Madison and I have just returned from a fantastic trip to Galway. Ireland never ceases to amaze me. On Thursday, we hopped on a bus and stared out the window for a few hours until we reached Galway. The bus ride was quiet and absolutely beautiful. There is an endless amount of green in Ireland, and according to Paul, it's very "brown" right now... He hasn't seen Southern California recently.
Once we arrived in Galway, we checked into our hostel and walked around the city. We saw some extremely talented street performers, and found some very old, beautiful historical places within the city and along the coast. The Galway Cathedral is one of my favorite churches we've visited in Europe so far. It is a massive cathedral built entirely of stone, and when we walked in we felt as if we were walking into medieval times.
By the time we finished walking through old cathedrals and along the incredibly beautiful bay we were quite exhausted. We found our way back to the hostel, and crashed for the rest of the night. While neither of us slept too well, we completely forgot about dinner and stayed in for the rest of the night.
On Friday, we took a bus tour of the sights near Galway. We saw Dunguaire Castle, Poulnabrone (an ancient tomb in the Burren), some of the original Celtic crosses, and the Cliffs of Moher. We had our first traditional Irish meal at a pub on our tour. Madison and I both had Beef and Guinness Stew, which was amazing.
The Cliffs were absolutely breathtaking. When we started the day, we were afraid that we wouldn't be allowed to see them, because they were closed due to poor weather conditions (which means it was so windy you could hardly stand up). Our bus driver informed us on the stop before the cliffs that they had been closed, but he decided we would go anyway. The gate to the parking lot was broken, so tour busses still made their scheduled stops, and the cliffs were full of people.
We had an hour to explore the paths around the cliffs, and could have spent hours more taking in the sights. Some of the most impressive parts of the cliffs was the water reacting to the massive amounts of wind. When our bus pulled into the parking lot, it almost looked as if it was snowing (if it could snow giant, soapy snowballs, that is). The wind was blowing a flurry of sea foam up from the base of the cliffs.
Later, we thought that the wind was blowing up a stream of water from the ocean below, only to realize that it was actually from a waterfall. But because of the wind, the water was flowing up instead of down. It was unreal.
As we were walking along and taking pictures, Madison said something along the lines of "The only thing that could make this better is a rainbow." God must have been listening, because only a few minutes later, the brightest rainbow I have ever seen appeared in the most picturesque place above the cliffs. While the pictures of this turned out gorgeous, they are nothing compared to what it actually looked like. It was one of those moments where it is impossible to describe in human words.
On Friday night, we went and saw a live band at one of the pubs in Galway. We had a fantastic time listening to great music. When we finally got back to our hostel, we fell asleep as soon as we climbed into our beds. We slept better than we have on our entire trip, and this morning we walked through Galway's main street one more time before we got back on the bus towards Trim.
Tomorrow we are planning on taking a trip into Dublin, and on Tuesday we fly back to Heidelberg!
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