Tales of Angry (Ginger) Women

Hey Everyone!

First let me say that I have no weird beef with gingers, most of my mom's side of the family has red hair and they are all fantastic (hi Mom!) but the Irish love to talk about angry read-headed women, all of which I will get into later.  I'm not really going to talk too much about class in this post cause well, if I did you would be so bored that you would stop reading these posts.  What I am going to talk about are the two weekend bus trips Marie, Lauren, and I took this weekend.   It was a long weekend that I am only now recovering sleep-wise from but it was worth every motion-sick second.

Day One began at 9:30am when I begrudgingly got my sleepy (maybe slightly hurting from the night before) butt out of bed to throw on some new clothes and head to the bus station.  This seems like an easy task, the bus station was very close to our apartment, but we didn't know where the station was so we wondered a little before landing ourselves in the right place. We were on the bus and on our way by 10.  Between the wind causing the bus to have an unsafe sway to it (we were driving on a cliff next to the ocean for goodness sake!) and the curvy road (there are no thruways) motion-sickness like no other overwhelmed me throughout the journey but for short amounts of time I was distracted by our bus driver Dave.

Dave added all sorts of useless random tidbits to the reservoirs of my knowledge.  Most of these, as the title of this post would suggest, had to do with angry read-headed women.  I learned about one woman (ginger of course) who was so ruthless that she 1) would not allow her almost-dead husband into the house because he didn't win the battle he came home from - he later died in their stable or something that night 2) Used to kick her servants off the Cliffs of Moher if they really made her angry (you'll see a picture of those in a bit so you know just you crazy that is) and 3) The servants that made her angry, but not Cliff-kicking angry, she would hang by their hair from spires of the castle she lived in - yikes!!  We also heard about a ginger lady who killed off her husband whenever she found someone with more wealth that she wanted... enough said about that loony.  There were several stories about other ginger women but those two were the ones that stuck with me the most from Dave.  A conclusion that we drew from Dave's warning to all the men ("Stay away from Irish read-head women!") was that his wife, that we heard some complaints about, must be a ginger. 

Stop one, the Aillwee Cave, was definitely unique.  This Irish farmer due stumbled upon it in the 1940's after chasing his dog who was chasing a rabbit into it.  Thinking it was no big deal he didn't mention it to anyone until some cave-survey people from England showed up in a pub and he told them of his find - in 1975!  It has since been turned into a really cool tour of a really deep, really big cave.  One of the kick-butt discoveries made in the cave were 2,000 year old bones of and Irish Brown Bear (the likes of which haven't been seen in 1,000 years) and its little hibernation hole.  We went down some stairs, across several rickety bridges, and past a waterfall before pausing for a brief moment of 100% darkness.  I will say that in those 30 seconds in which our guide turned off all the lights and had everyone on the tour put away all phones and cameras many things ran through my mind.  It kinda went like this: Holy @*!# I can't see my hand and it's right in front of my face!! ... Okay, I think I can handle this... Oh my goodness what if the lights break and don't come back on - I'm too young to die!!!  And then the lights came back on and I was saved.  As crazy and scary as that was, I recommend everyone try it at least once - unless you're scared of the dark, then stay far far away.  I had a flashback to our campus tour when the tour guide at the cave announced that she would not be accompanying us back to the exit and gave us very vague “go left, then right, the straight” directions but eventually we found our  way out.

Lesson Learned: I'm too tall to be a cavewoman!!

After buying some souvenirs and taking pictures of the landscape we were back on the bus and on our way to Poulnabrone.  I’m still not sure what exactly Poulnabrone is, just that is was excavated and they found bones enough for hundreds of bodies there but they were all scattered so the theory is that people were buried somewhere else so they could decompose until they were moved to be by this rock thing.  It must be of some importance because it has its own security guard - I feel really bad for this guy cause he has to stand all day watching the rock thing rain or shine, hail or gale force winds he's there.  However random, Pulnabrone was in a really beautiful part of the Burren which is a large mountainous part of the Irish landscape which is covered entirely in limestone thanks to farmers hundreds of years ago who would over farmed the land and left.  I was taking some photos of the rocky landscape and the Irish blue skies turned dark grey and the heavens opened up and poured rain and a bit of hail down onto me.  I rushed back to the bus thankful that the wind was at my back and not at my face and got safely to dryness right as the rain stopped and the sun came out revealing a beautiful rainbow.

Me and Poulnabrone.. I like that boulder, that's a nice boulder 

Super windy Burren, right before the heavens opened up on me

After being told by our bus driver that the Cliffs of Moher staff closed up and left due to the 75 mph winds and that we might not be able to go I was mad and relieved at the same time.  Mad cause I spent 13 euro to see something that I wouldn't see and relieved cause it would mean less motion-sickness for me.  Dave's comment of "According to my boss, your safety is more important... Sorry." had me laughing and really wanting some lunch.  Awe hit me in the force as we pulled up the the pub we were supposed to be eating at and saw four other tour buses there.  Instead of going somewhere else Dave let us out and told us to be back in forty minutes. It took those entire forty minutes just to get my soup which was in a to go mug for coffee and I had to steal a spoon so I could eat the most amazing seafood chowder in the world on the swaying rickety bus.

We were driving to I couldn't even tell you where when Dave announced to us that he was going to take us to the Cliffs of Moher despite the extreme winds.  What happened to our safety being more important than the euro we spent Dave??  I have never been in winds that strong and hopefully I never will be again.  If there was no barrier wall I'm 100% positive that I would have fallen to my death, we were being blown forwards and backwards and side to side.  I am still mourning my scarf that was blown off and over the barrier, it will be missed until I replace it.  Not many of my pictures came out because the sun was in the wrong direction but those that I did get were amazing.  The only sad parts about that experience was that 1) We couldn't make it up to the castle and 2)We couldn't make it up over the tallest cliffs.  Conclusion: we have to go back when the wind isn't gusting faster than the speed limit on the I-90 in New York.

The Cliffs of Insanity... I mean of Moher
(bonus points if you get the reference)

The castle I'll have to go back to one day

Our next stop was at the Mini-Cliffs in Blackhead.  I'm not sure if they are actually called that or if that's just what Dave called them but they are half the size of the Cliffs of Moher and were very beautiful.  The wind was not as bad here so we could get very close to the edge and got beautiful shots of the sunset over the Atlantic ocean.

Our last stop was at  Dunguaire Castle which wasn't entierly impressive and all the pictures were too dark to really come out but it was a nice way to end the day.

Day Two the bus left at 11:30am which meant we got to sleep in for which we were all grateful.  We weren't quite sure what exactly we would be stopping at all we knew was that we were going to Connemara.  Although I would've been happy to never see that bus again after Day One I climbed back on it hoping that sickness would not overwhelm my day as it had previously.  Although the bus still swayed like grass in the wind the roads were fairly straight on our journey so the sickness was minimal and manageable. Looking out the window as we drove we saw vast rolling hills dotted with puffy white sheep (and even a couple black ones!).  The first several stops in Connemara were in the Twelve Bens Mountains which were quite amazing.  They jutted so high into the clouds that they were almost obscured by the clouds although I got a few pictures where the tops were visible although in a haze. 

The jewel of the day was going to Kylemore Abbey.  Rounding the corner and first laying eyes on the abbey and the chapel on it's grounds was quite literally breathtaking.  After stopping in the cafe to have the most amazing lunch on the planet we browsed the gift shop because it was too early for the next tour.  We ended up getting really sidetracked in there and missing the tour so we had to explore for ourselves, which ended up not being such a bad thing after all.  The inside was beyond beautiful and all I could think was "People actually lived here??"  The Abbey was first a private castle and was sold to Benedictine nuns in the 1900s who ran a boarding school from 1920-2010.

I totally want to live here!

After we explored inside the Abbey as much as we were allowed (several things were not open to the public) we went to the Gothic Church (no lie that's what it's called).  It was about a 10 minute walk from the main Abbey through the woods next to a gigantic lake.  We got the the church and were in awe of how beautiful it was.  Upon going inside I lit a candle and said a prayer before taking a lot of pictures highlighting its glory. 

However the real adventure happened on our walk back when after taking a couple photos by the lake the skies opened up again and hail began to pelt us.  Now as if that wasn't painful enough everything comes down sideways in Ireland so we were being pelted with hail that felt like rocks in the face. So with our scarves over our faces, barely being about to see, we made our way along the path praying to God that he would make the hail stop.  We tired bargaining everything from our grades to alcohol to our first born children.  The laugh was on us though because God ceased the hail and gave us rain instead.  Again with the sideways nature of precipitation, we got back to the bus soaked and laughing and a bit closer as a family.

Just a tad wet

I'm pretty sure I was asleep before the bus even left the grounds of the Abbey and I slept all the way to the wishing tree.  It is a tree in Connemara which you tie a piece of fabric to and make a wish before you leave.  Sadly I didn't have spare fabric to tie to the tree but I said a wish before getting back on the bus anyways - not that I could tell you all what is is or it won't come true!  Also, wherever this tree was located was absolutely beautiful (I don't know where it is cause I was asleep when we were told all about it).

When we got home I swiftly collapsed into bed and drifted off to a very deep restful and beautiful sleep.  I will leave you with that and a promise to have a much shorter posts in the future!

Until next time,
Sarah