If I Were a Terrorist I'd Make Galway Airport my Home Base

So to make a long story short, I wandered around on the bike for a really long time and saw some amazing views. I went along a lot of paths that were really random and ended up going up a lot of humongous hills. Finally I decided I should probably ride back as it was getting pretty dark and did so. Ireland is gorgeous. The next morning, we wanted to try to bike ALL the way to Dun Aengus before catching the 12 ferry. Well, we wouldv'e just left super early in the morning, but the B&B didn't start serving breakfast til 8 and that was too hard to pass up. So we got going as quickly as we could but with eating breakfast, getting to town, leaving our luggage at the travel office and getting Marina a bike, it was around 10 before we actually got going. Well, Marina wasn't feeling well and just was really struggling, so we decided to separate and she was going to go find this closer fort while I biked like mad and tried to get to Dun Aengus AND get back for the ferry at like 12. Well, by this time it was like 10:30 and Dun Aengus was like 4 miles away by bike, then another mile by foot or sooomething like that, with lots of hills on the way. Oh, my goodness. I don't think I've ever bikes so fast or gotten so exhausted in my life. If it weren't for the fact that I can be incredibly stubborn when I want to be, I don't think it wouldn't be actually physically possible for me to get there. I mean, my body was about to just break out of its skin or something my muscles were stretching so much. I'd be sooo tired but every time I saw a hill I just thought about how if I wanted to see anything on this island, Dun Aengus was that thing and I'd just push myself up the hill as fast as I could. Well, I finally got to the base of the hill that the fort is on. I locked my bike up and just started running. I ran through the office that you pay in and basically threw my money at them and then ran all the way up the rocky hill path. When I got to the top, the fort was amazing. It's huge, with several walls. Like, there's an inner wall, then 20 feet later or so there's another wall and then another and another or however many walls. Also, the walls form a half circle where the edges of the half circles end in a cliff that drops down a couple hundred feet to the ocean. Hard to explain, but it's basically as if it was originally several circle walls but half the walls fell into the ocean. That's actually one theory. They don't know much about the fort since it's like 2000 years old or something. Well, anyway, when I got to the top of the fort there was a tourist group there and they must've thought I was crazy because I ran up to the fort panting and just ran frantically from place to place inside the fort trying to see everything as quick as I could because I was in some serious danger of missing the ferry and if we missed the ferry we'd also miss the flight to Edinburgh and be stuck in Ireland. Well, after I'd had a good enough look around I just had to leave and bolted back out of the fort and down the hill again. On my way down I ran past two little boys who were putting on a show for the tourists. One was player the recorder and the other was dancing some irish dance next to him. As I ran toward them I just remember thinking "wow, I'm running down a green irish hillside away from a beautiful high jagged cliff with irish music all around me - this is so cool!" I definitely threw them a coin. Well, by the time I got back to my bike it was probably 11:15 or so and I had to get all the way back in significantly less time than it had taken for me to get there and I hadn't even had a rest this whole time. Seriously the most difficult exercise I've ever had, but I made it. As I sped into the village it was literally 11:59 and I still hadn't turned in my bike or gotten my luggage and I had no idea where Marina was because i hadn't seen her as I whizzed by the fort she'd gone to. I quickly decided to bike first to the boat to see if I could talk to them and buy myself sometime. Well, luckily as I turned the corner and came around the boat I saw Marina at the end of the dock with all our luggage. They'd been about to leave already and she'd been begging with them to stay and promising that I'd be there in two seconds (and praying her heart out that I would be). I didn't even have a chance to turn in the bike, I just trusted them to turn it in for me and they gave me the deposit for it out of their own pockets. Yay for nice boat crewman! Yeah, so that was basically insane. Well, the ferry dropped us off at Rossaveal where we took a bus to Galway. At Galway we checked our luggage (that sounds like an easy thing, but it actually involves tugging a large peice of luggage through crowded city streets and up hills for quite some time while your hands develop blisters before finally finding the luggage place - every single time) and then stopped by subway and grabbed a sandwich to eat at the park. By the way, all food places, including American ones are much different in Europe. Most depressingly you only get like one cookie for a euro instead of three for a dollar at Subway in Ireland. AND there's no such thing as a cold cut trio!!! Anyway, we ate our food in the pretty little park and then just wandered around wherever we wanted to. I actually really liked Galway, it was gorgeous. We found a cute little shopping district with all kinds of colorful shops and cobblestone streets. Then we stumbled upon a little church (you are constantly just stumbling upon churches that in europe are seen as totally insignificant but that would be amazing architectural masterpieces in any city in the US). After seeing the church we wandered a little further to the banks of a pretty little river in the middle of the city with lots of ducks and geese in it. Well, we had some bread with us, so we threw the ducks so bread and were joined by a cute little girl who we also gave bread to. I don't think I've ever seen a little girl so happy to get a piece of bread. She pretty much had the time of her life throwing bread to those birds. After we grew tired of feeding the birds we continued on and finally find this Cathedral that we'd seen on the bus ride in and that we'd actually half heartedly been trying to find this whole time. Well, we went in and it was pretty sure enough, but hosestly I wasn't too impressed. We just spent a little bit of time there and then headed back and got our luggage, grabbed a taxi and headed out to the Galway airport. We got there way early because we were worried about luggage allowances and wanted enough time to work with the luggage situation if it turned out to be difficult. And it's a good thing we did. Turned out we were only allowed a ridiculous 20 Kg (44 pounds) for our carry on and 7kg (about 15 pounds) for our carry on and were going to have to pay 5 euros for every pound that we were over. Well, as it were it'd have had to pay 40 Euros and Marina would have had to pay 115 Euros and we weren't about to let that happen. So what did we do? We just wore the extra weight on our person! I kid you not, after throwing away all we could stand to part with, we seriously carted our bags over to the bathroom and just threw on article of clothing after article of clothing. I was wearing a lot of clothes, but I didn't end up nearly as bad as Marina. By her final wardrobe change she was wearing every pair of underwear she owns, about 4 bras, 2 swimsuits, probably 10 shirts, a few sweaters and a jacket, a couple pairs of jeans, some gouchos, so sweats, so basketball shorts and a pair of scrubs, mittens, a scarf, boots with a lot of socks and a TON of jewelry. Add to this the fact that we both had cameras and such attached to our belts and basically anything else we could think of that would be even remotely ok being just on our person. Oh and this was not a big airport. For all you Californians, it was about like John Wayne except maybe smaller. Like, there was only one departure gate room and it was pretty small. So you'd think with how tiny the airport was, we'd have drawn a lot of attention, right? Well to our suprise, we got almost no weird looks whatsoever! In fact, they didn't even choose to pat me down! They patted Marina down, but then again, they ALWAYS pat Marina down. So that's how we left Ireland. The flight wasn't too terribly interesting and in a few hours we were in Scotland! Alright, farewell for now. Go on yahoo and look for pictures to go with the blog!