<\/p>\n
Thursday 14th, Dublin<\/h2>\n
On the way to the city center from the airport I see\u00a0it: the Irish green<\/strong>.\u00a0That intense, vivid green\u00a0coming from a grass field hit by some rays of sun.\u00a0From the bus window I can\u00a0feel that the temperature is\u00a0low, the sky is terse and of a\u00a0lighter blue.<\/p>\n Now I feel human again and ready to get lost in the city.\u00a0I notice that all the restaurants and bars have conveniently on display their menu with price list.<\/p>\n I reach a place recommended by Lonely Planet just to find out that is a overpriced sandwich cafe. I’m in lower Camdem Street<\/strong>, an area full of local businesses promoting the local economy and a vibrant community feeling.<\/p>\n I enter\u00a0a pub full of old folks\u00a0drinking beers and watching horse races on TV: the perfect spot for my first Guinness!<\/strong><\/p>\n In the evening I’ve to invent something to kick-off my social life in Dublin, so I join a Meetup called\u00a0Have a beer, meet other Hackers and Founders!<\/a>\u00a0Funny enough, there’s the same meetup in Amsterdam<\/a>\u00a0but without the ‘Have a beer’<\/em> part in the title: this is how they roll in Ireland.\u00a0It’s a pleasant evening with a bunch of geeks coming from all over Europe… I get a glimpse of life as an expat in Dublin.<\/p>\n On the way back to the hostel I stop to\u00a0River Bar<\/strong> where there’s a Salsa party going on, but the level is pretty bad and I don’t stay long.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hard work in\u00a0the morning and then\u00a0I’m off for the\u00a0SANDEMANs free walking tour<\/a><\/strong>. The free walking tour are the best way to quickly get to know and understand a place. Period.<\/p>\n The company is good and after the tour we end up in the recently opened\u00a0Whiskey Museum<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m informed that the word whiskey\u00a0<\/em>started being used to indicate an high quality product compared to\u00a0whisky <\/em>and ended up differentiating the country where the liquor is made:<\/p>\n Countries that have E\u2019s in their names (UnitEd StatEs and IrEland) tend to spell it whiskEy (plural whiskeys) (source The Kitchn<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Personally I don’t like any of the Irish whiskeys <\/em>at their tasting. Long life to Scottish and Japanese whiskies, with their smoky-oaky-doky superb taste!<\/p>\n I dance the evening away at the\u00a0River Bar<\/strong> club, where there’s absolutely no Irish person<\/strong> around: Latin Americans, Spanish, Italians, Brazilians, Moldavians and Scandinavians are enjoying the party.<\/p>\n I’m informed that Ireland is the only country of Europe where Brazilian citizen can get a student visa that allows them to work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s weekend woo-hoo!\u00a0I head off to\u00a0Kilmainham Gaol <\/strong>for the prison tour. There’s a 2 hours waiting, perfect time to meet a\u00a0fellow web entrepreneur and DCer Adrijus. He looks typical Irish but he’s actually Lithuanian, and runs\u00a0a business specialized in designing ebook covers<\/strong>. Cool dude!<\/p>\n The prison tour is excellent and helps to understand the recent Irish history. Maybe it comes with age, but I’m getting more impressed by\u00a0places where people were executed.<\/p>\n To shake off the feeling I walk to the Guinness Storehouse<\/strong>\u00a0(pro tip: get the ticket online<\/a> and save a couple of \u20ac) and I visit the old Guinness factory. It’s a huge marketing operation, reaffirming over and over the Guinness brand. Very similar to the Heineken Experience<\/strong>\u00a0in Amsterdam, I think the Dutchies made a better job presenting and entertaining the visitors.<\/p>\n Anyway, this is a place not to visit alone, I felt a bit bored.<\/p>\n It’s Saturday night and I taste\u00a0an excellent stew with Guinness<\/strong>\u00a0at The Celt<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0pub, recommended by someone working\u00a0at the hostel. The girl at the entrance is Italian, and I hear Spanish all over me. I have an interesting interaction with one of the few Irish man around, that tells me about God and Devils, that he experienced that and all the rest is bullshit.\u00a0He goes on and on and I feel trapped. With a smile I slink off and jump in the street.<\/p>\n I go to the Salsa place but there’s disco tonight. Bummer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fantastic morning run. The city still drunk when I cross\u00a0the Liffey river and run on\u00a0the desert\u00a0river path pointing west.<\/p>\n I reach the huge Phoenix Park<\/strong> and I can feel that I’m running\u00a0uphill – or at\u00a0least\u00a0my legs can feel that! I see\u00a0a wild deer crossing the road and a squirrel. I find myself running in the wet grass, tripping on nothing and falling in the mud.<\/p>\n I never fell while running before. I stand\u00a0up and laugh hard. I look\u00a0around to see if someone is\u00a0laughing with\/at me, but the few people and too far to care… I hope someone saw me, at least I didn’t fall for nothing!<\/p>\n By the end of the morning I’m on a CityLink<\/strong> bus to Galway<\/strong> (pro tip: book the ticket online<\/a> to save a couple of \u20ac), on the other side of the island,\u00a0hoping to see the\u00a0Irish green<\/strong>. That green I saw on the first day, on the way to the city from the airport. But there’s no Irish green today.<\/p>\n The day is\u00a0gray and rainy, so I don’t feel too bad about sleeping on the bus instead of looking outside the window.<\/p>\n “Are you visiting or you moved here?”<\/em> – seems a common question in Galway. I left Dublin to see a more genuine side of Ireland, but the story is the same: the Irish youth is moving out, and Spanish, Italians, Brazilians are moving in, playing the eternal game of the immigrant looking for a place to stay, looking for a job, looking for friends, looking for a better life.<\/p>\n I’m at the Kinlay Hostel<\/a>, a modern and huge structure in the center of Galway.<\/p>\n It’s 3pm when I have my first\u00a0Irish breakfast<\/strong>\u00a0in a real Irish pub: from the outside looks small, but inside is a dungeon of rooms and areas full of noisy people watching the soccer match. I’m a spectator of the spectators<\/strong>,\u00a0I study them and I don’t care what’s on the big screen.<\/p>\n The rest of the rainy day goes lazily behind my notebook, doing some work I won’t be able to do tomorrow as I plan to visit the\u00a0cliffs of Moher<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I leave after 9pm searching for food, just to discover that here, even if full of Spanish people and tapas restaurant, people\u00a0eat\u00a0very\u00a0<\/strong>early and most of the kitchens are closed down already.<\/p>\n My dinner is a 4-cheese pizza, but at least accompanied by a bottle of local\u00a0Galway Hooker<\/strong> beer (name after a traditional boat from this area, funny I know) and finished with an\u00a0Irish Coffee<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I feel lonely today. Surely I am.<\/p>\n I’m asked again\u00a0“Are you visiting or you moved here?”<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I woke up my only comrade in the 5-beds dorm is long gone. I look outside the window. It’s not raining, and this is enough to make me jump out of bed:\u00a0cliffs of Moher<\/strong> here I come!<\/p>\n I usually avoid guided tours in favor of more adventurous and genuine indi<\/em> experiences. But in Ireland, first time I see that, the public transport is more expensive than tours!<\/p>\n By 9am I’m in the New Coach Station embarking a Galway Tour Company<\/strong>\u00a0bus. The \u20ac20 day tour proved to be a very enjoyable experience, mainly thanks to the driver & cicerone that filled the journey with down to heart stories and anecdotes.<\/p>\n We stopped in few places in the\u00a0Burren\u00a0<\/strong>area along the way. The area itself is surreal, with limestone formations surfacing all around, the soil long washed away by the rain and blown away by the winds – two natural elements surely not missed here.<\/p>\n In fact, without this tour I would have never known that the Poulnabrone dolmen<\/strong> tomb was built, God knows how, by our Neolithic ancestors approximately 5,800 years ago<\/strong>. They had nothing back then, but the natural respect towards death.<\/p>\n That makes it simply\u00a0the oldest human construction\u00a0I ever saw<\/strong>.<\/p>\n There are a Chilean (very friendly) and a\u00a0Porte\u00f1o<\/em> (very unfriendly) in the group.<\/p>\n After lunch we reach the highlight of the day (even if my mind is still stuck at the 6,000 years old tomb), the famous cliffs.<\/p>\n There’s a visitor center hidden inside the hill, a bit bizarre but not as bad as anticipated by Lonely Planet and by the bus driver.<\/p>\n We climb up to the view point, the day is gray but we’re lucky with the visibility: the scenery is breathtaking.<\/p>\n We’re standing over 200m above the sea, the cliffs are a giant natural wall hit\u00a0by giant waves. I’m looking one of the marvels of nature, yet there’s Wi-Fi to let the over 1 million\/year tourists send pictures home in real time.<\/p>\n And on the way back to the visitor center I’m contemplating\u00a0that everything I saw today is changing: the limestone is eroded by the wind, the cliffs are eroded by the sea. And what Emilio told me\u00a0yesterday\u00a0about impermanence<\/em>\u00a0seems prophetic.<\/p>\n But I’m especially thinking that I should come back in summertime!<\/p>\n I’m back to the hostel doing some work, and then off to\u00a0Busker Brownes<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0for an excellent seafood chowder<\/a>. I took 4 days to find my fav Irish food, but there it is!<\/p>\n What’s this noise? A bunch\u00a0of kids are screaming and having\u00a0craic\u00a0<\/em>here\u00a0in the hostel. To\u00a0hell with them. I better go sleep.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This morning my comrade was still in the room. I’ve a Skype call at 9am. A light breakfast, some Internet and I run off for the Galway free walking tour<\/strong>, the last thing I want to do here. She leaves me close to the unimpressive Spanish arch, that I fantasized about for the last few days causing my own disappointment.<\/p>\n It has nothing to do with Spain and all to do with traders coming from there.<\/p>\n Next to the arch there’s the Galway Museum<\/strong>, that I visit because it’s free entrance, like most of the museum in Ireland (and, by pure coincidence, in UK). It’s interesting and things are well-presented, but since I didn’t pay a penny it automatically has no value for me (entrepreneurial tip:\u00a0<\/strong>keep it in mind if you’ll have to price a product). Looking around to Irish (and Brits) I find the confirmation that free museums have no direct effect on people culture.<\/p>\n For my simple mind, the best thing of the museum is the cafe where I get a\u00a0matcha latte vanilla\u00a0<\/em>for almost \u20ac3, and then one wonders why Japanese developed the\u00a0kamikaze<\/em>. I spend some time reading a Terzani<\/a>, Yes, still that one.<\/p>\n Walking back I finally see the real Galway: a lively city with\u00a0street music also in winter.<\/p>\n Back to the hostel for some high-quality high-intensity Internet work, and then off to catch a bus back to Dublin.<\/p>\n This time I’m not sleepy, but the sun is long gone so I can only imagine some Irish green<\/strong>. I read, listen podcast, abuse the Wi-Fi on the bus and by the time I reach the capital I’m dizzy.<\/p>\n Just in time to check-in the amazing\u00a0Abigails hostel<\/a><\/strong>, where I’m the only occupants of a luxurious 5-beds dorm – my\u00a0\u20ac17 private room with bathroom in the city center<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I spend the evening at Mulligan’s<\/strong>\u00a0drinking Guinness and talking about Android, how-to become an ambassador, communication in the age of social media and social media in the age of communication.<\/p>\n I’m informed that Finnish and<\/strong>\u00a0Lithuanian language\u00a0<\/strong>descend from Mongolian language (this seems to be true, according to Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s rush hour when I’m running along the Liffey river, back to the Phoenix Park. The grass is frozen but the day is beautiful. What a fantastic run!<\/p>\n![\"Grafton](\"https:\/\/www.danielebesana.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/20160114_140543-e1453673950776.jpg\")
<\/a>My first activity is\u00a0a non-touristy one: I get my\u00a0beard trimmed\u00a0in Grafton Street<\/strong> for just \u20ac5 in one of the many barber shop around the area. The place is\u00a0in a basement, with low ceiling and a beautiful mix of old times and hipster touch.<\/p>\nFriday 15th, Dublin<\/h2>\n
\nCountries without E\u2019s in their names (Canada, Scotland, and Japan) spell it whisky (plural whiskies)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nSaturday 16th, Dublin<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSunday 17th January, Galway.<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMonday\u00a018th January, Galway.<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nTuesday\u00a019th January, Galway.<\/h2>\n
\nWell, I’m the only participant and the young girl puts away the big sign ‘free tour’ and says we don’t have the quota to run the tour.
\nI ask her to show me around anyway, and she gives me a 10 minutes walk, not that walking around Galway takes much more anyway, explaining me few things.
\nI’m informed that lynching<\/strong>\u00a0comes from Sir Lynch, mayor of Galway that once upon a time killed his own son convicted for murder (this seems to be an Irish invention, according to Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nWednesday\u00a020th January, Dublin.<\/h2>\n