Ireland: Truly as Green as it Seems

Hello everyone, I am back again with more experiences to share! If you have not read my last post, it was about my experiences in Budapest. For this blog post, I will focus on another weekend getaway I had in the great country of Ireland.

As school here in London, comes to a close with less than 24 hours left before my last final, I constantly reflect on the great time I had studying here. I learned more about the U.K. and England than I ever would have if I stayed in the States just reading the newspapers or watching the news. Also, by the time I return back to the States, I would have visited 11 different countries in a time span of 4 months. I am incredibly lucky to be able to do so!

But back to the focus of this blog….Ireland! You know when you Google Ireland and the images that appear on your computer are so green as if its photo shopped? No, it is truly that green in the countryside. I was able to visit Dublin, Howth, Cliffs of Moher and Galway within one weekend.

I think the most interesting thing I noticed on this trip was simply the importance that America has on the country and its citizens. This is because of two instances. First, when traveling via bus to the Cliffs of Moher, our first rest stop was in the countryside. We stopped at a small food court plaza named “Barack Obama Plaza.” To be honest, I thought this was random, yet so funny. I asked my tour guide why there was a plaza dedicated to the Obamas and a museum on the second floor. Apparently, Barack Obama’s ancestors are from a small village adjacent to the rest stop and a few years back, the family visited to speak to thousands of Irish people. As a result, they built this rest stop and it created 60+ jobs for the locals. Secondly, when I visited Galway, there is a large square park in the center of the city originally named Eyre Square. However, the community renamed it John F. Kennedy Memorial Park after JFK and Jackie visited to speak to, once again, thousands of Irish Locals. In addition, the hotel off of the square was designed especially for the Kennedy’s visit. The whole top floor was redesigned for the president. Isn’t that crazy?

All in all, I realized that despite being thousands of miles away from home, home always makes it way back to me, and others around the world. Maybe my history classes were right, the U.S. is a pretty important place with pretty important people.