Week 2 – the weekend

Friday our field trip took us from Westport to a mountain called Croagh Patrick. This is where Ireland’s patron saint climbed the 2500 foot steep and rocky mountain to spend 40 days fasting and praying. This is also when he reputedly banished all the venomous snakes from Ireland. There is a statue of St Patrick about 100 yards up the mountain and that is as far as I got. Just across the road on Clew Bay sits the National Famine Memorial. Perched on the west coast of Ireland, a place where those leaving for other countries to escape the famine last saw their home, is a sculpture of what is called a ‘Coffin Ship’. It was called that because many thousands of those people that sailed away on these often unseaworthy ships died on the journey.

We then reached Galway and after a walking tour of that city about 12:30 we were done for the week. At least 15 of the class stayed in Galway for part of the weekend so they all checked in their hostel while I checked into the very nice Skeffington Arms Hotel on Eyre Square. Galway (with Killarney a close second) is probably my favorite city in Ireland. It is compact, vibrant, and fun! There are always minstrels, acrobats, and other performers on the street working for tips, and they are good! I walked around by myself for the better part of the afternoon taking everything in.  For about 10 minutes I watched a vendor who offered 100 euro to anyone who could hang by the arms from a metal bar with feet off the ground for 100 seconds.  I watched  number of people try and fail, the best getting to 66 seconds, so I concluded it was impossible. Then my DCU classmate Aden (he is a rock climber by hobby) stepped up and not only succeeded to beat the 100 seconds with that vendor, but also with his competitor offering the same test on the next street. Aden told me he was not positive but he felt both times the bar started to spin at about 60 seconds and he felt an electrical shock at about 90 seconds. Anyway it was fun to have it happen and 200 euro is a big win for a college student!  

That evening about 10 of us from DCU participated in an organized Pub Crawl. In one of the pubs it was the American’s vs. the world in beer pong, then there was a pub with a rock band, one with traditional Irish music, and lastly an upscale night club. As you entered each of the pubs you were handed a shot of some kind of booze. I was skeptical at the start but it was a really a good time and a great way to see a variety of different places without paying a cover charge. I took a train back to Dublin on Saturday evening (I had had it with long bus trips at that point) and called it a night. Sunday was pretty boring since I spent the afternoon putting together a PowerPoint presentation for class on Brexit and the potential consequences for Ireland. The presentation actually turned out pretty good. I told Jackie that if I had gone to class all the time and put time into things at Penn State like I am doing at DCU I might have graduated Cum Laude like she did! Closed the weekend out with a nice dinner with some of my new friends at a restaurant about 2 miles from campus.

More Irish language lessons:

Ring road = beltway

Beware of the dropping barrier = message on the arm that raises and lowers at a toll payment station

Mind = watch out for

Forthcoming = upcoming

Pictures: Famine Memorial; Croagh Patrick; streets of Galway; Pub Crawl; Achill Island