Yesterday we spent the evening in Cork and it was alright. The morning was spent going to Fota House, another Big House for my class. I’m not going to lie, all the houses are beginning to blur together in my mind into one confusing shape. Pretty soon I’ll need to rely on my blog posts to keep track of them all.

After that I spent the day walking around Cork with some kids from the class. A couple others went to Blarney Castle to kiss the stone, but I decided not to. Ok, truth is I was told not to. Jerry, our bus driver, heard I wanted to go and decided to have a word with me. The stone is at the top of a castle, so lots of stairs with no handrail. Added to that you need to be picked up and held up to the stone, which works for everyone else. Not so great with a knee injury. So I looked around Cork and had fun there instead.

It was a pretty city. The only downside was that it smelled like fish everywhere. Other than that it was great.

We woke up early today to head over to Galway. Our first stop was the Cliffs of Moher. I can’t actually describe how amazingly beautiful it was. The sight of the cliff face dropping into the sea under the bright blue sky was breathtaking.The walk was a little difficult for me because of the stairs, but I managed to get up there.

There was a hiking trail that we all followed. It led across the cliffs so we got some spectacular views and pictures. The one I’m on is a small outlook. It was down an incline, so I had to slide down slowly because walking seemed like a bad idea. Then I just stood up, took the picture (which looks amazing) and crawled back up. My teacher, Gill, was complaining that someone with a torn ACL shouldn’t be that close to the edge.

We spent a solid two hours hiking around near the cliffs. After that it was back in the bus and a great bus ride to Galway. We went along the coastal road and got to watch the ocean and see all the houses. There are remains of castles every where on the western coast of Ireland.

Even better was the fact that this section of coast in my last picture is unique only to this section of Ireland. According to Jerry, it was caused in the last Ice Age and years of isolation have kept it pristine. No other place in the world looks like this.

Following the bus ride we checked into our rooms at Galway. We’re in on campus apartments in the univeristy dorms (I think its Univeristy of Galway). Everyone else has a single room, but Luaren and I have to share. Poor Lauren.

I can’t complain about the rooms. They seem arlight, even if they are a bit dusty. My alergies will be kicking in tomorrow.

The only issue so far is that we’re outside of Galway. To get into the city, we take the school shuttle which stops running at 7;30 in the evening. Looks like we’ll have to keep our trips pretty short then. But the city looks nice. It’s less overwhelming than Dublin and not as sleepy as Waterford. So it should be a good place to end the trip.