IRELAND

WE ARE FINALLY ON LAND!!!!!!!  This morning at around 0600 we anchored in the Galway Harbor--yay!  We woke up at about 0500 to get our first glimpse of land we were SO excited.  Then we had to wait for awhile before heading to breakfast and getting our maps from the pursers desk.  We went to the Union to wait for our passports to be ready (an immigration official came on board to check all of our passports before they gave them back to us) and we had to wait around for awhile......we were quite impatient.  To put it in perspective we have been on the ship for just over seven days and we had one of the rockiest voyages any of the alumni could remember :(  So we were a little tired of being on the ship, and of being slightly sea-sick.  Needless to say we were very excited that we could see land and cheered when our passports were ready.  We got on the second tender (aka we got shuttled to land by one of the life boats) and after four crew members hoisted in one of the students who uses a wheelchair we were off!
We stepped out onto Irish soil at approximately 0900 and wandered a bit until we found our hostel where we checked in and ditched our backpacks in the locker.  Then we wandered around the city for awhile and ate at a pub that Meg's friend had suggested--the King's Head.  At 1300 we got on a bus to the Cliffs of Moher and took lots of pictures of the Irish country side on the way and stopped at a burial ground stone (maybe?).  The cliffs were breathtaking and had a cave in the middle that reminded us of Pirates of the Caribbean (see picture).  After that we headed back to the hostel and went to get dinner.  Now Danielle and I are chillin' in the hostel because we weren't too big on the pub crawl--maybe we will visit a pub tomorrow. Anyway I miss you all and am very glad to be on land for awhile :)  Send me e-mails or post on the blog if you have questions or want to hear more!

   My roommates and I on the MV Explorer

   Meg, Sarah, Me, and Danielle in Ireland

    Cliffs of Moher   (note Pirates-type cave)

Tower on the Cliffs of Moher

Hope you enjoy the pics!

~Colleen

P.S.  I just looked at the blog for the first time and I apologize for the weird formatting on some of the posts--I do not know how to fix it but I will try