Ta an craic is fearr san Eirinn!

Tralee, as I said before, is a very cute little town. It’s only about 20,000 people, but after places like Inishmore and Dungiven, it feels like a booming metropolis. I came here to see some shows at Siamsa Tire (pronounced Sheem-sa Tee-ra translates to “country entertainment”) which is the National Folk Theater of Ireland. As luck would have it one of my research contacts invited me to attend a Dance Research Forum in Tralee and it just happened to be taking place during the week when I had planned on being here! The research conference starts up tomorrow, I saw the first show at Siamsa Tire last night, and I’ll see another one tonight. I also got really lucky in that my hotel is literally next door to the Siamsa Tire theater—I didn’t even plan that!

The first show I saw was called San Am Fado (pronounced Shan ahm fa-DOH translates to “the long ago”). It is actually the same show that I saw at Siamsa Tire when I came to Ireland a few years ago with the fam. I remembered really liking it, but last night reaffirmed that it is one of the most perfect pieces of theater I’ve ever seen. It’s not really a play, there’s no script or dialogue, or even that much of a story; the actors just act out scenes of country life and it’s all punctuated by moments of Irish dancing and really beautiful Gaelic choral singing. It’s a little hard to describe…it’s like an Irish dance ballet… Anyways, call me cheesy, but it totally gave me goose bumps. Tonight I’m seeing a different show by the same company, so I don’t know what it’s going to be like but I expect it will also be wonderful.

There is nowhere for me to eat in Tralee. Everything is either really expensive or meat dishes only. I had Chinese food last night. Actually, I’ve eaten SO MUCH Chinese food on this trip (a lot of Indian food too). The only place I have been so far that did not have a Chinese restaurant was Inishmore. Dungiven had two, Birr had three, and in Belfast I found one street that had literally four in a row and one across the street. At Chinese restaurants in Ireland you have to pay for your rice which is usually more like Uncle Ben’s than Long Grain Jasmine rice. Also, French fries are always offered as a side dish. Also, no fortune cookies.

Here is the best building in Tralee.

I thought I’d share a few more pictures from the Aran Islands too:

Here’s the big hill you have to climb to get to the Dun Aonghasa fort

Here’s some of Teampall Bhreacain, an 8^th century church.

At one point when I was riding my bike around I stopped next to a farm wall to look at my map and readjust. I had seen that there were some horses in the field and when I looked up from the map I found them looking right back at me. They had seen me and run over to greet me. Apparently they really wanted to have their picture taken.