Ireland – Castles, Cliffs and Hobbit doors

            WHEW! What a flurry of activity the past couple of days have been.  By flurry,  I literally mean the precipitation- Monday we faced the white stuff on and off all day (which apparently was a blizzard by Irish standards).  That morning we had a pretty early departure time… around 8:30.  I should note that Monday morning was our first BLUE SKY AND SUNSHINE on the Emerald Isle as well. That is a big deal here, as it rains about 360 days a year. Anyway, the Rose Lodge in Cork was a beautiful place to stay and the owners were beyond incredible as well! The first thing on the agenda was a visit to Biotector, an activity that Jeff Hester, the Board of Trustee member on our trip set up.  Biotector is a family business that developed technology that analyzes several top pollutants in the wastewater created by factories.  They are doing quite well and are the top company in their field.  By analyzing these pollutants, Biotector actually helps these companies, such as dairies and even petroleum facilities in Texas, fix problems in their systems, which helps lead to increased efficiency and less waste (a.k.a more money in the bank!!)

            We had to swing back to the Lodge and pick up a group member of ours who was under the weather (but is thankfully doing wonderfully now) and our other faculty leader, the consummate gentleman and Irishman John O’Conor.  A lot of Monday was spent on our coach traveling.  In fact most of our time has been spent on our coach, more time than any one hotel we’ve stayed in. The point of Monday was to see the mountains.  And what mountains they are.  They were snow-capped, majestic, and just simply sublime.  The area we were in was Killarney/Ring of Kerry.  It was incredible just to see the barely untouched countryside.  Yes, it was cold and snowy, but it was so worth the slightly runny nose.

            After the conclusion of hour countryside trek, we arrived in Limerick and checked in to the Jury’s Inn and had about 45 minutes of downtime before we met with SU Alum Michael Jenkins (’12 Music Composition) at the Locke Bar for our pub-crawl.  I knew Michael during his senior year at SU and he’s currently in the first year of his post-grad in Music Therapy at the University of Limerick.  He was a gracious host and the dinner at the Locke was perfect.  So was the dessert.  And the drinks.  I could definitely get used to nightly 3 course dinners…. Needless to say the pub-crawl was fun and a good way to experience local Irish culture.  I was sad to say good night to Michael but he is going to meet us in Dublin later in the week.

            Tuesday, we got to experience 3 things that I think sum up Ireland for us so far.  The first was Bunratty Castle, ca. 1250s.  It was pretty standard as far as castles go: long winding stairs, 500-year-old hand-carved wooden wardrobes given as wedding dowries, thrones, cannons, murder holes (Google it, I’m obsessed with them), stained glass and even several pairs of 15,000 year old elk antlers.  Next on the agenda was the Cliffs of Moher.  What else can I say but breathtaking?  Perhaps humbling.  Here was Ireland’s natural beauty at its best.  I won’t expound much further, but I’ll let some of the pictures below do the talking.  Lastly was the city of Galway.  After nearly two days of traveling rural areas and villages it was nice to see an urban, modern city and to get thrown into the bustle.  After lunch we had about an hour and a half for shopping.  Some of us split up and explored the city, and some of us put our Euros to good work at the mall and other shops.  One thing that I love about this country is its size and great diversity of things to do.  Castles in the morning, jaw dropping nature in the afternoon and a little light shopping later.

            As a side note, Peter Jackson got it wrong when scouting countries for the Lord of the Rings films.  Clearly Hobbits lived in Ireland, as evidenced by me barely fitting into the doorways at various castles/old fashioned homes.  Enjoy the pictures!

-Michael Divino