Leprechaun Hunting

(Not really, but I wanted a catchy headline..)

We arrived in Galway, Ireland yesterday and this city is everything you imagine Ireland to be with its tall cliffs, its green moors surrounded by short piles of stones that function as walls. These walls were actually built by starving Irishmen during the time of the Great Famine of the 19th Century, in return for bags of food. The Potato Famine has always been so interesting for me -it was a time when most of the population could only afford to eat potato, and when Blight hit, the crop failed and millions of people starved to death over the years. In some places, the statistic was up to 90%, and the Irish people have actually never recovered their population since. It was interesting to note that it should not really have been a famine at all, since it was only the potato that failed. Some go so far as to call it an attempted genocide, because of England's failure to assist the Irish people, seeing them as a second-class people that should have been wiped out. Today, Ireland is actually the greatest donator of famine relief in the world.

I never expected Ireland to be so amazing, nor expected it to be the place where I'd be sunburnt. Absolutely phenomenal weather. We've seen rope bridges. We've seen the Giant's Causeway, one of the natural wonders of the world. It's a series of tens of thousands of basalt columns, resulting from an ancient volcanic eruption. We've been up to the Cliffs of Moher, and The Burren, the former of which was featured in both Princess Bride and Harry Potter 6. There was also a ruined castle nearby, featured in Game of Thrones (which I don't watch, but apparently it's unrecognizable without all the CGI effects).

Today we took a ferry ride up to the Aran Islands. There is also Dun Aengus Fort there, which looked beautiful from the postcard, but I was pretty bummed because we didn't get around to seeing it. We also had a picnic at the seal colony, but we didn't see any seal unfortunately. We went bike riding all around the island, on a 6km route, and I can't describe the sheer beauty of the fields and the animals, and the photos will never capture the atmosphere. What I can just say is that it was one of those unbelievable, pinch-yourself moments that everyone needs in life.