Day Thirteen

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I guess it makes sense that this would be unlucky day thirteen, seeing as how I thought my life would end numerous times throughout the day. I don’t think the ancient Celts had planned on having giant tour buses attempting to trek across the rugged terrain with study-abroad students holding on for dear life when they were marking out their roads.

Let me be clear: Luxurious five lane freeways? Don’t exist here. Wide and smoothly paved roads? Unheard of. The roads in Ireland are terrifyingly narrow and most out in the country aren’t really paved. So trying to drive a giant tour bus on this harrowing roads can easily give someone an anxiety attack, and considering that we had to practically make U-turns to get on roads sometimes and were driving on a cliff overlooking a fjord for a while, I think most of us panicked at least once.

Our first stop was the Killarney Abbey, which is basically this big mansion across a lake that used to belong to some rich guy and now houses nuns and their Catholic boarding school. Sounds awesome, right? Well, instead of actually going IN to the house and taking a tour, we just stopped for coffee before getting back on the Bus of Terror.

Speeding to our next destination (which none of us knew because no one ever tells us anything), the bus attempts to make practically a U-turn onto a very narrow, very unpaved road. This attempt results in us blocking the road for approximately five minutes while the driver executed an 11-point turn. Now on this new road (which we quickly discovered was bordered on either side by steep drop-offs) we passed a hostel, and to our great amazement, an amusement center full of exciting things like rock walls and ziplines. Surely this couldn’t be our stop?

Nope. We were headed to the Famine Road…which believe me, we were about as excited about as the name sounds appealing—especially after seeing the exciting ropes courses. So he got off the bus and onto this little hole in the wall trail where we were slipping down rocks and getting whacked in the face with thorny branches. 100 feet down the trail…it ended, forcing us to retrace our steps and get back on the bus. Apparently our guide (yes, we had a GUIDE) thought we could get to the magical Famine Road that way…but was wrong.

So we drove for another fifteen minutes, going down another very narrow and harrowing road in our giant tour bus of pollution. This time, however, we had a very steep drop off into Ireland’s only fjord—which for any of you who don’t know what a fjord is, it’s a really effing big body of water. So I’m still surprised I was the only one wearing my seatbelt. The bus pretty much dropped us off in front of someone’s house, so we were all wondering exactly where we were going, especially when we started wandering up some random trail past someone’s laundry.

For those of you envisioning Famine Road (built as a work relief project by those suffering from the famine) as being some thoroughly unexciting paved stretch of road that we would wander as our guide spouted some facts at us—you would be thinking the same thing I was. But as we were stumbling along rocky terrain and trying not to step in the gooey, muddy grass, assaulted from the wind and trying once again to not fall into the fjord…we realized we were on the famine road.

It’s not a road by our standards by any means. Barely walkable, the only distinguishing architecture is high stone walls prevent the land from eroding into the sea. The view was absolutely breathtaking, however. We stood on a green, rocky hill, the fjord was down below us, and on the other side was another mountain.

After making our way back, we got back on the bus and drove to some town whose name I unfortunately do not remember. We ate lunch there, though, a small group of us went to a local pub and had absolutely delicious soup. And then we looked at the sheep and wool museum. Yeah.

Then, even though everyone was pretty much exhausted and wanted to go home, we stopped at yet another random town, whose name I also do not remember, and were told we would walk around for a while. It was slightly cool, because there were ruins of an abbey that were really well-preserved that we walked around. And I also found Dr. Pepper at the local Spar for the first and only time since I’ve been here. That pretty much made my day.

Eventually, after a comparatively mild bus ride back to Galway, we all settled in for our second week of classes (and Abbie and I realized neither of us had read the play we were supposed to for the next day. Yay school!)

(Killarney Abbey, the Fjord and the Famine Road, little town we stopped for lunch)