The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1909-07-29
THROUGH OLD COUNTRY AT
SMALL COST.
Four Months Outing In Land of the
Shamrock Cost but Three Hun
dred Dollars.

NEW YORK, July 29.-"Three hum
| dred dollars and four months in Eu-
rope-that is what 1 had and what
wanted to get out of it. When a wo-
man has passed into her thirties with
out travelling a hundred miles away
| from her home town while her friends
| have been ~ almost every quarter of
the globe. you know how she feels"
The speaker was a woman from the
/ southwest, who stopped in New York
the other day on her way to make her
eighth wheeling trip abroad.
| to go with rather than where to Co."
| she went on. LAS / had never been
| attractive. The main point was to get
some one who was willing to travel in
the cheap way necessary to make my
| $500 hold out for four months
THAT person when found proved to
| be college chum of a friend l had
| known since my girlhOod She de-
clared that though we had never seen
each other before she was sure we
would get on charmingly for the SIM
pie reason that both of us wanted to
go to Europe and neither was willing
to be tied down to a personally con-
Quoted tour.
1T was in March that we met.
Within half an hour we had decided
to take bicycle trip through Ireland
with a three weeks stay in Paris as
an ending. My new friend was
anxious to go to Ireland, because she
had been studying Gaelic. She Of
| fered to give me the benefit of her
| instruction and lend me all her books
on the subject. AS there was still
! two months before we were to leave
1 accepted her offer
My friend took her sketch box
and l my camera and both of us took
our wheels. The cost of our ocean
voyage was reduced as far as possible
by taking round trip ticket by one of
practically all the comforts to be had
on the faster and more expensive lines
! The difference seems to be that where
as the expensive lines make the trip
in a weeks time and less the slower
lines require ten days or more.
+, Il first set foot on soil at Queens
town. After two days stay here we be-
gan our tour first on our wheels, then
| jaunting car. We also travelled by
train when desirable. Everywhere we
were received with the greatest friend
illness, and in exchange for our stories
and descriptions of America the peas
ants, old and young, told us the legends
and folk tales of their country and
sang for us quaint Gaelic songs. All
through our trip in Ireland, America
was word to conjure with. We had
|
to get what we wanted and often more.
after spending a few days in CAL
way, we pushed on into Connemara,
where we spent two delightful weeks
more than twenty miles away from the
nearest railroad station. Here my
friends knowledge of Gaelic was con-
venient as English is almost an I'M
known tongue. During these two weeks
we enjoyed delightful bathing and boat
ing in the arms of the sea penetrating
the western coast.
| Finally, tearing ourselves away from
| the blue lochs and brown boys, we
| turned our faces eastward toward Dub
| lin. My friend had calculated our time
/ in such way that we arrived in the
| Irish capital just in time for the great
national Gaelic festival. After a three
weeks stay, every minute of which We
both enjoyed, we left for London,
| where we had decided to spend the re-
naming three weeks OF our time IN
stead of going to Paris.
when we landed back in our hume
town / had spen all but IS of my $500
and had been away three days over
four months. Our passage over and
return had cost SIS. We both gave
SIS in tips aboard ship and paid S. more
for the transportation of our wheels.
, Our hotel bills for the first six weeks
touring came to $45 each and never
once did we have other than comfort
able quarters among kindly people.
Throughout our trip we found the
i, village hotels and country inns more
than fairly comfortable, well kept and
inexpensive. We seldom paid more
than SIS week for room and board l