it was a marvelous place to stay. I had a great bedroom all to myself with a giant double bed. I've been completely spoiled for the other farms already.

My room

The kitchen was my favorite part of the house. Anita has every type of spice and cooking pan necessary all packed into a fairly small kitchen. She was quite brilliant at packing it all in there.

Kitchen

Another place I spent a lot of time was in the sitting room. Off in the corner of the house they kept a sitting room with tons of blankets and pillows from all over the world. There was even a small TV and we watched a few movies on the weekend. My favorite was 'Withnail and I' a cult British comedy, and surprisingly not all that far off from my wwoofing experiences. Definitely worth checking out. 'Withnail and I' Trailer

Sitting Room

Here is another general picture of the kitchen/dining area. The house also had a loft with a gorgeous spiral staircase (in the middle of the photo) that led to an office area. The whole house was absolutely amazing, and Anita and Will were so sweet to let me stay. They even invited me back whenever I can make it, even if it's this week. So now I have a fail safe plan for the rest of my time in Ireland in case this farm is no good.

Kitchen/Dining Room

Cliffs of Moreh (aka tourist time!)

Cliffs of Moreh

On my first full day in Galway I totally got suckered into taking a bus tour for €20. It was actually a pretty good deal although there were still a couple of hidden fees, but seeing as it would be pretty much impossible to get to these sights from my next farm, I figured I better do it now since I won't be back. I woke up early this morning for the free breakfast at my AWESOME hostel and I decided to go the tourist information office first thing just to see what attractions they would recommend. They didn't have all that much to say, so the guy convinced me to hop on a bus tour that was leaving in 5 minutes. I hurried on over and made it just in time.

The tour consisted of a whole bunch of junky little stops to take pictures of the ocean, go into a cave in the burren (a rocky limestone area of county clare), walk around an old castle, and a few others that were even less memorable. But the highlight of the tour was going to the Cliffs of Moreh. They are the third tallest sea cliffs in Ireland and they are renowned for crazy people jumping to their doom. The reason they're so popular is because you can pretty much walk straight up to the edge at your own peril. The actual tourist attraction doesn't allow you to do that, but most of the tourists snuck around a big warning sign and hiked up the side of the cliff anyway, including myself. It's quite a dangerous feat as it's a bit windy at the top.



Luckily there were no accidents, while I was there anyway and it was one of the most invigorating things I've done in Ireland so far. Definitely worth the €20, which I would have paid to get their by bus even if I didn't want the tour. The cincher on the deal was when the tourist info guy told me it was on the verge of becoming one of the eight wonders of the world, and boy was he right. Never seen anything like it that up close and personal.


The trail up - there were other tourists up there, I swear!


Me at the top clinging for dear life


Quite a drop

Galway City!

I've officially moved on from Greenan Farm and made my way over to Galway (pronounced like gall stone, not like gal which my chicago accent can't figure out everytime I try and say it). It was a bit of a crazy journey to get here but I made it! I decided to stay with some friends in Dublin friday night (Will's cousin Roisin invited me out with some of her college friends) and we had one pretty grand rager of an evening. I only got about 3 hours of sleep before I was off to the bus stop to wait for a bus into the city center and then transfer to another bus to Galway. Of course, the bus I was told to go to didn't come on Saturdays as I figured out after waiting an hour. Finally, I caught the correct bus into the city with the help of quite a few friendly pedestrians and found out that they were gonna try and charge me €20 for a bus ticket and it wasn't even direct. Luckily I had noticed a private bus carrier that went direct to Galway for €10 when I was traveling to rathrdum earlier for my first farm. So I booked it over the river Liffey, found the correct bus station, got cash and a sandwich and made it back just in time to catch the bus. It was a nice 3 hour ride and then I was in Galway!

After a quick nap, I've spent the evening wandering around. Unlike Dublin, there really aren't that many touristy sites here other than pub hopping on the main drag. Galway is a college town and therefore much sleepier than bustling dublin. There's so many coffee shops I thought for a moment I had died and gone to heaven. And it's not as horribly expensive as Dublin either. Tomorrow I'll probably just walk around the city some more and work out how to get to my next farm on Monday! Soon to come are much more details about Greenan Farm and pictures as well!

My first Wwoof Farm!

It's now been a full week since I made it to my first wwoof farm in Ireland. I would have posted earlier but we're all the way out in the country and they have limited internet usage cause of it! The farm is absolutely wonderful. I'm staying with a small family, Anita Davis and Will Wheeler, and their three kids, Abhaine (7), Illana (5), and Niesche (2). I'm staying in the house Will built by hand which is absolutely unbelievable. It's gorgeous and I have my own amazing guest bedroom with a huge warm double bed.

During the week I tend to wake up around 9am, leisurely make my way downstairs before 10 for some breakey (muesli has been my choice as of late), and then I'm usually doing some type of housework until lunch. Sometimes it's hoovering, sometimes dusting or just watching the kids. Then around 1pm it's off to lunch at the tea room on 'the farm'. 'The farm' is an awesome giant tourist attraction that Will and his father Jonathan own and run, right next to the house. It has a giant hedge maze, farm animals, old heritage museums, walking trails, and a tea room! So I get my lunch in the tea room, usually some soup and a sandwich, and then I spend the rest of the afternoon, around 2-4:30 weeding in the garden, watering the polytunnel, and completely whatever odd upkeep tasks they have around the farm. After that, I usually go and have a cup of tea or coffee at the tea house and read outside for a while before returning to the house to help with (ie watch Anita make) supper. We've had the most marvelous food thus far: lamb burgers, venison stew, chili, laksa (a Thai noodle soup), classic Irish stew. It's been great! Then my job is to clean up the dishes, and it's off to watch a movie with the family or finish a book in the sitting room til bedtime! What a wonderful day.

Thus far in the 6 days I've been here I've finished, The Time Travelers Wife (4 stars for plot, 2 stars for writing - wonderfully fun book overall), and I'm a few hundred pages into Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Both books are Anita's that she's let me borrow while I'm here. This weekend has been wonderful as well. I spend yesterday cycling around the countryside, and then in the evening Anita and Will took me along to a party in the mountains hosted a Jewish family that lives in a Mongolian yurt. It was quite a scene, like something out of a movie. They had a belly dancer and everything! Then we went to this amazing pub in the middle of nowhere that was PACKED with people, and I drank way too much beer, as seems to be the custom here. We drove back over a mountain on the way home and were up so high, we got covered in clouds!

Today I went out on a fishing expedition in the family's newly bought caravan, with 4 kids in tow (we added a nephew to the pack). Although it was a grand time, I don't think I'll be going on anymore caravan trips with kids in the near future. I did manage to escape the kiddies for a while to go hiking in the woods and I came upon some old castle ruins which I was able to climb to the top and take some pictures of. I'll post those next weekend when I have more access to internet. Other than that, this next week should be just like the previous and I'm looking forward to finishing off a few more books and eating some great meals before heading off to my next farm!