Slán, Éire

I cant believe that the time for my to write this entry has come.  It feels like only yesterday that I just arrived at Dublin Airport waiting for Mary to pick me up.  This semester, and really, the past nine months have just flown by, but it has been a fantastic experience, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have lived and studied abroad here in Ireland, and for all of my family and friends who supported me throughout the year.

Some news (in case any of you do not yet know), I am attending Rutgers School of Law-Camden next year, and I am very excited for that.  It was a very difficult decision to make (going to law school and then choosing one), but I am confident that I made the right choice.  I actually start a summer class (Contracts) next Tuesday (!), but I am looking forward to it.  Additionally, a paper that wrote for a class here at TCD entitled  "The European Court of Justice and the Single European Market: Two Landmark Cases from the 1970's" was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Postgraduate Research, which is a peer-reviewed journal published by TCD.  There is a slim chance that I will be selected to present my paper (which means that I would get to come back to Ireland!) and even win 500 euros.

I am both happy and sad to go home.  Happy because I have had a great year, but I am also moving on to new things and places.  I also have not seen my family since January, and Danielle is getting married this weekend, and I am so happy that I can be home for that.  Sad because I have had a great year in Ireland, made some great friends, and just had an overall, great experience, but I know that I will be back here one day.

So, thanks to those of you who have read this blog over the past year, I had a fun time writing.  Talk to you or see you soon!

Red Bull gives you wings!!!!

Today in Dun Laoghaire harbor in South Dublin was the 2011 Red Bull Flugtag Competition, where teams put together crazy flying contraptions and get-ups and jump off of a platform to see who can "fly" the furthest.  We made it an all day affair.  Courtney and I grabbed a DART down the coast to see our friend Vikki, who lives near Dun Laoghaire, in the morning.  We drove around Dalkey and Sandycove areas (we saw the gate to Bono's house, you can't see the house from the road, and he bought the neighboring houses as well to prevent people from being able to see his property) and then we drove out to Bray, to walk along the cliff walk there.  Following tea and an Irish breakfast at Vikki's house, we went down to the harbor to watch some of the craziness.

There was a wide variety of flying machines.  One was themed like the movie Avatar, there was a team that did a spoof of the movie Up! and Cool Runnings, a flying cow superhero, a Frankenstein, and some more traditional planes.  What was also crazy was the weather, which changed every five minutes from nice and sunny to cloudy to lashing rain to sunny while raining.  Despite all of that, I managed to get sun burn, but o well.  They estimated that there were around 100,000 people at the event, and we all had a great time, though I was very disappointed by the lack of free Red Bull.  Despite the fact that I do not drink the stuff, I enjoy free giveaways, and alas, there were none.  The evening was capped off with a pint at a local bar and then I made my way back to Dublin city proper to start thinking about how much I have to do in the three days before I fly home.  Time to start packing...

Bray Head and Co. Wicklow

Me, Courtney, and Vikki

Bray Head Cliff Walk

Bray

Flugtag

Flugtag

Cork

This past Friday, Christina, Courtney, and I said goodbye to Amy as she headed back to France and then we caught an early morning train down to County Cork, which is where my Irish ancestors were from, the Flynn's and the McCarthy's.  We probably have third cousins in the area, but unfortunately, those two names are the number one and two most common names in the region.

Upon arriving in Cork, we sat out on a quay of the River Lee and got coffee while we waiting for the bus to take us to Blarney Castle.  As we sat there, we saw hundreds of garda and a navy patrol boat, preparing Cork for the arrival of the Queen, who followed us down the Irish countryside.  We didn't get to see her again, and by the time we arrived back in town from the castle, she ad already departed for London.

Blarney was really cool.  We saw the castle (which was originally built by Cormac MacCarthy, the leader of the McCarthy clan), and of course, kissed the Blarney Stone, toured the gardens and the Rock Close, and took a tour of the Blarney House, which is still the private residence of the Baron of Blarney.  We got lunch at a pub in Blarney town, and then headed back into the city, where we  walked around the city center, visited St. Finnbarr's Cathedral, walked around the campus of UCC, and went to the English Market in the heart of Cork city.  It was a really enjoyable day and I was really glad to finally make it down to Cork to see where my family had come from.

The Castle and the grounds

Blarney Castle

view from the top of the Castle

Kissing the Blarney Stone

Me, Christina, and Courtney

Blarney House

The Rock Close

St. Finnbarr's

Dublin City at night when we got back into town

Dublin City at night when we got back into town

Queen Elizabeth II

This week was an historic week in the Republic of Ireland.  On the invitation by President Mary McAleese, Her Majesty, The Queen, Elizabeth II, crossed the Irish Sea for the first state visit of a reigning British monarch in 100 years.  There were a lot of security concerns over the, and these were valid.  There were a few bomb scares, but nothing happened.  It was interesting to be here during the visit.  TCD was closed for several days, since the Queen was visiting the Book of Kells.  Roads were cordoned off, thousands of Garda were brought in to Dublin, and my trip to the Guinness Factory with Amy and Christina was cut short on Monday, since they were closing early to prepare for the Queen's private tour on Tuesday.  However, as luck would have it, I was able to see the Queen.  Amy, Christina, and I were going to meet my friend Eanna for coffee, but the road we needed to cross was blocked off, so we figured that we would wait for the motorcade, since there was a good sopt open to view the road.  A few minutes later, we saw the royal caravan, and saw the Queen and Prince Phillip drive by, as they waved to us.  While the road and building closures were a bit annoying, it was cool to see the Queen.

Now its been announced that President Obama is coming to visit, and like Bill Clinton, he will be addressing a crowd on College Green (his preferred location was vetoed by the Garda for its impracticability).  Roads and buildings will be closed again, but I doubt that there will be the same amount of electricity in the air for his visit.  He is flying in Monday morning, meeting with a select group of people from his ancestral home town, making a short speech, and then going to London.  I doubt that I will go see him.  I have seen him speak before (he is not as good as a public speaker as he is made out to be) and I don't really feel like waiting in line for 5-6 hours to listen to some empty, hollow rhetoric (especially since last time, he showed up two hours late).  Anyways, it is some pretty interesting times in Ireland.

Stockholm

When I first got to Ireland, I set up a bank account with the Bank of Ireland.  If I used my account ten times within a certain period of time, I became eligible for a free flight to a European city.  I met the requirements and picked my top three cities for travel (Rome, Milan, and Stockholm).  A few weeks later, I received a call with an offer for a flight to Stockholm and was able to work out dates that worked with my schedule.  I convinced a friend of mine from class, Rose, to come along with me, so last weekend, we traveled to Sweden.

Stockholm was a really cool city.  It is built on 14 different islands between te Baltic Sea and Lake Malaren, which are connected by over 50 bridges.  We spent most of our time in Gamla Stan, the "old town" part of Stockholm.  We got lucky with the weather (it only rained once, and when it did, we ducked into a pub for a bit).  A few things really stood out about Stockholm.  First, it is quite expensive (especially alcohol and there is a 21% VAT, a type of tax, on everything).  People in the US have mentioned implementing a VAT in the US, and I would recommend them spending time in Sweden as see how much stuff costs when there is sales tax and a consumption tax, no bueno.  Second, the city was extremely clean. Third, every Swedish person speaks English quite fluently, and apparently learned a lot of slang from watching Beverly HIlls 90210, according the the guy who sold me my pin at the Hard Rock.

We spent a lot of time walking around, we went to the Royal Palace (and the four museums in the palace), saw the changing of the guard, went to a viking museum that had a 17th century viking ship, and took a boat tour around the islands.  In addition, I tried moose (which my Norwegian friend thinks was really elk, and just poorly translated on the menu, either way, it was good).

Here is a video of the Royal Cavalry Band at the Changing of the Guard

Royal Guard

Me and Rose at the Royal Palace

Changing of the Guard

Royal Palace from the boat tour

Museum Island

Gamla Stan

I really enjoyed the trip and had a lot of fun.  You can view more pictures here (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.543847508742.2038494.67101704&l=8805e2532d) and here (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.543843736302.2038492.67101704&l=d631998e93).

I had my final class today and my friends Amy and Christina are in town visiting.  The Queen was in Dublin this week (I'll post pics later), and we are going to Cork tomorrow!

Hitting the Links

Today I ventured up to North County Dublin to meet up with my classmate Rob, to finally play a round of golf while I am here in Ireland.  I would have been really mad if I had not squeezed a round into my time here in the Emerald Island.  Neither of us had clubs, which posed a bit of a problem.  We first went to Rush Golf Club in Rob's hometown, a nine-hole links course, but they did not rent clubs, so we went on up the road to Skerries Golf Club.  Because of a slow foursome ahead of us, we paired up with two guys from Skerries and got in a late afternoon nine-hole round.  We would have played more, but we were quickly losing daylight, the rain was moving in, and I really need to prepare for my dissertation presentation on Thursday.  Despite it being my first round of golf in 9-months, playing with rented clubs on a course marked in meters, I managed a 50 (with one or two mulligans).  Not my best nine holes by a long shot, but not too bad either.

Third Hole, Skerries Golf Club

Skerries Golf Club, with the Irish Sea in the background

Cliffs of Moher and Western Ireland

This past weekend, a friend of mine from France, Anne-Sophie, came to visit Dublin.  While we were thinking of things to do while she was in Ireland, she mentioned finding a day tour to County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, to see the Cliffs of Moher.  So, this past Sunday, we got up early and met up with our tour bus at 6:45 am and set out for County Clare, which is about a three and a half hour trip by bus.

On the way, we drove through the city of Limerick, the third largest city in Ireland, and we stopped to see Bunratty Castle.

Limerick, with St. John's Castle in the bottom left

Bunratty Castle

The River Shannon, the longest river in Ireland

After those stops (and a few coffee/tea breaks), we finally made it to the cliffs, which were probably one of the nicest natural sites that I have ever visited.  Our bus driver joked that there are four seasons in Ireland, but on the cliffs, you can experience six seasons in one day.  He wasn't joking.  In the hour-plus that we spent on the cliffs, it was sunny, cloudy, raining, and there were wind gusts that literally swept people off of their feet.  The Cliffs themselves were magnificent, and the pictures do not do them justice. At their highest point, the stand over 800 feet tall, rising out of the rocky coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  There was a tower on the highest cliff, called O'Brien's tower, which gave a nice vantage point to look from.  In the distance, you could see the Aran Islands, a group of islands of the coast where Irish is still the language of everyday use, and where the famous Aran Sweaters originated.  I learned that each family in the Aran Islands would have a specific design for knitting sweaters, which made identification of lost love ones who died fishing at sea easier.  The cliffs might seem familiar, and you might recall a scene in the sixth Harry Potter film where Harry and Dumbledore search for a horcrux in a sea cave under a cliff.  That was filmed at this site.  Anyway, here are some pictures from the top of the cliffs:

On the way back, we drove through the Burren, a unique geological region filled with karst, a type of stone, and were a type of self-draining lake unique to Ireland is found.  There are literally miles of stone-covered fields and mountains.

It was a very long and tiring day, but it was a lot of fun.  If you ever find yourself in Ireland, definitely check out the cliffs.  Like I said, the pictures do not do them justice, and do not capture just how dramatic the drop off is.  Anne-Sophie flew home today, and instead of working on my dissertation presentation for this Thursday, I am writing this entry and thinking about my trip next weekend to Stockholm.  Hopefully, all will go well.