When I touched down in Shannon airport on Sunday (approx. 6:10 GMT, or 1:10EST) I met up with several girls from my program who were on my flight over from JFK. We went through customs together, which took almost two hours. I take it Shannon is not used to having large quantities of folks coming through at 6 in the morning, so customs was highly understaffed. They also apparently aren't quite in the 21st century so their computers are awfully slow. Customs officials don't have real regulations on what information they need from you before you enter, and my official seemed to want a lot of info. This man now knows way to much about my family. In the end he was very friendly, called me "beautiful" (he was like 60, dad and Pat) and said "welcome home" when he heard that I had ancestors from IE.
We took a bus down to Limerick which was a bit of an adventure. The bus driver was super quirky and did everything he could to fit approx. 30 students and all of their luggage onto the bus he was driving (Bus Éirann, for those who are familiar with the system). The ride was about 20 minutes to Limerick, give or take, and helped me to make some discoveries about the irish:
1. They LOVE traffic circles, even more than Massachusetts (google tells me they're called "Bay Staters")...I think it's because it keeps them from having to slow down EVER, which leads me to...
2. They will almost always drive inappropriately fast, even on extremely narrow, rural roads.
3. They don't really have traffic (although I cannot vouch for Dublin yet)
When we made it to Limerick we still had a walk to the hotel. Most people took a taxi cab, but myself and a few other girls were cheap and walked. Let me just say, I got my work out on Sunday. 75 pounds worth of luggage pulled about 3/4 of a mile was sufficient to last me a few weeks. The hotel we stayed in in Limerick was called Jury's Inn, a chain over here. It was right on the river Shannon and pretty much in the heart of Limerick. I met my roommate Sam, who is also my roommate in my permanent accommodation in Galway.
We got to explore Limerick over the next couple of days. It was exhausting because we were all adjusting to the time change but they had us up around 8 every morning. I later found out that Limerick has historically been referred to as a "stab city", generally not the nicest area. Now a days its reputation is changing and it's definitely safe to walk around at night, but Galway is definitely a step up from Limerick. Limerick has been in the news lately because it is the home of the Dell factory. I believe they just announced that they are laying off 1900 people due to the recession (as one local told me "in a country of only 4 million, 1900 people is huge").
During our time in Limerick our Program took us up to the Cliffs of Moher (this is geographically counterintuitive because the Cliffs are much closer to Galway than Limerick). The cliffs were absolutely beautiful, and it was great to see them on a really clear day. Unfortunately some of the pictures are a little dark because we got there in the late afternoon and the sun was pretty low in the sky. I'll try to spare you of those.
Our first night in Limerick we went out to a pub named Dolan's. Our program had recommended it so unfortunately there was a group of about 25 American students sitting in a very locals-oriented bar. One of the guys even had them turn on the Eagles game (yes, Hayley and Pat, I watched a game from Ireland). It was a little embarrassing to seem so American but they had great live traditional music so it was a good time.
I'll stop there for now and make my next post about Galway.
No comments:
Post a Comment