The Emerald Isle

I had a great trip to Ireland. I have been so amazingly lucky this year and have gotten to travel to some AMAZING places for next to nothing. Ireland was no exception: I found a conference in Dublin that just so happened to be remarkably perfect and aligned really well with my field of study. So after a bit of sweet-talking, I convinced some people at UCSD to send me! This means that my round trip ticket would be free, my housing a food during the conference would be free, and the $500 conference registration would get paid for….overall a pretty sweet deal.

My labmate (and friend) Diana also came to the conference, which was awesome. It was great to have a travel companion and someone to go out at night with (and to sit through incredibly boring scientific talks with). We arrived to Dublin after a trans-continental and trans-Atlantic flight with an 8 hour layover at JFK in between. We did make the most of our layover though, and took a cab into the city since Diana had never been to NYC so we had bagels, saw Times Square, walked up 5th ave (focusing our time at Tiffany's), strolled through Central Park, and then had a Gray’s Papaya dog (and grabbed to-go cupcakes at Crumbs) before heading back to the airport :)

We didn’t get much sleep on either flight, so after our transcontinental red-eye flight (not to mention the fact that I stayed up ALL night the night before out flight packing and getting ready to leave the country for 6 months) so I was pretty exhausted when we arrived. But we got our bags and found the bus that would take us to the Hostel. It was super easy and after a direct bus trip 20 minutes into the city, we arrived at our stop. The hostel was supposed to be very close to Trinity College (where the conference was) so we got off in front of the College and started wandering around to find the hostel. After a few minutes of wandering in circles, we finally found our place. It was about 11:30 am, and we couldn’t check into the room until 2pm, so we dumped our luggage in their storage room and went out in search of something to occupy our time.

We (of course) headed straight to a bar and ordered the first of many rounds of Guinness. We relaxed in the bar (it was the lobby bar of a moderately swanky looking hotel) on a couple of couches, and used the free wireless intenet until the room was ready. Upon checking in, we were informed that we were on the 3rd level. In Euro-speak, that means the 4th floor…they call the 1st floor the ground floor, so you have to add a flight of stairs to everything. As expected, there was no lift, so we had to haul my giant bag up entirely too many stairs (Thanks Diana! I would have died without your help!). Oddly, once we got to the correct floor, the sign to our room still pointed up…

We climbed another flight, only to discover a long, winding hallway that led us in a giant U, to a flight of stairs that went down….so after hauling the bags UP the stairs, we got to haul them back DOWN to our room. By that point the lack of sleep was kicking in, and we thought it was the funniest thing in the world. We made it to the room and after a couple showers, pretty much collapsed from exhaustion. We napped for a couple hours, then forced ourselves to get up and go get some food. It was cool and drizzling, but we wandered to a street lined with restaurants and finally settled on a tapas bar called Havana. The food was great, and once we were full of sangria, paella, and lentil stew, we made our way back to the hostel and went back to bed for the night.

 We were amazed that it was still light out, and the sun didn’t set until after 10:15pm! But we got to bed and got our rest for the next day (Monday, the first day of the conference). The rest of the week was an awesome blur of Guinness, science, and fun people. We met a ton of interesting characters, saw a bunch of great live music, sat through some horrendously boring science (and some fun science, too), presented our posters, and saw a lot of sights.

On Saturday, Taylor arrived and we whisked him out of the city and headed to Galway on the advice of fellow travelers. We picked him up at the airport, grabbed a rental car, and started driving! Diana came with us, and we stayed at a lovely B&B just 5 minutes walk from the main square. Driving on the wrong side of the road with a manual car was an adventure, but we made it safe and sound...But to be honest, driving through roundabouts was pretty terrifying, and I don't think I have EVER sweat while driving so much, haha!

 We spent 2 nights in Galway, which was kind of like a quaint, Irish version of Vegas. People apparently go there to have their bachelor/ette parties (which are called "hen" and "stag" parties), so there was always a group of people dressed ridiculously in each bar (a whole group of Cyndi Laupers, a crew of matadors, 10 ballerinas adorned with fluffy, pink tutu's, etc. ). It was a fun town, and we spent most of our time in the city eating, drinking and watching World Cup, or relaxing in the B&B's hot tub!

While in Galway, we took a drive out to go visit a castle. One of our lab mate's is named Ellen O'Dea, and she informed us before we left that there was a castle in the Irish countryside named the O'Dea Castle. Inspired, we went to find it! It was a little under 2 ours away from where we were, so we grabbed some road snacks and headed out to the countryside. It was a cool drive, and on the way we found the ruins of an old church and stopped to check them out. We pulled down a long, one lane driveway flanked on both side by stone walls. We parked and wandered the ruins, and noticed that there were a few people handing around in the adjacent cemetery...

By the time we got back to our car there was actually an entire funeral procession coming down the driveway. We attempted to quietly sneak the tiny car down the driveway, but since it was only a one lane driveway, we made it within 50 meters of the end when we got blocked in by 6 cars coming in and had to BACK UP (in reverse....with mourners all around us....with ME driving on the wrong side of the car!) the whole way back to the parking area and just sit and wait until they were all inside the cemetery with the casket and everything. It was really odd.

But eventually we were on our way and found the O'Dea Castle. It was cool, and had been restored and was now a little archeological/educational center. We took the mini-self guided tour, watched a video on the history, and wandered the grounds. It started raining when we were walking through the surrounding fields, so we ran back to the car, and headed on for the day.

We eventually made our way to the Cliffs of Moher - they were so beautiful! Amazing HUGE cliffs that tower over the deep blue water of the Atlantic on the west side of Ireland. There was even a castle tower that overlooked the cliffs.

We dropped Diana off at the train station (she made her way to Paris to meet up with her boyfriend) and drove south into the countryside. Last night we stayed in an amazing castle that had been turned into a quant guesthouse complete with a resident Irish wolfhound. Today we woke up to gorgeous sunny weather (a rare treat) and drove along the south western coast.

We are staying in a hotel on the ocean on a peninsula that juts west into the Atlantic. Tomorrow we head to Cork for 2 nights, then I will show Taylor around Dublin for 3 nights! Ireland is an amazing country and we are having a great trip!