The Final Excursion

I’ll start off this blog by saying hello from Spiddal, Ireland, mostly because I sadly will not be able to say that for much longer. Honestly, where does the time go? It feels like yesterday that I was stepping off the plane and moving into the Park Lodge, and now I’m ten days away from flying home. I think our whole group is starting to feel the sting of our trip coming to an end, so we are all trying to pack as much in as possible to the last week and a half of our amazing trip. I’m sure that I will have another mopey blog or two or three at the very end of the trip and when I get home, so I will save my sad sentiments for a later time, and for now I will focus on our final excursion that we went on last weekend to Cork and Kilkenny.

We set off on Thursday for our last long bus ride on our beloved tiny, yellow Lally bus to our first stop in Cobh to tour a museum that dealt with Irish emigration and the famous ships that have visited Cork and Queenstown harbors, one such ship being the Titanic. It was a very interesting and informative museum, and the town of Cobh was a gorgeous harbor city, so it was a great place to stop. After the museum we moved on to Cork, where an Irish poet gave us a nighttime walking tour of the city. Cork is surrounded by incredibly large hills, so at one point on the tour we climbed one of the largest and were able to see the beautiful skyline of Cork City. I absolutely loved the city of Cork, and I think my friends that will be studying there next semester are going to have an absolutely amazing time. It has a bustling city center with lots of shops and restaurants, which of course sucked me in and left me with a few less euros in my pocket, and there are a lot of beautiful monuments and architecture that are scattered throughout the city. Other parts of the city are more industrial, as Cork is a huge port city, and as we drove in and out of the further edges of the city we saw lots of shipyards and harbors, which was something cool and different than what we are used to seeing. There is also a river that runs through the center of the town, which looked beautiful at nighttime when everything was lit up, and it reminded me a lot of the River Liffy that runs through Dublin. We also had the pleasure of seeing the town decorated with Christmas lights and decorations all throughout the streets, shops, and pubs, which made us all excited for the upcoming holiday season. Thursday was also Molly’s 21^st birthday, so a large group of us took her out on a little pub crawl to celebrate, and I hope she had a fun time!

The next morning our group headed to the beautiful and infamous Blarney Castle. It is truly an amazing site and I am really going to miss being able to periodically stop at the beautiful remains of ancient castles. After a bit of an uncomfortable climb up the very narrow and winding stairs to the top, everyone in our group got the classic Irish experience of kissing the Blarney Stone. If you haven’t heard the legend, kissing the Blarney Stone is supposed to give you the gift of eloquence, so I’m sure many people will appreciate my ability to talk even more now. J I hadn’t exactly researched the Blarney Stone much, so in my head I was picturing a literal large stone on the ground that we could just casually walk up to and kiss. But in reality, the Blarney Stone is part of the castle wall and, with the assistance of an employee, I had to sit down with my back to the wall and then lean backwards and dangle half of my body down a large hole through the floor until I was far enough down to kiss the stone. I think the experience made all of us a little nervous, and it was definitely a unique experience, but thankfully there were some metal bars for me to hold onto and a nice old man holding on to me to make sure I didn’t fall to my death. The things we do in Ireland, right? The rest of our day just included free time in Cork in which we shopped and explored the city, and later on we ended the evening with a nice night checking out some of the pubs in Cork. And of course we were all very excited when we found a place with live music where Galway Girl was sung. I’m obsessed with that song, and I think I might just cry the last time I hear it sung live here in Ireland.

On Saturday we moved on to our final destination of our very last excursion, which was the town of Kilkenny. I found out after getting there that Kilkenny is known for its history of witches and witchcraft that supposedly took place in the city, and it is supposed to be one of the most haunted cities in Ireland. I absolutely loved this little town, which was actually not as little as many of us expected it to be. There were lots of good shops to look around in, lots of good candy stores and bakeries, and, of course, plenty of pubs. We got sucked into one of the amazing candy shops that Ireland is known for probably one too many times than we should have, but we all got a pretty good laugh at each of us trying the “Black Death” candy. I wouldn’t recommend it. There was also a beautiful little river running through the town, and I had a little bittersweet moment as we stood on the bridge around the time of the sunset looking at this classic Irish town. Towns like this have become such a big and common part of my life after these 3 months, that it is hard to imagine not living in or driving through one every weekend. Later that night we checked out the pub scene in Kilkenny, which we always do when we are in a new city, and I think we all had a lot of fun with the large variety of pubs that were available and all of the music and excitement that was so easily found around the city. The next day we were again given a free day, in which we spent even more time walking around the city again, but we also took time to go see the Kilkenny Castle. Once again, it was an absolutely gorgeous structure, and we took a long time to walk around the beautiful grounds that surround it, which was a great way to spend our morning. We were surprised to experience fall colors like we don’t really see in our area of Galway, Ireland, and it was just a nice time of walking along the river and in the woods and talking about anything and everything with my amazing friends that I have made on this trip.

This is where our last excursion comes to a close. On Sunday afternoon we got back on our bus for our last ride back to the Park Lodge. While we were all pretty exhausted, I think everyone was feeling pretty nostalgic and there was a lot more talking, laughing, and joking around instead of the usual throwing in of our headphones and taking naps like we normally would. I honestly feel really sad as I sit here now and think that our days of traveling around Ireland are now over. We have been so blessed to be in a program that arranges for us to experience literally almost every part of Ireland, and I know that has added so much to my experience of this country. I really have fallen in love with Ireland, and I don’t even know how I’m going to make myself leave here in ten days. The family that we have created here is such a unique and amazing thing, and I think we all know that it will never be quite the same after leaving the Park Lodge. I’m not going to go into too much more of my sad, sentimental thoughts now, as I will have plenty of time to write about that in the coming days. For now, I’m just going to try to enjoy every minute that I have left here, because an experience like this isn’t going to come around again. I apologize for how poorly this blog is written, but I’ve been writing all of my final papers this past week and my brain is not functioning quite as well as it used to. Maybe having our first full 4 day week of classes in almost a month will help me get back on track and my next blog will be a little better. J We’re going deep sea fishing on Friday for one more fun, program-endorsed group activity, so I’m sure that will be a blast and I’ll have lots to say about that. Until next time then, thanks for reading!