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
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