"You can sleep in four months"

This quote was a little piece of advice my mom gave me in the first week. After all, adjusting to the nights that literally last until sunrise was no small feat. But with the start of classes and weekend trips, this concept has become a rule to live by. This weekend, in particular, proved just how much one can do while suffering from sleep debt.

Pierce, my friend from Cazenovia, is studying in Florence this semester and decided to take a trip to Barcelona this past weekend. He didn't think to check with me first, because I had already booked a trip to Ireland. I was so mad at him because I would have loved showing him around Barcelona. But anyway,  his plane was supposed to arrive Thursday evening, and my flight didn't leave until Friday morning, so at least we had one night to hangout. Problem was, his flight was delayed six hours and we weren't able to meet up until around 1:30am. Nevertheless, it was still great to see him. I gave him a cheat sheet of places to go and things to do in the city. Then I walked him and his friends around Las Ramblas and gave them a overview of the sights. They were particularly surprised by the amount of prostitutes out and the men walking around selling cans of Estrella Damm. Ah, Barcelona.

After dropping Pierce off at his hostel, I headed home and got to bed around 4am. Two hours later, I was up and getting ready to leave. We caught the metro at 6:30am and then the bus to the airport at 7:30am. We flew Ryanair which is a discount airline (our flight there was listed as 1 euro before the plethora of taxes). The catch is, you have to fly out of smaller airports outside of the major city, in our case Girona which is a little more than an hour northeast of Barcelona. We arrived in Shannon airport around 12:30pm and boarded the Bus Eireann to Galway at 1pm. There was standing room only for the first half hour of the bus ride, but slowing people got off so we could take seats. Finally, we got to our hostel, which was conveniently located right next to the bus station (we didn't plan it), at around 3ish.

We stayed at the Galway City Hostel, which was located right on Eyre Square in the center of town. The staff were extremely nice and marked up a map for us with all the sights to see as soon as we checked in. As my first hostel experience, it wasn't to bad (although I could just imagine my mother's reaction, haha). There was free computers with internet, towels and breakfast were complimentary, and the showers had hot water and doors.

One thing we noticed right away was our Spanish mindset. We kept thinking "now how would I say this is Spanish?" and saying "gracias and lo siento," despite being in an English speaking country. Although at times I thought it might actually be easier to understand spanish than the Irish accents. Also surprisingly, there were a lot of Spainsh college students around. I had a conversation with a few of them and apparently Galway is a popular place for Spaniards to study abroad. Who knew?!

First order of business was to eat the best fish & chips in Galway at McDonogh's (or chips and beans for Kelsey and I, cause we don't really like fish). We learned that Emily's absolutely favorite food is fish and chips, and I am pretty sure she lived off the them while were were in Ireland. After that we had our first of many Guinness' at the Quay. These two stops took us down the main pedestrian street of Galway called Shop St/High St/Quay St, depending on which section you were on. (Although, street signs in Galway are even harder to locate than in Barcelona, and there are no crosswalks anywhere. It's like a free for all). It was pretty much an Irish version of las Rambles.

For dinner on the first night we were picked up by Marissa's dad's receptionist's niece, who lives in Galway. I know, random connection, but I guess the Irish are just that hospitable. She had never even met Marissa or Marissa's Dad, let alone us, and she drove us to her house and made us dinner. Her husband and her gave us tips on what to do and her mother-in-law, who literally lives right next store, brought us over a box of fingers (twix without the caramel, but still good) to take with us. They were so incredibly nice and it was very interesting talking to them (and trying to understand their accents!).

After dinner she dropped us off at our hostel and we went out to a bar. While we were sitting at this bar I glanced up and saw Duffy Hartnett, a fellow Cazenovian who I probably hadn't seen since I graduated! I called his name and waved at him until he recognized who I was. A couple of his friends were from Buffalo and knew Kelsey too, so we ended up hanging out with them both nights we were in Galway. Small, small, small world! They took us to the one club in Galway, and while it was laughable compared to the ones in Barcelona it was still a good time.

The following day, Saturday, we walked around the entire town in one afternoon. We took a nice long walk out to salt hill, saw the cathedral, walked through the farmers market, bought Claddagh rings, watched some six nation rugby and of course enjoyed a pub crawl at all the best pubs in Galway (thanks to the advice from Jen, the Irish couple and the hostel folk). We meet a group of welsh men away for a weekend bachelor party, dressed as pimps (jewelry, fur coats, chains & all), who were pretty funny. Also, there was another group who we laughed about Will Farrel youtube favorites with. We were amazed how long we lasted but I supposed Barcelona had prepared us well. 

On Sunday, we once again had to wake up after only a few hours asleep to catch the Bus Erinann to Dublin. We had definitely lucked out with the weather on our trip. Both days the temperature was only about five degrees colder than Barcelona and sunny! Which we assumed is a rarity in winter Ireland. So I was looking forward to watching the sunrise over the Irish country side and taking pictures of sheep, but I completely passed out for the whole four hours (yes, it only takes 4 hours to drive across Ireland). It was probably a good thing that I got the extra sleep because once we got off the bus we went straight to the Guinness Storehouse. The customer service women was very nice and let us put our bags in their office for no cost while we toured the 7-floor shrine to Guinness. At the very top we got our complementary pint of Guinness and sat in the gravity bar overlooking the entire Dublin skyline. We still had a couple hours to kill before out flight left, so we went to the oldest pub in Dublin, The Brazen Head Inn, which was within walking distance from the Guinness Storehouse and our bus stop. There was live Irish music playing and the food was delicious (Emily got fish and chips...again).

There was a slight delay on the flight home, but if you take into account just how much traveling we did over the weekend, it all went very smoothly. Despite all of us feeling exhausted and like we gained twenty pounds from all the rich, fried food and filling pints, the weekend was absolutely amazing. If anything, it just made me want to go back again. I still have not seen the Cliffs Jen had recommended, the Joyce landmarks, and the sheep on the hills that Jessie was so fascinated with. Plus, this is definitely a place I would want to come back with my family. So, so long for now Ireland, I will be back!