Friday five of us went to the Guinness Factory for a tour, Chris, Laura, Kyle, Jon, and I. It was quite interesting; I rather enjoyed looking at the authentic 9,000 year lease that Arthur Guinness signed 250 years ago. September 24th, 2009 is officially Arthur Guinness day this year for those of you who didn’t know, I certainly didn’t know until I got here. The ads are of different people around the world raising their glasses to Arthur, I find it highly amusing. I’ll be in Galway that day, the school is taking us on a trip, I’ll report if anything interesting happens. After the tour we were all hungry but didn’t want to eat in the factory as it was expensive and crowded. We ended up at the Brazen head Pub, which is the oldest pub in Ireland, established 1198, it’s older than the founded United States of America. Our Irish Culture & Society professor was actually there having a drink and we sat and talked to him about places to visit among other things like majors and where we’re from.
Saturday a group of us jumped on the DART to Howth, a nice little town on the Irish Sea. We wandered around the town for a bit before deciding on a restaurant where most of us enjoyed having fish and chips for the first time since getting here. After that venture we proceeded to find a hiking trail and on the way came across stairs that led down to the water. The group of us pondered the “Enter at your own risk” sign before proceeding down to the beach. At that point a local dog was following us around and a couple of the guys attempted to play fetch with him by throwing seaweed and rocks, but he wasn’t having any of it. Once we left that little venture we found the starting point for the trails that were laid out, there were four of them and we had intending on taking the longest and hardest one called the Bog of the Frogs. It was an extremely breathtaking hike with an incredible view of the sea, cliffs, and the surrounding mountains. The whole of it felt so surreal to me and we all agreed we felt like we were in a movie. When we came to where the paths split we ended up taking the third hardest trail as it was about an hour shorter and we were concerned about the rain that seemed to be surrounding us and night falling too soon. The boys were satisfied because the trail went right past the Bog of the Frogs. The only problem is we must have taken a wrong turn at some point or the bog just wasn’t that impressive because we didn’t come upon it, although we did find an ice cream shop. The trail we took was a trail for a while and then it would turn into paved roads, we weren’t overly impressed. It was kind of funny that the ice cream shop happened on an easy hike and it wasn’t just a mirage on a harder one, we definitely could have used some ice cream when we climbed up Bray Head Mountain. When we made it back into town it was agreed upon that we would go see Howth Castle before leaving for the day. Most of the castle is just as it had been left but the back part of it is still private residences which I found to be interesting and I was also wondering how much the property must be worth.
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