Planes, Trains, and … Ferries? Ireland--August 19th, 2006

Today was our first full day in Ireland, but most of the day was spent on various forms of transportation! We woke up at 6—actually, we never really went to sleep. We really did try, but because of the time difference, we slept for about an hour and realized we were still on Utah time, and while it was the middle of the night in Ireland, it was most certainly the middle of the day in America! So we roamed around the airport and used the free WiFi they provided. It was really interesting because throughout the relatively small airport were colonies of people in various stages of sleeping. It turns out, we had a pretty prime location relatively speaking—it’s just too bad sleep eluded us!

Well, at 8:00 am the bus we needed to take from Shannon to Doolin arrived. You see, the funny thing about streets in parts of Europe, and especially Ireland, is that they are much narrower than American streets. In America, most places have enough room for two cars to go in opposite directions fairly comfortably. Apparently, this nicety escaped Ireland, and we traveled hap hazardously through the Irish countryside in a bus where we had to slow down or swerve in order to narrowly miss hitting oncoming cars. I think we may have even had to stop for sheep once. But it was a beautiful ride—the Irish countryside is absolutely beautiful! It’s amazingly green and lush. It was quite an enjoyable ride aside from being scared for my life. We had to stop after about an hour and switch buses, but the only problem was that our next bus wasn’t scheduled to come for another hour and a half. Which wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that we had to drag all of our luggage with us while we went exploring.

We stopped in this town called Ennis, to wait for the next bus, and we decided to explore. Well, we had seen a steeple of a church while driving in, so Sheri and I set off to investigate. We found a beautiful old church and set our bags down just inside the door and went to investigate. This was, after all, our first church that we have seen in Europe, and was therefore pretty dang exciting. We saw an old man sitting in one of the pews just watching us, and we saw a coffin. We asked him about it, and we found out that it was not the coffin of some long dead saint, but was in fact the coffin of a man who had just barely died and his funeral was later that morning! The older gentleman introduced himself as Patsy. We had a very interesting conversation with him—which mostly consisted of him talking and us listening. Apparently, he had kissed the Blarney Stone and had been blessed with the gift of gab! And that he certainly had! He told us all kinds of stories, and although we couldn’t understand about half of what he was saying because his accent was so thick, but that was half the fun! After we left the church, we decided to explore the little town further, and discovered all kinds of cute little shops and I almost wish we would have had more time to explore! However, we had to trek back to the bus stop in order to continue on our journey.

After about another hour on the death-defying bus ride, we arrived in Doolin, where we were scheduled to take a ferry out to the Aran Islands. We boarded a boat called the “Happy Hooker”—apparently it was a converted fishing boat, but we still thought the name was funny! There were so many people on the ferry, and we weren’t quick enough to get seats inside, so about halfway through Sheri and I got the brilliant idea to go to the back of the boat and try and balance on the deck of the boat while we were cresting through waves. NOT as easy as it sounds!!! Think of surfing. But we sure had a lot of laughs! Especially when a huge spray came up and hit us both in the back and soaked us! It was funny though. And when we got to the first of the three islands of the Aran Islands, we had an hour to get out and explore before the boat would take us to our final destination. The first island was beautiful, although a bit touristy. We saw the ruins of this fortress from the boat and decided to go investigate. It was really cool because in America there just aren’t really ruins because everything is relatively new—especially in comparison to Europe. The whole island reminded me of the movie, "Secret of Roan Inish"—I don’t know if any of you have ever seen that movie. But I have. Like 10 times. And not because I actually liked it. Unfortunately, at the age of 9 my mom dragged me to see that movie every weekend while she was at her gallery. And no, I am not still bitter about that…… I might appreciate it more if I saw it now, especially after having actually been in Ireland, but as a 9-year old, it was pure torture. Thanks Mom. But it does take place off the west coast of Ireland, which is where the Aran Islands are!

When we got back on the boat that would take us to our final destination—an island by the name of Inishmor. Since most of the people had gotten off the boat at the first Island, there were plenty of places to sit down. However, unfortunately, this meant the boat was also much lighter and it was a lot bumpier ride. I had already not been feeling well, and with the boat rocking so much, it made me a little seasick. What was funny is that when we finally got to the right island, we waited for the other people to walk past us, and literally in less than 30 seconds I had already fallen asleep! I was THAT tired! Well, Sheri woke me up and we had a good laugh—I really don’t think I have ever fallen asleep that fast in my entire life. But we disembarked, but had no idea where we were going. We both had these huge suitcases, and everyone else had backpacks because they were obviously not packing for four months! And we had directions to our B&B, but we didn’t really know where to go. Fortunately, a bus driver gathered from our lost expressions that we needed help, and kindly offered to assist us because our B&B was literally on the other side of the bay. We ended up on a bus with 20 French people—after the bus driver had just told us how much he hated the French. He was one of those old men who really get up in your face—he was literally talking to me and was 6 inches from my face! He was harmless though, and pretty funny.

We finally got to our B&B, at nearly 6pm after traveling or being in airports for two days straight. The B&B was nice—our window looked out onto the bay, and afforded a wonderful view. But I was much more concerned about the bed. And what a nice bed it was! Unfortunately, to Sheri’s shagrin, I decided against following all the advice about getting over jet lack quicker and promptly decided to go to sleep, because I really wasn’t feeling well. The past week had been very stressful with finishing up EFY, packing for Europe, moving all my stuff into storage, attempting to sell my car, and just all the other last minute details that accompanies a trip of this magnitude. I was quite exhausted, and was grateful for the chance to finally sleep in a real bed and relax!