Saturday in Dublin calls for an authentic market experience, so we took our gang to the Temple Bar Food Market for a leisurely lunch-stroll through local vendor stalls. Things we ate: giant Irish oysters, pulled pork with roast potatoes and gravy, marinated goat kebabs, smoked salmon crepes, and possibly one too many cronuts. The smells alone were irresistible, and we couldn’t have asked for finer urban picnic weather.

Tonight at community meeting, most students cited seeing a matinee performance at the Gate Theatre–Brian Friel’s adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country–as their daily “high”/favorite moment over any other. Lush costumes, biting and surprisingly contemporary dialogue, and a handsome young lead who actually appears in the majority of scenes were among the finer points of the play’s appeal.

Tomorrow morning we take a sojourn from Dublin to explore the wild west: the island of Inishbofin by way of Clonmacnoise monastery, with an afternoon in Galway on the return. Our three day writers’ retreat to the ‘Bof will involve a necessary technology fast, since our island hostel doesn’t have wi-fi–we hope you’ll bear with us as we compose blog posts for future consumption. In the meantime, keep an eye on/go ahead and follow our Writing in Ireland Instagram!

–Veronica & Patrick