My first weekend in Ireland, me and several girls from UVA, Tori, Ariel, and Kelsey, decided to go to Galway and the Aran Islands for the weekend. Galway is another major city in Ireland that is literally straight across the country from Dublin, and the Aran Islands are off of Galway. We took a bus from Dublin to Galway that only took two and a half hours. It is crazy to me that you can travel across the entire country in two and a half hours!
Galway is a cute little seaside town that we enjoyed hanging out in, sitting by the sea, and eating really good food. You may here me rave about the Bailey's Irish cheesecake we had there when I get back home :)
On Saturday, we spent the night in the Aran Islands which is absolutely gorgeous!!! It has by far been my favorite part of Ireland so far. They are these small, untouched islands, completely secluded from the rest of the world. It is like Ireland's essence and nature has been preserved in the Aran Islands. It is not even that touristy, because at first I thought it would just be a tourist trap, but even though there are tourists (like us, duh), the island still has a way of maintaining it's authenticity.
I finally felt like I was in Ireland when I was in the Aran Islands - the pastures and little farms and sheep scream quintessential Ireland. (The security guard at Parliament laughed when I told him I was excited to finally see sheep in Ireland when I was chatting him up the next Monday back for work.)
We just had fun walking around, exploring the island. We kept saying, "ooo look a path!" because we kept finding little paths to explore and new sights to see. While walking around, we came across two horses, and you wouldn't believe it, but they walked right up to us and let us pet them! It was the most precious experience ever :)
I am either an unknown horse whisperer, or they just really liked my sweater, because they kept nuzzling their noses against me and coming up to me over the rest of the girls. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to go for the latter, because I had bought my sweater at the Aran Sweater Market, and let me tell you, I knew that I smelled like a farm animal. Ireland is known for making really good knitted sweaters, and mine was definitely authentic...like it had been ripped off of a sheep right then and there and thrown on my back. So the horses probably smelled a familiar smell from my sweater, hence their friendliness.
Aaaand for some reason, my sweater also functioned as some sort of aphrodisiac for those two, because right after they let us put them, they got a little frisky with each other! Let's just leave it at that and say we all immediately walked away, hoping that image wasn't seared into our brains. Eww.
We stayed at this lovely, homey little hostel run by some older women who were so friendly, calling us "love" and chatting us up at night as we all put a puzzle together and watched tv. They asked us if we had "good craic," craic meaning fun, a good time, while we were on the island and we said of course! One of my favorite things about Ireland so far is just how extremely friendly and warm the people are here.
The Aran Islands are also known for their cliffs, and we all enjoyed exploring them and enjoying the beautiful sights.
As I sat out on the cliffs, looking at the expanse of the nature before me that God had created, I thought, this is how we were intended to worship, this is how we were intended to experience God.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I
Took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference
Blog post title - The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
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