Galway Girls

This past weekend our group did even more traveling outside of Cork. We woke up early Friday morning and boarded a three and a half hour bus to Galway. Once there, we met up with a young girl, Jennifer, studying through IFSA-Butler in Galway for the semester (far right in second picture). Jennifer gave us a lengthy tour around the city and showed us the school that she studies at, National University of Ireland, Galway. After our tour of Galway, we grabbed an early dinner of warm soup and rice at a local restaurant. After dinner we decided to explore the city some more and check out some pubs. The first pub we went to had a band of about five playing classical Irish music, which was really neat. The second pub had two guys playing more contemporary Irish music. In this pub, we requested that they play "Galway Girl", made famous by the movie "P.S. I Love You", starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. We were all thrilled when they obliged and played the song for us!

After a full day, we headed back to our hostel - The Kinlay House, which is supposedly one of the best hostels in all of Ireland. Five of us stayed in one room, with two other people. One girl was an Australian who was backpacking part of Ireland and the other girl we never met because she got in after we were asleep and was up and gone before we woke up. Overall, the hostel experience was much nicer than I had anticipated. It felt like freshman year again, except for more people to a room.

Picture 1 - all of the girls who went in front of one of Galway's rivers (from left: myself, Jenna Schwab, Lindsay Gunderson, Suzi Hamby, Sharlett Mena, & Sharlett's roommate from Germany, Raina)

Picture 2 - all of us plus our tour guide in front of a cool sculpture on the NUI Galway campus

Picture 3 - outside of our hostel, the Kinlay house

Picture 4 - our bedroom in the hostel - four bunk beds in all

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain