dingle, the Kathleen mcauliffe store, and beaches!

This fall, I designed my class schedule with travel in mind, so my Thursdays and Fridays are completely free (I compensate with what I've coined "ten hour tuesdays", worth it). Since my friends all have class on Thursdays, i decided to do another paddywagon day tour. This time, i decided to go to dingle,  in large part because there's a store called the Kathleen mcauliffe and naturally one of my goals was to get a picture with it here. That, as well as the rest of my trip, was a huge success.

Our first destination was killarney, a town about an hour and a half west of cork. It's known largely for its national park and hiking, for which I'd definitely like to make another trip. However, as this was only an hour long rest stop, I wouldn't have time to make it outside the city centre. But don't worry, I managed to find a Nike outlet store. After an "i deserve it" buy, I walked around the main streets of killarney. County kerry won the all ireland football final on sunday, so every available storefront, lamppost, and sign is decked out in the county colors of green and gold. There were even some huge decals of kerry jerseys plastered on the front of one of the big hotels. More More to come on kilarney once I make a Thursday trip to the national park!

After leaving killarney, we ventured toward our main destination of the dingle peninsula. For an hour, we drove through the Kerry countryside, where I'm convinced that sheep make up 90% the population. But evantually, the rolling green pastures begat hulking mountain ranges that overlook the Atlantic ocean. The view of the sun reflecting off the endless stretch of water was pretty enough, but then we stopped at inch beach, which is apparently a surf hotspot. Beaches and surfing are low on the list of things I'd associate with west ireland, but i won't complain. Staring out into Atlantic with the tide rushing over my feet, sand between my toes, and wind blowing into my face was absolutely sublime. If it were summer, I'd have bought some surf lessons and never left.

But when i did, we next drove along the Atlantic coastline to slea head island, the gaeltacht (irish speaking) island where tom cruise and Nicole Kidman met while shooting a movie. But the island itself is absolutely divine, a completely untouched and unspoiled region where moss covered mountains loom over the rocky coastline. So although it's responsible for one of pop cultures more unholy unions, slea head still blew me away with ocean views that will break instagram.

during our voyage along the Atlantic coast, we had passed through the town of dingle, but so we made a proper stop in town after turning around. Upon arriving, I jumped off the bus and made a beeline for the Kathleen mcauliffe store. I'd waited for about 10 years to finally visit "my store" and it didn't disappoint! I met dingle's Kathleen mcauliffe, who was very nice and gave me a souvenir Kathleen mcauliffe bag. "my" collection of scarves and dresses are bright, trendy, and high quality with cute but kitschy patterns. too bad I didn't quite get a "same name discount" ☺

my little pilgrimage to my store done, I explored the rest of dingle. It's It's primarily a fishing town, which was made evident by the amazing smell of frying fish in the air. Other highlights were a dolphin themed craft store, a folksy local music store that smelled of incense, and countless other cute boutiques and tea shops. Also, with dingle being another gaeltacht area, a lot of signs were in gaelic and i definitely geeked out over that. The hour and an half flew by, but thankfully it started raining the moment i hopped back onto the bus.

Overall, dingle was a blast. I can't wait to do more travelling; next on the horizon is galway, cobh, and a proper killarney trip. Also, my friends and I booked a trip to rome for November. Since I have thanksgiving to late december, I want to take some extended trips to any of spain (madrid and barcelona), paris, amsterdam, prague, and just about anywhere else my friends will go.
Slainte
Katie  

Long Overdue: Pics

These are mostly on Facebook but for those not friends with me on there, here you go!

Newmarket

Bunratty Castle

Cliffs of Moher

A random castle from limerick

Dublin City Hall (AKA the view from my hotel)

temple bar! 

More to come! Stay in touch :)

kinsale!

Unfortunately, I won't be able to travel this weekend as I'll be doing a homestay with a 70 year old couple out in the country. Fingers crossed that they at least have wifi so i can spend  so e downtime catching up with everyone. To get a taste of adventure for the week, I did go down to Kinsale today. It's a small, touristy town on the sea and conveniently located only an hour from my campus. The bus was cheap, I had a morning to kill, why not?

Since I have to leave for my homestay at 5:30, I only stayed in kinsale for 3 hours but I could have easily stayed the entire day. When I first arrived, I had planned to go to Charles fort, a military fort on the ocean dating back to the 1500s, but upon walking for 20 minutes and still only making it halfway there, I turned around. During the walk, I did get this amazing panoramic view of the towns colorful buildings along the sea, so not all was lost. Also, i passed the a pub called the spaniardo where I learned about how the Spanish and Irish armies teamed up to fight the british.

Another 20 minutes later, I arrived back in the town centre. I made my way over to Desmond castle, a castle from the 1700s that has served as a military base, prison for american revolutionary soldiers, a famine workhouse, and now doubles as an international wine museum. Ok. Cool. Apparently kinsale, as a coastal town, is one of Ireland's biggest wine towns so there were a lot of interesting exhibits that went along with that. My favorite was a world map made of wine corks, with the flags of the bigger wine producers painted onto their cork. Unfortunately, no gift shop.

Kinsale is a tourist hotspot so the last big highlight of my trip to was, predictably, all the gift shops. All of the brightly buildings were super inviting and covered in vines. I visited a lot of galleries with nautical themed ceramics, stained glass crafts, and cute souvenirs. Also, there were a lot of boutiques with the softest sweaters I've ever seen as well as a few quirky bookshops.
Aside from a papyrus card and a book (if my homestay doesn't have wifi), I remained strong and didn't buy anything. But...I was only there 3 hours.

Before leaving, I also checked out st multose church, which has amazing stained glass works and a graveyard on its grounds.

Overall, I wish I could've spent more time in kinsale because both its waterfront views and cute buildings are stunning. Also, for such a small town, it contains a lot of fascinating historical ties with spain and France that I never would have known. Not a bad way to spend 3 hours. But don't just take my word for it.

limerick, cliffs of moher, and bunratty castle in 12 hours

..or why I'm going to bed at 9 tonight


So if you've been on any sort of social media recently you'll know that I went to the cliffs of moher today! A bus tour company called paddywagon does day trips out to the cliffs for only 30 euro for students and I heard good things about it from a friend, so I jumped on it. The bus left cork at 8 am, which is likely why I went alone (i guess that's a dealbreaker) . First, we stopped in limerick for a pit stop, bathroom and coffee break. We were only in town for 20 minutes, but we were parked by the river shannon as well as a castle, so i snapped a few quick pictures of the scenery while i waited.

After leaving limerick we drove through more of county limerick until we hit the burren. Located in the west of the ireland, the burren is a protected region of limestone. Since its free to use in county clare, every house, farm, business, you name it, is surrounded by a two foot limestone wall resembling a castle, usually covered in vines as well. Certainly beats barbed wire or picket fences. As we headed closer and closer to the Atlantic ocean, our tour guide told us about how this landscape of limestone came to be: during the famine, British officials paid (forced) starving irish men to build these walls so they could make enough money to feed their families. Shocking to no one, making already starving irish men burn off more energy wasn't a very good policy decision. Welp. The guide started playing The Fields of Athenry, it was sad, whatever.

Also in the burren were the "mini cliffs". For about 10 minutes, we stopped alongside a rocky exterior overlooking the Atlantic and wandered around the shore. We'd have stayed longer, but a cycling race would be totally shutting down the area at any moment so we needed to move quick to beat the traffic. As all my pictures show, this is the prettiest place in the world to race. In fact, we ran into the cyclists in doolin, the sleepy tourist town where the bus stopped for lunch. 45 minutes of instagram later, we left once again, but this time for the cliffs of moher.

As we climbed a hill that overlooked a gorgeous harbor and the Atlantic ocean, the tour guide began to ramble on about how the cliffs are Ireland's number one tourist spot and how amazing the "gifts of moher" (lol get it? Gifts, not cliffs? ugh) souvenir shop is.Needless to say, I was concerned that someone had managed to commercialize the life out of...a bunch of cliffs. The first things I saw upon arrival were the gift shops, tourist office, and about 5000 people with cameras, so that didn't help.

But thankfully I was wrong. once i hit the dirt trail which is about 700 feet above sea level, i could only focus on the miles of deep blue ocean in front of me. I had expected there to be a fence separating people from the cliff, but instead I could sit on rocks a foot any from the cliff and absorb the view. At first, it sounds kind of like the northwestern lakefill or another "pretty water view". But something about the cliffs- their sheer mass, their beautiful coat of vine, or the ocean that stretches to infinity - made it impossible to look away, even though nothing was happening in front of me. I'd assumed that I'd get bored during the 1.5 hour stop, but the time flew. I'm not sure why a) high places, b) waterfront places, or c) high waterfront places make people all deep and reflective, but basically I had to deliberately look at my boots while hiking back or I would've missed my tour bus.
Overall: cliffs of moher = A++++

Our last stop on the way home was an express trip to bunratty castle. Thanks to the Italian middle school kids on our trip who consistently showed up to the bus 10 minutes late after every stop, we only had 15 minutes here. Nevertheless, I wandered over to the castle, got a picture of it, and then realized someone had left a side door open. Naturally, I snuck in and found an old courtyard with a cannon relic. Got caught instantly, high tailed it to a cafe, and then back to the bus.

Thanks to the italians, I'm still on the bus instead of back in cork (I'm never doing a guided tour ever again, btw), but should arrive back soon. Not sure what will be happening tonight, but tomorrow a few guys and I will probably go out to watch the camogie final (cork women's hurling!) Before streaming in American football all night.

Sorry for rambling, stay in touch, and have a great week!
Katie

Cork: Week One

It's been a week since I moved into my apartment in Cork, but the last 7 days have been so crazy that it feels like months since I left Chicago. Can't imagine how I'll feel in December when it actually has been months. The first 3 days wmainly consisted of getting familiarized with the city, settled in our apartments, and going to some orientation sessions on campus. Everyone in my program lives in the same apartment building, so we ran all our errands together and managed to turn shopping for detergent into a fun and loud endeavor. Over the weekend, two of my friends turned 21, so on Saturday night we went to a few pubs in downtown cork. For a smaller city, theres a ton if options for nightlife, from clubs to more relaxed live music pubs. We walked into The Wash first, which was so packed that none of us could move. But once we started dancing on the tables to 90s hits and singalong songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, we had an awesome time,  Everyone we met, from our new Irish roommates to people at the pubs, were the most friendly people with the most wicked sense of humor. It definitely lived up to my expectations of pub culture in ireland. Unfortunately, I tend to fall asleep at 1130 most nights, but I'm making an effort to go out as much as I can.

On sunday, a few friends and I walked to a pub to watch the All Ireland Hurling Final between Kilkenny and Tipperary. The place was packed with fans and the atmosphere was electric. Hurling is a fastpaced sport that combines the physical nature of hockey with the quickness of lacrosse, but it being the championship match brought the excitement to a completely different level. The match was a nail biter and crowds swarmed the TV in the last seconds when Tipp almost scored the winning point with 1 minute left. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, the teams tied, which means we'll be watching the rematch in 2 weeks!


The next day brought the start of classes, which to be honest none of us felt prepared for after a week of fun during our orientations in Dublin and Cork. We also didn't feel prepared because we didn't know which classes were offered until...twe days earlier. The Irish are a bit more lax than Americans in terms of scheduling and timing, which showed on Monday when half of my classes either weren't offered or were moved to a different time. Since UCC's campus is several miles long, i got quite a workout as i ran around cork trying to find the buildings of my classes that, you know, got cancelled. Fortunately Tuesday went much more smoothly and I felt like much less of a freshman (or fresher, in Irish terms). I finally got my schedule straight last night and it looks like this:
Intro to Irish traditional music
Cultures of Cities
Music in Modern Ireland
Introduction to International Development
..and Intro to French (I know this is Ireland, but I couldn't fit irish into my schedule and this class is "aimed at 12 year olds" so I couldn't resist)

I'm only in class from noon on Monday until 2 pm on wednesday. Also, i have 1 fjnal during all of december. So much time to travel! Hoping to hit Galway and the Cliffs of Moher this weekend with some friends. Also taking a day trip to the Dingle Peninsula in West Ireland, where I'm taking a picture with the Kathleen McAuliffe store. Also, another friend turns 21 on Thursday, so it'll be a fun night in Cork tomorrow!

Stay in touch everyone!
Katie  

I went to a Malaysian bar in Ireland, so OK then.

Settling into my plush seat in the back corner of my bus back to Cork from dublin. I've gotten a combined ten hours of sleep maybe in the last three nights, so this is totally welcome. My friends are sitting in front of me, and I know once I start talking to them I'll never rest. So I'm being the typical antisocial kid in the back of the bus, oops.

Despite having no phone, I did manage to find people to hang out with in Dublin (shocker amirite?). I ran into a girl from my program in subway of all places. She, her roommate, and I wandered the streets of downtown for like an hour before we ended up back at our hotel. Outside, both my roommates and two other girls who'll be in limerick this fall were waiting for a hop on hop off tour bus. I joined them and after a few minutes' wait, we saw the very last bus of the night speed past us and sprinted onto it. It was so late that all the stops on the tour like kilmainham gaol and the Jameson distillery, had already closed. The tour was still fun though, since we were on the open air top deck of the bus, the sun was setting, and our bored tour guide rattled off any joke that came to mind.
We rode through phoenix park, which was absolutely divine, and swung by the Jameson distillery too.
After we got off the bus, the five of us went to an Irish dance and music show that was going on in our hotel. Even though ive heard irish music my whole life, the live experience far surpassed my expectations. I really enjoyed the dance part too. The music and routines were more diverse than I expected; it went beyond the kicking and traditional Irish music that I always associated with Irish dance. Overall, a fun night until my roommates and I passed out in our room at 11. Well, they did-I tossed and turned .  For a few hours before I finally gave up and went for a run along the River Liffey.

The next day, we had 6 hours of orientation sessions about academics and student life in ireland. The monotony of meetings as broken up by a trip to an actual GAA facility where we learned about Gaelic games. We got a basic overview of Irish football and hurling rules as well as some of the historical context behind the sports. The irish are particularly obsessed with their games right now as the all ireland Irish football and hurling championships take place this month. We went to the fields to try both sports for ourselves, where I kicked myself in the face with an Irish football about five times. We also did a little hurling and already, a big group of us are planning to hit the pubs for Sundays All Ireland final.
After partaking in such a traditionally Irish pasttime, I and ten or twelve people in my program continued to celebrate Irish culture..with two hours at a Malaysian karoake bar near our hotel. The songs were cheesy, the guys embarrassed themselves, and it was a great time. We planned to go out afterwards, but enough people wanted to get a good night's sleep that we decided against it. Still, the twelve of us packed into one of boys' rooms, played some music, and talked for a while.

The last few days, I've hung out with five guys, two from NU, and four girls pretty consistently. During our orientation today, we were the typical crowd in the back of room making jokes and laughing out loud the entire time. They seem very friendly and we've started messing around with each other and there's some inside jokes and stuff. Knowing that I'll be living near and travelling with such laid back, funny people has definitely made me feel better about this semester.