Galway Girl

WARNING! EPICALLY LONG POST ALERT!!!


As any of you actually following this online journal MIGHT have noticed, it has been a while. A long while, in fact, because what with life happening, and finals happening, and traveling and exploring and bussing and training and flying all over the place, dragging my loverly computadora out every time I wanted to record something ceased to be a very viable option. Also, I got lazy. But because I have several very messy journals full of travel notes that need organizing, and because I started this thing and I might as well finish it by george, I am going to do just that. So! Be prepared! Lots and lots of months-late-but-newly-written travel reports are heading this way! I know you are all just bursting with anticipation.

Here we go then:


Once upon a time, long long ago, all the way back in APRIL, I started a blog post about going to Ireland...

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This post, belated as it is, is dedicated to an amazing woman, my grandmother Alice Cavanaugh. I wish I had had the opportunity to get to know her, because she must have been incredible - anyone who could singlehandedly raise seven children, not to mention people as extraordinary as my Dad, must be truly special. But she passed away when I was six years old - to young to do more than remember the energy of her smile, its brightness, and its joy, and to remember the cool dry feel of her lips tickling the back of my neck as she crooned, "kiss pocket!" I remember how unconditionally she loved us, and Dad.

I also remember some slightly scratchy wool sweaters, cream-colored and thick with knitted knots, little leather buttons all down the front. They were from the Aran Islands, and my Dad and Nana brought them back to us after a trip to Ireland that the two of them took, the year before she grew really ill. I was tiny, but I remember waiting at the airport and running up to them as soon as possible, the same way Theo and I would run shrieking and dancing out to the driveway the minute we heard the car approaching in the evenings. They had been all over Ireland as I (dimly) recall, from one side of the island to the other, but lingered in Galway a little, I think. That is where her family was from, the west of the country, and it was from Galway that her parents had emigrated when they came to the states, way back in the early part of the 20th century. Nine years later, when the Bonsall clan made our pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle, Galway passed in a barely-noticed blur for Theo and me, primarily because the days we spent there coincided with the release of the 6th Harry Potter book. I remember the book shop quite clearly, but alas, very little else of Galway registered, overwhelmed as we were by the trials and tribulations of a certain boy-wizard and the mysterious Half-blood Prince...

It was to my great joy, therefore, to have the opportunity to go back to Ireland this semester, and Galway in particular, to see what I had been missing when my nose was so deeply buried in Jo Rowling's book, six years ago. My Macalester gal pal Miss Chelsea Bakalar, baker extraordinaire, staunch companion on the dance floor and in the library, expert-party-planner and font of all things French, was studying in Galway city this semester, and I was lucky enough to get to join her for a few days. my old friend Kilian was galivanting about the British isles at the time, so after a visit to Edinburgh we both took off for Ireland, bussed from the Dublin airport to Galway city center, and met Miss Bakalar. As Chelsea finished her last final, we wandered about the city, tossing dandelions and daisies into the slow dark water of the canals that run alongside the Corrib river, lingering to listen to the street musicians on Shop Street, and enjoying the quaintness of the town. Galway is known for its university and its music, which we got a taste of that evening in one of the "trad bars" - pubs where live bands regularly play traditional music. Chelsea and I each got a pint of Guinness (our "first dinner") and the bar tender, perhaps noting my excited, wide-eyed enthusiasm, or else catching the American twang as we chatted quietly to each other, treated us to a shamrock-shaped swirl of foam on top of our pints, a trick likely reserved for silly tourists. I was charmed anyway. Our real, "second" dinner later consisted of utterly delicious burgers, followed by gelato that we ate slowly on the rather lengthy walk back to Chelsea's apartment, which was about a 40 minute unhurried amble from the city center.

Seeing Chelsea again was in some ways like coming home - all of my Mac friends from that first year course are quite a bit closer to family than just acquaintances by now, and although worlds were colliding a bit to have Macalester and Europe intersecting so drastically, it was also wonderful to see her. We had a lovely time gossiping away, unfortunately leaving poor Kilian a bit out of the loop as we nattered on about people we knew and people we didn't, boys we liked or danced with or kissed, and the utter loveliness that is a man with an accent, be it Irish or Scottish. Chelsea graciously offered us the use of her apartment couches and spare beds as well, which was just the cherry on the top of an already brilliant time (three cheers for free accommodations!).

The sky was turbulent, the next day. All dramatic grey clouds and crystalline sun, with the wind whipping things into shape all around. We hiked across a field or two, past dandelions and empty beer bottles and scraggly berry bushes before hopping the low wall to the sidewalk. Suburbs in Ireland are not so very different from suburbs in the states it seems – large, multilane street with too many cars chasing each other recklessly past overgrown grocery stores and long parking lots. I realized that I had barely seen parking lots all semester, except for the eight-car car-park at Robbie’s Close and a few spaces for vehicles to linger near campus; Edinburgh doesn’t have much space to be devoted to automobiles, and besides, most people walk anyway. I hadn’t missed them. 

Wandering about Galway that day was sufficient to remind me why I came home at the end of my family's 2005 jaunt across the pond enchanted and heartbroken, utterly in love with Ireland. Galway is ADORABLE. The brightly painted shop fronts, cobbled streets and swan-filled quays all simply made me smile, as did chomping apple cores while perched on sea-side boulders, making dandelion chains from the tall grass around the football pitch, and lingering on too-small swing sets under a high grey sky before wandering back into  town. Revive Café’s windows overlook the shopping street in Galway, and as Chelsea and I perched there over our tea and rhubarb pie, writing post cards and dreaming Celtic dreams, we could almost see the saxophone player ponderously playing just around the corner. We could also just catch a glimpse of the bright-eyed stone carver with the quick hands and kind smile who had been tooling pieces of slate as we had wandered past earlier. Under his chisel, smooth roofing slate tiles came alive with the curvilinear shapes of serpents, birds or men, horses and trees and simple knots twisting and curling in shapes first drawn into the Book of Kells a millennium and more ago. They were utterly beautiful, and we could not resist. One slate with a knotted, calculating bird tied to itself now sits on our coffee table at home, a gift for my dad. (Honestly, in Ireland, the problem was not what to get, but what not to get for my wild Irishman of a father. Everywhere I went I saw things that I didn’t just think he would like, but knew he would like. Resisting the all the souvenirs, ridiculous or sentimental or both, was surprisingly difficult.)

We met Kilian (who had been doing some solo wandering) at the end of the walking street, by a statue of a seated Oscar Wilde, which made me quite excited. I am just a very little bit in love with his plays. Someone had apparently decided that the witty writer looked a bit peckish not so long before, and so his bronze lips and chin were streaked with something scarlet and drippy and very, very sticky, as I discovered when I tried to lessen his resemblance to Dracula (ketchup perhaps? or Boysenberry ice-cream?). I gave up, and posed anyway, and now have photographic evidence of me smiling in a besotted way at one of my favorite authors, Mr. Wilde the Vampire. 

That night, after Chelsea’s thrown-together-but-still-delicious-as-usual dinner, we joined her compatriots in an epic puzzle event, and spent several hours squinting at tiny off-white pieces of cardboard, trying to distinguish whether this particular bit of grey was the grey of the rocks, or the grey of the sky, or the misty grey of the border, or perhaps the grey of the lettering that read INIS MOR: THE ARAN ISLANDS in large, grey letters. It was quite fun, actually, and after the puzzling we watched a rather brilliant movie (The Lives of Others – see it immediately, it’s wonderful) and went to bed.

The next morning dear dour Kilian got on a bus back to Dublin, where I hoped he would see a bit of the city before heading back to the states; he told me he would likely be catching up on homework in the hostel instead. Traveling, as Kilian told me, is simply not his thing, and that is something that I had a great deal of trouble understanding. Mostly, I think, because it is so very very much my thing, and I have difficulty imagining disliking it; however, it takes all types, as they say, and Kilian waved cheerfully and smiled only a little ironically as we bade him farewell. Chelsea and I then betook ourselves to a tourism office, and purchased tickets for the Aran islands. After grabbing breakfast in a local café (and wondering briefly why they call rolls “baps” and also why the British and Irish feel the need to put bacon in everything) we got in the (exceedingly long) line for the busses, and somehow squeezed on. Forty minutes later we were on a bus to the lovely Aran islands, off to see a bit of real Ireland at last, and thirty minutes after that we were climbing carefully over several boats and onto the pier at Inis Mór. If my jaw wasn’t dragging on the ground, it was only because traveling around Spain and France had given my jaw muscles such a workout that they could now withstand a bit of awe and remain decently closed. The islands were incredible.

There is something about islands that just grabs my gut and twists, making my eyes widen and my breath come faster, making me smile and smile and smile. Perhaps it is the knowledge of the sea all around, speaking, as my mom would say, to the fish in me, or perhaps is the distance and the isolation that islanders know. Perhaps it is the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world, or perhaps it is the simple beauty of water on rock. Regardless, the Aran islands were particularly lovely that day, with a cloudless blue sky and a hot summer sun that belied the season (not the mention the place). After lunch – fish chowder with the most delicious bread for me (dear lord the Irish can bake!) and an open sandwich for Chelsea – we began to plot how we were going to make our way around the island. Sketchy vans were a possibility, but we really weren’t wild about that idea, and despite the cuteness of the equine methods of propulsion the horse drawn buggies were rather sketch looking as well, and likely expensive. At last, I cajoled and coerced poor Chelsea into agreeing to bikes. Chelsea had some serious qualms about this plan at first, mostly to do with the fact that she had not ridden a bicycle in several (ten?) years, but I convinced her anyway, in part due to my optimistic (though, it turned out, well-founded) faith in her, and my blithe insensitivity to her unease. If I had not been so dead set on bikes, perhaps the kinder thing to do would have been to cater to her concerns and opt for an alternative mode of transportation, but instead I put on my Face Your Fears and Live Life attitude (it’s pretty obnoxious, I’m sure) and we rented, mounted, and rode off on our newly acquired bicycles. And Chelsea did brilliantly. Apparently the old adage, “It’s like riding a bike – you never truly forget how” is actually true, and with only a few wobbly moments, a few hungry rosebushes and a steep hill or two, we managed quite well.

Something strange about the Aran islands - the Gulf Stream, for some inexplicable reason, got a little lost in the middle of the Atlantic and now flows all the way north past the western coast or Ireland, and thus the beaches of the Aran islands are as white as any in the Caribbean, and the turquoise waters of Galway bay could just as easily lap the shores of Cuba or Florida as Ireland, to look at them. An azure sky above, drystone walls crawling over the swelling green hills, sun hot on our faces and a breeze, barely cool, rushing past. Utter joy. 

Dún Aonghasa, (or Dun Aengus,) the ancient celtic hill-fort on Inis Mór, was built originally by some wild chieftains sometime in the 2nd century BCE, which makes the fact that it is standing at all quite impressive, not even taking into account the utterly incredible view. The fort was built on the edge of a 100 meter cliff, and the concentric half circles of stacked stone would once have defended the inner keep on three sides, while the sheer cliff on the fourth face would have needed no defenses at all. (Of course, in the case of an attack, that way would have provided no escape routes for the inhabitants either, unless they had some very very long rope ladders... and boats below... maybe there are caves somewhere on the cliffs? I thought about this rather a lot... Aaaand may have also spent a lot of time imagining the Dread Pirate Roberts scaling the cliffs as well... haha) After a short hike up to the hill, we clambered through the rock walls and then wriggled on our stomachs up to the edge of the precipice. It was a sheer drop, and the aquamarine waves crashing against the black rocks far below sent up a hissing roar, unmuffled by the distance. It was a sight to take your breath away, to speed your pulse to racing with adrenaline, but above all it was so, so beautiful. It was perilous and peaceful, utterly zen and slightly vertigo-inducing, and thrilling beyond belief. Chelsea and I spoke at the exact same time:

"I could die here."

"I could live here."

We lay in silence and breathed in the blinding sun on the water, and the rush of air flying hundreds of feet up from the surging sea below, and were still. 

..........................

It was hard to come back to reality. We managed though, and I fell asleep from pure exhaustion on the bus back. Pasta for dinner, delectable crisp for desert, and card games with the compatriots before bed. 

Sunday was easter, and a bit surreal - holidays away from home always are. I wandered listlessly about the city, listening to a singer with the most beautiful Irish accent sing "Black velvet band" (Her eyes, they shone like diamonds...) and a boy-band jamming along to their rendition of the Mumford and Sons song Little Lion Man which won my heart at once (I have, you might recall, rather an obsession with the band, and that song in particular. If I haven't said this before, go listen to them. Now.) I got to experience being hit on by an Irishman ("that's a fine arse on ye".... and I quote. I think having me bust up laughing might not have been his goal, but really, I couldn't help it.) and allowed myself to be schmoozed into buying a homemade doughnut (which was, without a doubt, the best I have ever tasted) by a fellow with a gold-toothed grin and twinkling eyes. Pancakes for dinner, complete with raspberries and nutella, followed by cardgames and goodbyes. We left the next day.

Dublin was my first experience with solo traveling, as far as staying in hostels by my lonesome goes. And it went alright, all round. The first night there I was in a room with three Italian men who spoke little to no English and were planning on getting up at four to catch a plane. Thus, they went to bed even earlier than I did, and within minutes were snoring like chainsaws. Musical the Italian language may be, but that apparently does not change the grating quality of their snores. It didn't help that the thunderous racket was coming from the bunk below mine, as well as the two bunks directly across the way... Eventually, with pillows firmly over my ears and a great deal of concentration, I at last drifted off to sleep. 

Exploring Dublin on my own the next morning was wonderful. I was staying in the Temple Bar area, which is full of quote bars and Irish-y Tourist-y shops, on the not-too-tacky end of things, and walking through there was quite pleasant. Revisiting St. Stephen's Green and Trinity College was grand, and made me remember the days when I promised myself that I would try to come to college at Trinity (still possible someday, I suppose). There is something incredibly liberating about wandering around someplace by yourself, especially someplace far away and foreign. No one knows who you are, no one has any preconceptions of you, and if you let yourself, you are practically forced to live in the moment and just be. Dublin in the early morning was like that for me - quietly thrilling and inescapably present. The pulse of the city beats almost too fast, with the staccato beat of the cross-walk indicators and the hasty strides of the businessmen brushing past on either side saying hurry, hurry, there is life to be lived, don't miss it, hurry - 


[Sometimes I think the Irish need to collectively take a breath and relax. ....Actually, I suppose they do, and that is why Guinness is the national drink...]

The Book of Kells exhibit in the Trinity college Library was amazing six years ago, and somehow it was even more incredible this time around (thanks in part to some medieval history and literature classes - thank you Ellen Arnold and Terri Krier!) and it honestly makes me imagine a great many inkstained cross-eyed monks wandering around Kells about 1,200 years ago... One of the signs there made me laugh a little; it read something like this:

814 CE - Kells Abbey burned by Vikings
859 CE - Burned by Vikings
917 CE  - Burned by Vikings
924 CE - Destroyed by floods
986 CE  - Burned by Vikings
1006 CE - Book of Kells stolen from the Abbey, returned two months later sans covers and opening illustrations
(Etc. etc.)
1250 CE - Destroyed in battle
1326  CE - Destroyed in battle
1327 CE - Sacked and destroyed
1456 CE - Land redistributed by the English
1479 CE - Land further redistributed by the English

Oh my. Poor Kells.

The manuscripts were amazingly beautiful, of course, and so detailed it made my brain hurt just trying to imagine drawing all of those intricate swirls and knots, let alone contemplating the added difficulty of doing so by the sketchy light of tallow candles, with goose quills and home made inks on textured calfskin... Whew.

National Museum - Bog people and far more shiny gold things than I had ever seen in one place at a time - then dinner and a pub in the Temple Bar area, traditional music and cider and general good times. Eventually Chelsea and her friend took off for their hotel, but I stayed and sat and listened, feeling all independent and grown up and stuff. :) I was euphoric, still to be in Ireland, though I couldn't help missing my Dad and wishing vainly that he could be there, to tell me about Irish ales and to sing along quietly to all the trad songs the band was playing - I knew about half, but I know he would have been familiar with just about ever tune.

I got back to the hostel, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my eight - bed dorm room was still empty, and all the beds were still untouched, no luggage to be seen anywhere. Considering it was ten o'clock, I figured it must simply have been a quiet night, and when no one showed up before I fell asleep at about 11:30, I assumed the room was mine - a comfort, considering I was planning on getting up at 4 to catch the 4:20 shuttle to the airport so as to arrive there shortly after 5, and thus to catch my 6:20 flight back to bonny Scotland. At 2:30 am, however, my hopes were dashed and I was rudely awakened by the dorm slamming open and a light being briefly switched on, quickly followed by darkness, a slurred apology, and some stumbling, banging and muffled curses. "Sorry for wakin' ye'" a distinctly Scottish voice said, and I told him it was quite alright. I should have left it at that, but my curiosity was piqued, so I asked where he was from. And that turned into a conversation about Edinburgh, the university, what I was studying, what he was doing with his life (traveling, at the moment), what I wanted to do with my life (travel, at the moment) and the imminent arrival of his Australian mate who was recently divorced and had a child. I kept trying to politely extricate myself from the conversation and hint that I really, really should go back to sleep and I was delighted that he had had such a good night and wanted to tell me all about it but I needed to get up in less than two hours! I  finally convinced him of this when in burst the aforementioned mate, sloshed and talkative and far too awake. After about 20 minutes of trying delicately to shut him up, I resigned myself to being awake, and heard far more about his life than I ever had any inclination to, a situation which was made only more surreal by the fact that the lights were still off and I hadn't really gotten a good look at the fellow. The Scottish man went to sleep, but the Australian stayed cheerfully, drunkenly awake and increasingly flirtatious (awkward, considering he was about 30 and had just finished talking about his ex-wife and son!) as I eventually got myself up and began to pack the last of my things. When, after a lengthy pause that made me hope he had at long last fallen asleep, he said, "...You have a nice bum, in the dark," I decided enough was enough, hauled my stuff together and went to wait for the shuttle, a little earlier and far less rested than I had hoped. It was funny, in retrospect, after I had finished feeling disgruntled about the utter lack of sleep. Hostels are strange places.

Flying back over Scotland literally gave me warm fuzzies, though it's entirely possible that that was due to my slight delirium of exhaustion. Home again, home again, jiggetty jog.