Birthday Cake

This was the cake we ate for Ellie's birthday. It was just as tasty as it looks! I got it at the English Market, which is filled with all kinds of good food like this cake.

Old Head of Kinsale

Today I had a field trip to the Old Head of Kinsale for my structural geology class. Unfortunately, we had to battle the incoming tides and we couldn't gawk for too long at the cool folds in one area. It was absolutely freezing on the coast today. I came home and my entire body was still shaking. Despite the tide and the cold, I can't recall any other day that I learned as much as I learned today. I've been thinking about it since we left Kinsale.

Parasitic folds on the south limb of the syncline.

Killarney National Park

My roommate Ellie and I got a wild hair on Friday night and decided we were going to go to Killarney National Park. She's been talking about going for ages, and we finally went. There is actually some snow on the peaks of the mountains! It was great to see snow, but we didn't get a chance to get anywhere near it. We'd like to go back when the weather is a bit nicer and take a little hike. The mountains to the west of Loch Leane are the tallest mountains in Ireland. They are beautiful, but don't quite compare to Montana mountains.

Here's where I went. A) Cork and B) Killarney

Red deer I think

Loch Leane

Ellie and me.

Fungus amongus.

Lock Leane and Ross Castle with snow capped mountains in the background!

Ross Castle

Getting into the tree!

Ellie squeezed in.

Hangin' around.

Ellie and me.

Leather Belt

Whitney's dad, Mike, tooled this leather belt for me. He started it about a year ago and I just got it when Whit came to Ireland! It's been a long time comin' and I think that makes it even more exciting! The big bummer is that my belt buckle is in Montana. I looked for some here, but the only ones I've seen are dreadfully 'Old West' or something else equally as fashionable. I can wait another 7 weeks. Thanks Mike.







That's a lot of belt pictures, but I love it so much.

Gougane Barra

Yesterday, my Irish friend Joanne took Erin, Whitney, Ellie, and me to hike a the tallest peak in Ireland, but the weather was pretty crummy and she feared that her little car wouldn't fare well in the dirt track to the trailhead, so we improvised and she took us to the Gougane Barra, which is a remote, forested area and the headwaters of the River Lee, which flows into the Cork Harbour and into the ocean. In Cork, it is the most disgusting river I've ever seen, but in the Gougane Barra, it is the most lovely, crystal clear, peaceful network of streams that cascade down the high hill tops around the logh. It was a very very damp day and the photos are quite foggy and blurry, but here's a few that turned out.

Here's where we went.

A church built by St. Finnbar in the 6th century.

A monkey puzzle tree!

One of many streams.

Lookin' for fish.

Mossy wall and trees

The hillside with lots of small waterfalls.

Cobh

Whitney, Rob, and I took the train to Cobh (pronounced Cove), which is where the Titanic stopped the last time before setting sail across the Atlantic. There is a museum there that has lots of fascinating information about emigration from Ireland in 19th and 20th centuries. We spotted a really cool cathedral up on the hill that we wandered up to later in the day to walk off our lunch before heading back to Cork.

St. Colman's Cathedral


The inside of St. Coleman's

Galway Girls

Happy New Year! I've been neglecting my blogging lately, but not due to any lack of material. The new year has been a busy one so far and it doesn't appear that it will slow down any time soon. Two of my friends from Missoula are visiting me in Cork right now and they want to see everything they can, and I want to do it with them AND somehow balance school in with it all. I haven't had to be in school in January for the past 3 years and it's wild to be in my second week of the third quarter!

I recently took the girls to Kinsale, Blarney, and Galway, but I'm going to skip the blog of Kinsale and Blarney for now since I've already been there and you've already seen photos, but here's Galway!

The Burren Area (limestone)

We found loads of snails hanging out in the Burren.

Be Careful - Cliffs of Moher

There were loads and loads of fossils in the stones used to build the stairs around the cliffs. We probably looked like fools taking pictures of the stairs, but there was some really interesting fossils in them!

The Cliffs of Moher