Thanksgiving and Galway

They don't usually celebrate Thanksgiving in Ireland. Which quite the shame considering it's my favorite holiday. But I celebrated anyway, along with fourteen others on Thursday night. Then Friday Tony came to Dublin along with Jessica and Steve later that night. What a day! We've had a good weekend traversing the country and wandering around without really knowing what was going on. It was nice to have more people visit me, I like showing people around Dublin and exploring new places. This is just the account of my weekend with friends from the Midwest. I'll update on Tony's visit next.

The city of Galway, all decorated for Christmas!

Saturday morning we all got up early to catch a train across the country to Galway. It was a nice, sleepy, uneventful train ride. We landed in Galway about 10ish and got our hotel rooms sorted out and found a bus to take us to the ferry to take us to the Aran Islands. The Aran Islands are a set of 3 islands off the coast of Galway, which is on the west coast of Ireland for those who didn't know. We went to the largest one known as Inis Mor. It was 9 miles long and 3 miles wide. On the ferry over I found out that I get sea sick, so that was unhappy. Except it started out really fun splashing about in the huge waves.

Me, Steve and Jessica on the bus to the ferry that went to the Aran Islands.

Steve, Jessica, and Tony sleeping on the ferry.

Once we got to the island we realized we had no idea what to do, because it was a bit cold for biking like I thought sounded fun. Luckily someone shouted to us for a tour of the island. So we went about the island with narration from Rory, who had the sweetest accent I've heard yet. He left us on our own to explore the ring fort on the west coast of the island, which has these amazing cliffs. It was nothing short of amazing. And really windy too. I waved across the Atlantic to home, so I hope you saw me. We toured around the island and learned some interesting things. Like there are only 800 people who live there, and they all speak Irish. They also build so many stone fences as a way to clear the stones from the fields, and also, obviously, to mark territory. All in all, the Aran Islands are really cool and the four of us discussed how it would be nice to retire there or something. I decided that would be a bad idea because I would never want to take a ferry that often.

That looks dangerous Tony! (Don't worry Mom, it wasn't really)

Steve, Jessica and Tony hanging out on one of the 5 billion limestone walls on Inis Mor.

The half-ring fort of Dun Aonghasa. Beats me on how to pronounce that.

We found a kitty!

Donkey and old thatched roof barn. There are lots of those on the island.

That night we ate a delicious dinner, I had turkey and most of Jessica's potatoes. Afterwards we got cleaned up and went out for a night on the town with Tony's friend Nellie. She was conveniently staying in Galway the same weekend as us! Which made for an awesome mid-west reunion. I heard news about people from high school that I never thought I would hear about again. But it was really fun hanging out with her and she'll hopefully be spending her last night in Dublin with me before she heads back to Minnesota.

Nellie and Tony looking happy to see each other.

Me ruining a super-cute picture with Jessica.

Unfortunately we had to leave Galway for other fun adventures around Ireland. We barely got Jessica off to the airport in time (thanks to my general unobservance of the main street in Dublin being closed). Thankfully though she made her flight and got her dad a gift from duty-free! Life is good!

The train on the way back to Dublin looked like a den. Jessica said it was only missing a loon.