But Wait! There's More!

You can follow my new (but not improved) blog at www.johnabroadeurope.blogspot.com. Check it out!

Program over, family in tow, onward to Wales and beyond

My program has now been over since the morning of the 10^th and while I am sad to see my new friends leave me I am also very happy that my family is able to be with me for the next two weeks. Together we will be traveling by ferry (where I am writing this post from) to Hollyhead, Wales where we will rent a car, drive around the Welsh countryside for a few days and then drop the car off at Heathrow once we arrive in London. We spend a few days in London, hopefully seeing a West End show, and then we take the Eurostar to the City of Lights. The family leaves out of Paris and I then have two weeks in Brussels and Malta before I have to, unfortunately, go home.

Truth be told it was time to leave Ireland. While I am sure I will fiercely miss it once I am home I am afraid that it was beginning to become just another big city. I had been to the pubs, heard the music, eaten the food and learned more about the history and politics of the country than I ever thought humanly possible. Because of this exhaustion I was finding that more and more I found a bad taste in my mouth when I saw the awful tourist attractions and traps that riddle the landscape of Dublin city center.

Before anyone accuses me of being a tourist let me beat them to the punchline by stating that there is a massive and important difference between being a tourist and a traveler. A tourist, at least in the Irish context, is someone who thinks that the Blarney Stone is a national treasure of Ireland. Let me make it clear; it is just a rock that someone waxed a story about in order to lure unsuspecting tourists to a boulder that the locals piss on, so I've been told. A traveler, not to be confused with Travelers with a capital “T”, is someone who does not find it necessary to view every single historic site, museum or pub (can't forget that). Instead, a traveler is someone who has more than a cursory understanding of the country they are visiting. A traveler is not hooked by the tourist facade, does not turn into a Japanese person who takes 100M pictures and finds it necessary to buy the "Pog mo Thoin" bumper sticker for their friend back home.

I feel as though I arrived in Ireland a tourist and am leaving a traveler and even, I dare say, a more educated and worldly person. Wait, that sounds sickeningly cheesy, but there is a reason why it is the easy summation of my feelings: because it is true. So now I am about to disembark the ferry and set foot in Wales for the first time. What adventures will I find? What things will I see and what kinds of people will I meet? These things I do not know, but I am looking forward to finding out. Éire go Brách!

P.S.- If you enjoyed my blogging this semester and would like to continue following my exploits, wanderings and wonderings in Europe I will be starting a new blog which will chronicle my travels for the next month until I get back to the States. You can find the link here.

P.P.S.- I have now been in Wales for two days, yes I wrote this post two days ago and didn't get to publish it until today.