Sunday, 19 July: Bus Tour of the Burren, Cliffs of Moher, and Doolin

We’ll have a somewhat early start this morning for a day long bus tour of the area around Galway.  In the morning, we’ll begin with a drive to the Burren National Park.  This is a unique natural area in Ireland, consisting of barren limestone plateaus.  We’ll have a couple of hours of free time at the Burren National Park trailhead, where you can go on one of several hikes.

From the Burren, we’ll head toward the coast, with a stop at lunchtime at the dramatic Cliffs of Moher.  We’ll then proceed to the small village of Doolin, where you’ll have a free afternoon and may be able to catch some traditional music in one of the pubs.

While on the bus, Professor Cope will do a short lecture on Ireland’s environmental history and contemporary issues of sustainability.  At our stops in the Burren and Doolin, Professor Doggett will lead seminar discussions of the works of J.M. Synge set in the area, including “Riders to the Sea” and excerpts from The Aran Islands.  We’ll also talk a little bit about the poetry of Lady Augusta Gregory.

The key places we’ll be visiting are labeled with red pins in the map below:

 

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10 Replies to “Sunday, 19 July: Bus Tour of the Burren, Cliffs of Moher, and Doolin”

  1. Ireland has been a whirlwind the past two days. The flight was bearable, especially since I was able to get some sleep and also rest on the bus. Galway is absolutely beautiful so far. I love that the campus is a relatively short walk from town, and also how friendly people in the area are. This morning we had a lecture on penal laws, and I found the connections brought up in discussion to be fascinating. For instance, seeing the way the British portrayed the Irish as “savage” is quite similar to other stereotypes today (i.e. clothing or hoodies in America, or the portrayal of an Arab globally along with the negative connotations that come with it). I found this to be quite interesting, especially with the abundance of Turkish shops I have seen around Galway. There’s Turkish kabobs, even Turkish barbers. I discussed this with Dr. Cope, as he mentioned that there was an influx of Turkish immigrants around the 1990s and how it has brought controversy due to the vast building of mosques around the dominantly Christian area. After a wonderful dinner, we enjoyed walking around the rest of Galway and then prepare for the next day at the Cliffs of Moher and some of Doolin, and I am interested to be able to see similarities and also differences with that and Galway.

  2. My first impressions of Ireland can be summed up as one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had. The group of students has been very comfortable with each other and the lessons from the professors have been appropriately taught. I would say the most profound difference between learning on site and learning in the classroom is that I am better able to visualize the way in which this world has developed this culture and these works which we read. I also really loved the idea the primitiveness is a product of mosernity; in other words we cannot understand something as primitive without the larger framework of global capitalism and imperialism. People are just people and things are just things. Being able to meet many strangers from all around the world who are so welcoming and so normal makes me realize that people will always function in their day to day lives while there are bigger things happening in the world. Almost everyone had their own interests first and then the interests of their country or even the planet. I found the landscapes to be especially important in considering all that I have learned about Ireland previous to coming here. It is so drastic and so scenic, yet so impractical here that it makes one wonder how people once related to it before modernity and tourism crept into it. How did the locals feel about the shore, the cliffs, the sea, or the weather before all these other people showed up and started to change things? I wonder how the issue of expansion was viewed by those most effected by it. I find great inspiration from the environment here and I have been keeping careful track of my activities, as well as writing poems. I hope to come back to Galway and the west again some day. I hope that there will be many chances for me to come and spend time getting to know the locals a bit more. Most of all, I am now excited to go to Dublin. Considering that I have spent a lot of time in New York City, I am very curious to the way in whichh Dublin will compare.

  3. My first impressions of Ireland can be summed up as one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had. The group of students has been very comfortable with each other and the lessons from the professors have been appropriately taught. I would say the most profound difference between learning on site and learning in the classroom is that I am better able to visualize the way in which this world has developed this culture and these works which we read. I also really loved the idea the primitiveness is a product of mosernity; in other words we cannot understand something as primitive without the larger framework of global capitalism and imperialism. People are just people and things are just things. Being able to meet many strangers from all around the world who are so welcoming and so normal makes me realize that people will always function in their day to day lives while there are bigger things happening in the world. Almost everyone had their own interests first and then the interests of their country or even the planet. I found the landscapes to be especially important in considering all that I have learned about Ireland previous to coming here. It is so drastic and so scenic, yet so impractical here that it makes one wonder how people once related to it before modernity and tourism crept into it. How did the locals feel about the shore, the cliffs, the sea, or the weather before all these other people showed up and started to change things? I wonder how the issue of expansion was viewed by those most effected by it. I find great inspiration from the environment here and I have been keeping careful track of my activities, as well as writing poems. I hope to come back to Galway and the west again some day. I hope that there will be many chances for me to come and spend time getting to know the locals a bit more. Most of all, I am now excited to go to Dublin. Considering that I have spent a lot of time in New York City, I am very curious to the way in which Dublin will compare.

  4. After two days in Ireland, I’ve already encountered some really fascinating social interactions that are indicative both of long-standing biases and contemporary political motivations. Last night, I watched a man, who was at a bar with a group of his male friends (which is very common), go up to the bar to order a drink for himself. The bartender looked down, and when he noticed that the man had black painted nails, his face hardened and he made a comment along the lines of “your kind aren’t welcome here.” The men ended up laughing about it and the conflict blew over, but I thought this was a really interesting interaction considering the historically-significant gay marriage legislation recently passed in this country. The political climate may have changed, but personal bias and cultural discrimination are, in some ways, much harder to overcome.

  5. I still cannot believe that we have only spent 3 days in Ireland so far. Surely it is not enough. It always feels this way when you visit a new place. It is only when you are about to leave that you start to develop your favorite places to eat, street performers to watch and things to do. I finally feel like I might be able to understand my way around Galway as we are about to leave. The people here are truly wonderful. As we struggled to find our way back to the dorms late on Saturday night, we met three incredible girls. They were college aged and were heading in a different direction. Some of them were from here but one of them studies at the University in Sligo during the school year. They completely volunteered to go out of their way to help us get back to where we knew we were and they gave us coherent directions to help us get back safe. On the walk they told us about themselves and asked about us. It was so nice to meet real people. Not tourists, not the people that are only selling to the tourists, but the people who live and exist there. They were so kind and I would never expect that behavior from local Americans in any relatively large city. I can’t wait to go visit more and I’m hoping that this encounter will encourage me to approach more locals and adventure past the tourist shops later in our trip.

  6. So overall, in regards to my first impression, I have to say that this has been one amazing experience. I wasn’t really sure how the cities would differ in comparison to New York City, but it’s become apparent that there are a number of differences. Two of the aesthetic things I noticed that are new to me are the old, intricate churches and the narrow winding roads. It just makes for a different kind of atmosphere, in that Ireland’s history goes bad way further than my own; these churches have survived for hundreds of years, and the roads were clearly not originally meant for cars. In regards to what we talked about today in Doolin, I’m also beginning to notice the extent to which the past is an inherent part of Irish culture. We see bits and pieces of that in New York, and in America for that matter, but it’s honestly really striking in Ireland. Ireland’s “Celtic essence” is referred to all over the place, and I can’t help but wonder what’s honestly authentic and what’s more of a tourist attraction. It’s true that there is no real “essence,” and that people are the same everywhere – but given Ireland’s history of oppression, it makes sense that they would want to latch onto this aspect of their culture, in that it gives them some sense of solidarity. I still think this place is beautiful, and I’m really interested in seeing other parts of the country and comparing what I see.

  7. I enjoyed our first days in Galway immensely. The things we saw were incredible, and the evenings were very fun. On the drive from Dublin to Galway, I noted that the scenery was very similar to that of Western New York at times (although I did sleep through the latter part of the trip, so maybe I missed some things). I was not entirely surprised by this, but I did think the landscape would be a little more unlike those I am used to. Once we got to Galway, and especially during our trip to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher, this opinion changed drastically. The Burren is absolutely unlike anything I have seen before, in person or otherwise, and the Cliffs of Moher were pretty staggering. I have also found the people I have met here to be very friendly; many of them seem to be in less of a hurry than Americans. I thought the concept that Doggett brought up about primitivism only being revealed as a product of modernity was very interesting. It was not something I had ever considered before. Despite the fair weather, seeing the rocky coast and the sea between Inishmaan and the mainland made it easy to imagine the forbidding and rough environment described in Riders to the Sea.

  8. The area around Galway has been an awesome introduction to the country of Ireland. There are tourist attractions everywhere you look of course, but there have also been spectacular views of farms and amazing landscapes all along the coast (The Burren, Doolin, and the Cliffs of Moher especially), that helped me to visualize what the country looked like before industrialization. I very much enjoyed the discussion by the water in Doolin, and I couldn’t have imagined a better place to have it. This was a perfect example of why this class wouldn’t have had quite the same spirit in a classroom in Geneseo; speaking of Synge’s trip to the Aran Islands while gazing across the gloomy water to Inisheer had a profound effect on me. I find myself retaining information much better in this environment, even during discussions on the bus with grazing sheep flying past the bus windows. I was also lucky to have the opportunity to hear lots of live music today at the Cliffs of Moher and in Galway given the beautiful weather! I’m still formulating the main ideas of my project but I was glad to finally hear a lot of traditional music, and some modern covers as well.

  9. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of a nation performing itself, both to itself and to its tourists (us). Don’t get me wrong, I love Ireland, and I’m having a wonderful time here. The landscape is amazing and multifarious, the people have all been kind and friendly, Galway is fun and alive, and it felt familiar by the second day.
    I was a bit more ambivalent to The Cliffs of Moher than I expected to be. They are beautiful, they’re famous, they’re huge and impressive, but turning around and looking at the tourist shops and huge parking lot full of coach busses, seeing the authentic castle that was built in the 1800s so they could charge 2 euro for the view at the top, I think it illustrated the unease I’d had on shop street in Galway where everything is selling authenticity to shoppers. The landscape felt co-opted in a way, even though the shops were set into the hillside so that they didn’t take over. I understand that it’s like that in a lot of places–ecotourism maintains the natural of the beauty of the landscape but also changes it to make it massively accessible and take a profit from it. It’s essentially the same at the Grand Canyon, or in Letchworth State Park, but I think with Ireland in particular, because it avoided industrialization, they sell their culture, so the authenticity presented is commodified and co-opted by capitalism, like we all talked about by the sea outside of Doolin. I think one of the best examples might be that the “authentic Aran Islands sweaters” that are made in a factory in county Tipperary, or made in a factory on the Aran Islands in order to supply the demand for authentic sweaters.
    I guess it all goes with the idea that there’s no “essence,” no real authenticity that can be bought or sold, but when you understand and discuss the history of the place, the ubiquitous nature of “authenticity” can be another interesting aspect of the place.

  10. Today is our third full day in Ireland and it feels like we’ve been here forever. Each day is such an event in itself, making it a veritable whirlwind. I was excited to see the Cliffs of Moher and The burden Sunday. Despite our discussion on the commercialized essence of “romantic Ireland”, to me those places were awakening. Not normally a nature person, I felt I finally could understand the allure of the wind on ones face and a long walk. I could simply not get enough of the Cliffs and outdoors. The discussion of the facade for tourists made me think though. While I agree with it, I would rather see the culture preserved and treasured in such a way, rather than completely abandoned. To me, the lone castle atop the cliff was beautiful and largely left the land alone. And while I of course find the views beautiful as we drive through, I have to recognize the fact that man has also tamed much of those lands as well. Everyone spoke about the manicured gardens and the fake quality, and while it is obviously not the natural growth, I believe we can’t let either side-human or natural- overtake the other. In our pursuit of intellectual growth and discovery, we choose to enhance what makes us human. While we as humans need to recognize the strength f nature and balance our relations, I see beauty in manicured gardens and in the order they bring to the chaos that is societal construction.

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