Hello!! I have returned from my wonderful Spring Break trip! My journeys throughout Ireland and Scotland were truly amazing. I had such a wonderful time...so let's start from the beginning. This is going to have to be a 2-part blog, so I'll cover my time in Ireland in this entry.
I met with my travel buddies (Alison and Brittni) around 7 AM last Friday morning. We went to the bus station to go to Malaga in order to catch our flight to Dublin. This part of the trip went quite smoothly, and we made it to the airport in plenty of time (I am always worried about this...). We flew Aer Lingus, which is by far my favorite European airline. The Irish have created the best option for air travel! We arrived to Dublin after a 3 hour flight. By the time we rode the bus into the city and located our hostel, it was about 5:30 PM. After checking in to our hostel, we decided to walk around a little bit. We walked through the Viking part of town and saw Dublin Castle and the Christ Church Cathedral. We located the oldest pub in Ireland (which dates back to like 1050 or something crazy like that), where I consumed my first Guinness of the trip. The thing I discovered about Guinness is this: it really grows on you. It really is "an acquired taste"...and I definitely acquired it on this trip! After our quick stop at the pub, we went to the other side of town to walk around Trinity College. It is a beautiful campus, but there will be more on that later. At this point, we were pretty hungry so we stopped in to another Irish pub for dinner...and this is where the Fish and Chips obsession began. After some delicious food, we went back to the hostel for some much needed rest!
Saturday morning we woke up insanely early for an exciting day trip out to the Cliffs of Moher. We left Dublin around 7:40 and made our first stop at a really old church in the Irish countryside. The drive was beautiful, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as GREEN as the country of Ireland. Our next stop on the tour was on the coast, and we could see the islands of Ireland in the distance. After hanging out by the water for a while, we had all worked up an appetite so we proceeded to our next stop, Doolin. In Doolin, I ate some amazing fish and chips (see, told you, obsessed) and met a cool donkey. After lunch came the exciting part of the day...the Cliffs of Moher! These cliffs attract nearly a million visitors every year. The 6th Harry Potter movie was also filmed by the cliffs. Neither words nor pictures can truly describe how breathtaking this was, so you'll all have to go to Ireland to check it out for yourselves! The bus ride back to Dublin took about 4 hours (you can drive from one side of Ireland to the other in this amount of time, crazy!). When we got back, we popped into a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Chimichangas made this a perfect day in Ireland!
Sunday we had another day trip planned...to Blarney Castle! Our first stop was in the cute little town of Cobh. Cobh is right on the water, and it reminded me a lot of Charleston. Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic, and the Lusitania sunk just outside its harbor. After Cobh, we stopped in Kildare for lunch. Kildare is another cute little town, but it doesn't have much going on except for restaurants...thankfully that's all we needed! Following our lunch, we headed to the Blarney Castle. The Castle has beautiful grounds with lots of flowers and grass...it would have been a great place for a picnic. Blarney Castle also has one of the most famous rocks in Ireland...the Blarney stone! Legend says that if you kiss this stone, you will be more eloquent for 7 years, or something like that. While this may seem to be simple (how hard can it be to kiss a stone?), nobody really warned me that you have to climb up a million steep and scary stairs and then bend over backwards to kiss it! It was kind of scary...but absolutely necessary. I can now say that I kissed the Blarney Stone!! We ate in the famous Temple Bar area Sunday night. Temple Bar is a part of town famous for having pubs with live music, so we got to listen to an Irish band play while we ate, you guessed it, fish and chips.
Monday was our last day in Dublin, so we had a lot of things planned! First, we decided to tour Trinity College. The campus is absolutely beautiful, and quite historic as well. In the Old Library at the college, you can find the Book of Kells. This is an illustrated manuscript of the Gospels and New Testament that was created by monks in about 800. The book is really old but super colorful, and the library is a very cool building as well. Once we had finished satisfying our intellectual side, we walked to the other side of town to tour the Guinness storehouse/brewery. The brewery was actually really well done--the exhibits were interesting and it was all very interactive. We really enjoyed ourselves! The Irish sure do love their Guinness. On the 7th floor of the storehouse, visitors can claim their free pint of Guinness and take in views of the city in the Gravity Bar. Of course, the best Guinness I had came straight from the Guinness brewery! After a stop at Subway (sorry but we needed a little America!) we continued indulging in the Irish culture by touring the Jameson Irish Whiskey Distillery. This was also a really interesting tour, and I was chosen, along with 7 other people on our tour, to become an official Jameson Irish Whiskey Taster! I even have a certificate to prove it. We really enjoyed our time at Jameson! Monday night we ate at a place called O'Neill's, where I had quite possibly the best and biggest fish and chips yet! Yum!
I cannot convey how much I enjoyed my time in Ireland. The people were so nice, and the country is truly a beautiful place. I was sad to leave! I am proud to say that I'm Irish after experiencing a little bit of Ireland...so much so that now I'm starting to campaign for my family to go! I really want to go back, and I just know they would love it so much. So start saving your pennies, Daddy!! :)
Alright, that's all for now...I'll add some pictures below! Look for a post about Scotland coming soon! Love and miss you all.
Besos,
Shannon :)
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| Fish and Chips, part one of many |
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| Dublin Castle |
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| Guinness at the oldest pub in Ireland |
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| Trinity College |
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| Trinity College |
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| Irish Countryside |
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| The ocean!! |
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| Fish with 2 different kinds of potatoes...and my parents always said this was impossible! |
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| My new friend in Doolin |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cobh, Ireland |
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| Cobh, Ireland |
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| Boats in Cobh |
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| Amazing burger |
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| Blarney Castle |
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| Guinness |
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| Everyone's Irish on March 17th! |
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| Guinness at the Gravity Bar |
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| AMERICA |
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| Official Jameson Taster! |
