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.