Athenry

Chetan and Shraddha lived just outside the town of Athenry, made famous by the song, The Fields of Athenry. The town was about a 5 minute drive, a 20 minute bike ride, or an hour long, very wet walk (we only did the walk once) so we got to go explore the medieval streets pretty much whenever the weather was cooperating.

Our preferred mode of transport was bicycle, as we could glide through the beautiful countryside, stopping every once in a while to pick some particularly bulbous blackberries, watch the under-10-year-olds fight it out on the hurling pitch, and/or moo at cows. The only drawbacks to the bikes were that a) my seat in particular was literally rock-hard, and b) we once got caught up in the traffic of a drag racing competition that had come to town for the day.

Besides the always tempting allures of a pint of Guinness or a super 99 cone, we also happened to be in the neighborhood for the incredible-but-true holiday of Irish Walled Towns Day. Yes, there really is a day dedicated to the appreciation of surviving medieval walled towns, Athenry being a prime example (they even did a news program on the festivities in Athenry).

The celebration was centered around the castle and crumbling church/museum (free admission - hooray!) and included such curiosities as a medieval blacksmith, a traditional wood worker, a chance to try your hand at archery (Kate got two bullseyes), weapons exhibitions, and various other demonstrations.

We sat through one in the castle's keep on "Sounds Medieval" - a demonstration and performance piece displaying various instruments from Ireland's history including a huge, and very loud, war trumpet.

Athenry also has a second castle which we also got to see (from the outside) during an excusion with the local environmental coalition, a project of Shraddha's. The castle was bought in the 1970s by an eccentric man with a passion for collecting anything and everything old. Rather than restore the castle, he intended to maintain its current condition... of decay. He did, however, relent to allowing this environmental group use some of the extensive grounds for their community garden project
and we were invited to join them for their slightly overdue (on account of rain) harvest. In true Irish style we harvested blighted potatoes and slug devoured cabbage. It was a really nice outing and we were introduced to one of the groups most passionate (and hysterical) members, Patrick, who later came over for dinner one night and regaled us with some ridiculous (and ridiculously hilarious) tales about running an English-as-a-Second-Language school in Galway.

More on Galway later. For now, let's stay focused on Athenry, which we did occasional get rides into so that Chetan and Shraddha could spoil us. It's not like we had any say in the matter; Shraddha would take us grocery shopping and tell us to pick whatever we wanted, egging us on to get anything that looked tasty.
We did also get a smart, little eco-friendly tip we'd like to pass on: always avoid double packaging (i.e. cookies packaged in a tray AND and plastic wrapping). Ireland's waste management system is pay by weight so reducing waste is both enviromentally and financially friendly and avoiding double packaging is a great way to do that.

Other luxeries that were lavished on us included a wonderful dinner at their local and delicious Indian restaurant, not for a special occasion or anything, but really just because. They also gave us a day pass to the Raheen Woods Hotel, the town's luxury resort, where we got to use the pool and sauna facilities (and then go get a breakfast of pastries). We also were treated to movie nights on a fairly regular basis, which started out with a trip to the local Moovie Mart to get an education in Irish films; we first watched The Commitments, a comedy about a band being put together in Dublin, and then The Field, an epically depressing drama focusing on the Irish relationship to land.

And back at the house, Saoirse introduced us to the hilarious and painfully awkward British series, Peep Show, to which we were quickly addicted. We would, in fact, often settle in for some movie nights both spontaneously (when something good was on TV) and more calculated (off of Chetan's massive hard drive). One particularly interesting and relevant documentary was The Future of Food, a truly terrifying look at how large corporations have begun to patent natural
and genetically engineered organisms and are destroying both the food industry as well as food in general. Definitely check it out, or at least read up on the issues because there's some scary stuff going on (like, for example for those extremely lazy readers out there, genetically engineering in "terminator" genes that cause plants to die without reproducing [thus making the consumer buy more] but these modified plants are cross-breeding with non-modified plants and passing on this terminator gene, which then could kill off huge supplies of native varieties worldwide in just a few years).

Anyway, that's about it for Athenry. The last thing I'll leave you with is another picture from the fair and (hopefully) an eagerness to hear all about Galway, which is coming up next...