Tours, Rain, and Pubs

So the past couple days have been a wonderful mix of Irish exploration and getting comfy in my environment.

Yesterday we got up early to take a tour of our tiny town of Ballyvaughan. It's really a beautiful, quaint little town and almost everyone knows each other here. We had a wicked nice older gentlemen, who happens to be the town historian, guide us along with the president of our college, Mary. He was so nice, but so soft spoken, so often times his words were lost in the wind, but the history that I did hear was very rich and interesting. We started at the church and moseyed on through the town, went down towards Logue's Pub, where I had my previous first pub experience, then headed towards "downtown Ballyvaughan" which has a few more places to lodge and two pubs, The Whiskey Bar and Monk's. We also learned about faerie bushes and trees which are very serious business here. The only unfortunate part of the whole tour was the random Irish downpour that none of us were prepared for. Of course hardly any of us remembered to bring our rain jackets, how silly of us haha, so we all got soaked. It was also very cold and windy, of course. So needless to say, getting to Monk's Pub was probably the best part of the tour considering we got to go straight to the sitting room where they brought us coffee, scones, tea, and the most delicious whipped cream that tasted like butter and was thick and sweet and made the coffee taste like heaven.

So after that a small group of us headed back to the house instead of exploring because we were soaking wet and cold. It's amazing how long the walk seems when you are cold and wet haha. For the rest of the afternoon we hung around for a bit, watched free willy (pretty much the whole house participated), and a group of us girls headed out to Monk's again for dinner around 6. I had DELICIOUS sea food chowder again and we ended up staying forever! and by forever I mean like 4 or 5 hours haha. We finally decided to head out since we had to get up early the next day. Despite that, after getting back to the house, we hung out in my room for multiple hours and ended up staying up all night anyways haha. It was a good night though, especially when a butterfly randomly emerged from my bathroom and we had to chase it out. I've had mice and cockroaches, but never butterflies. I couldn't even be mad.

Today was even better, my alarm went off as opposed to it not doing so yesterday morning so I had plenty of time to get ready and eat some breakfast. Those of us in the kitchen got to enjoy a beautiful full-on rainbow right outside our window (we saw a few more in the beginning of our bus tour). Oh Ireland... I feel like I'll be desensitized by rainbows once I get back to the US haha. Anyways, the bus arrived and we boarded for our day long tour of the Burren. It was incredible. We started out seeing the Faerie Forts, which are old stone structures that were built hundreds of years ago, they are so intense! Following that we drove to the Portal Tomb which had these crazy interesting rocks and also lots of ice. It was quite slippery, but we made it thanks to Mandy's advice to walk like a T-rex. We also saw some cows. After that we drove past the O'Brien clan's property (that is nearly deteriorated) and Castle, it was pretty impressive actually haha, of course I perked up when I heard my name. We then went to see a project by a local artist called XPO which involved reinstating a common area since the post-office (where the communal hub used to be) had been closed down. It was pretty interesting. Afterwards we went to lunch at a very well known pub and visited the city of Kilfenora Cathedral and graveyard.

My favorite part of this whole tour was visiting the coast. We got to see the Cliffs of Moher in the distance while we explored the coast and I got to hop from rock to rock since there were huge cracks all throughout the cliffs. The coast is absolutely beautiful and the waves are so intense! Apparently people surf around there, I think that would be terrifying. After lots of photo opps and my friends Hannah and Mandy and I played catch up with the rest of the group we finally headed back to Ballyvaughan. It was a long long lonnggggg day but so worth it. When we got back I drank some more tea and bee lined it to my bed. A nap was in order. Now it's 11:30 pm and I'm not tired at all after taking a 2 and a half hour nap haha whoops. Also, the rain downpour the other day did a number on my body. I now have a very nasty cough that I'm a bit nervous might turn into bronchitis. I've been taking vitamins and drinking so much tea and it seems like it's helping. I'm also losing my voice, haha, surprise surprise!

Well, I'm so sorry about the long long post. I don't really want to post every day but I'm thinking I might want to for a while so my experiences don't build up like this haha. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff but I will stop in the name of your attention span haha. I will do a post dedicated to photos next when I'm finished editing them. I'll highlight a few and send you a link to my facebook album so I don't have to post them all since there are so many!

Anyways, hope all is well in the States or wherever you may be!!!

<3 Cait