This past week was pretty uneventful. However, on Saturday morning there was a crew of us that left for the Aran Islands!
Saturday morning, 14 international students (including myself) got on a bus at 9:30 am. We arrived at the ferry around 10:30 and headed out. The ferry ride took only about 40 minutes to get to the Aran Islands. I've never been on a ferry before--really wasn't as exciting as I had thought it might be...haha. On the ferry I ended up sitting next to a girl who was also studying abroad at NUI Galway from Wisconsin, but goes to school at Bethel. What a small world! I was wearing my Concordia sweatshirt and when we got off the ferry, another group of people asked me if I really went to Concordia--they were from St Johns and St Bens. Crazy!!
Anyway, we got off the ferry and all rented bicycles. We proceeded on to our hostel to drop off the food and stuff that we brought for the night. After a quick stop there, we headed out on an all day adventure of biking through the beautifulness that is the Aran Islands.
Our first stop was at an old lighthouse. It was a beautiful sight! There were a lot of ruins of the old lighhouse area, but the lighthouse is still intact, and of course a lot of stone walls everywhere. After that we went to the cliffs. The cliffs on the island were phenominal! It was gorgeous!! Quite the hike to get up there, but totally worth it! We then saw the 7 churches, seals, and headed back to town to return our bikes. It was a long day and everyone was just pooped from the biking. I've found that if you're used to riding in Moorhead, MN--flatness USA--a full day of biking up and down hills is not great.
We then headed back to our hostel and the boys made us dinner. Pasta for 14! That night we celebrated one of the boys birthdays at the hostel.
This morning we got up for breakfast and went back into town. I stopped at the Aran Sweater Market. A lot of the sweaters found in Ireland (everywhere) are made on the Aran Islands. They had a lot of beautiful sweaters and it was really fun to see! We then hopped back on the ferry at noon and headed home.
Needless to say, I'm exhausted!
All my classes will start this week and so it'll be interesting to see the difference in teaching methods here.
Sounds like you had a blast! I know you were really looking forward to that trip.
ReplyDeletep.s. I accidentally set that pic as my background when I tried to take a closer look at it, but I think that I will leave it for a little while. Congratulations, you are adorable enough to make my ridiculous criteria for a background image. :-)