Because I was so late to my last post I figured I will talk about what has been going on between my highlands trip and Ireland. If you don’t really care and would like to just see pictures or want to know how my trip to Ireland went… just scroll down. I made it easy to find if you’d prefer to just skip ahead.
Let’s talk school. It has been going alright. The week I got back I had to finish two papers because they were due on the 11th of March. Needless to say… I didn’t really have a good start on either of them. However, I did get pretty good grades so procrastination works. Just kidding…
Next big thing that happened before Spring Break was the Ballet. I went to Coppellia. It is a ballet about this guy who is going to get married to this girl. Except another girl catches his eye briefly. Then a wizard guy tries to use his magic to make the guy fall in love with his toy daughter. If he falls in love than it will like use up his life so that the toy daughter can become a real person. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen and they get married in the end. Much better than the Opera I went to.
The next week begins Spring Holiday and I was sure not ready and couldn’t contemplate that I would be in Ireland soon. It didn’t even hit me until I started packing the night before. I was to be in Ireland. I got pretty excited after that.
Ireland Adventure
So I went to Ireland last week and it was, to sum it up in one word, Miserable. Now that isn’t to say I didn’t have fun, quite the contrary. But it could have been so much better.
I left Thursday, the 21st of March. I actually left quite early because I have a weird thing about being on time or early. When we (my friend Melissa and I) got to the airport it was about 3 hours early, which was quite early considering that RyanAir doesn’t check people in until 2 hours before the flight. So what did we do? That’s right… we got coffee. Sat there for a while and finally started to make our way through the airport.
Once in Dublin, we got a bus to our hostel. Unfortunately it was about 6 euros for the ride… which is awful, but I guess what can you expect from an airport shuttle. Oh and it was raining which made it even better. On the bright side though the Irish accents were awesome.
Once at the hostel, I pretty much just went to bed right away. It was a long day and we had to get up before 8am. Finally we started to have fun once we all loaded onto the shuttle. We saw some interesting places. It was rather rainy out though so it could have been better. We saw an abbey and a castle. I was quite excited to begin my adventure in Ireland!
So, here is a fun story. On our way to Galway, we kind of lost a tire. I was by the window seat and just staring outside the window and all of a sudden there is this wheel that is rolling along the road along with the bus. It felt like a dream and I look back at my friend Michael who was in the seat directly behind me and gave him a look like… Did that just happen? So yes, our tire popped off and started rolling down the road beside us. We had to stop the bus and wait for about 45 minutes until a replacement arrived.
Once we finally got into Dublin, we learned that we got upgraded to a Bed and Breakfast because the Hostel overbooked people and couldn’t fit us. That was really nice. That night, all of us on the tour went out for a pub crawl. That was rather fun, because we ate at the pub and because we did the crawl I think got 10% off the meal. We also got a free drink at each place we went to.
The night then came to a close and the next day, Saturday, was the best part of the trip. This day, we saw the baby cliffs and the Cliffs of Moher. It was actually awful weather wise. Not raining but just really overcast and cold. The weird part though is right when we got to the baby cliffs the sun came out and it was beautiful. We spent a while around there and you could get dangerously close to the edge. It was my favorite part… yes the baby cliffs I thought were better than the Cliffs of Moher.
Now onto the cliffs of Moher… Not that special. I kind of sound like a drag but I mean, they were cool and all. And quite large but that was it. It is really just the sheer size of them that makes them special.
So didn’t do too much after the Cliffs of Moher. This trip was definitely not as good as the Highlands trip, at least the touring company. We did make our way to Killarney which was quite small but has this national park that is amazing. When we got to our Hostel it was pretty sketchy since the office was a small table inside the kitchen. Regardless, a few of us went around the town a while and then went out to eat. Since I ate at the hostel, I just went along for the discussion and the cocktails.
I met some awesome people on my journey. There was a New Zealander, two Austrailians, 4 Germans (2 and 2), 2 French, and some Americans (The ones who aren’t with us… that nobody bothered talking to). I even have a few of them on facebook.
So we went out to a club and danced and it was so much fun. Talked with the 2 Austrailians most of the night (Didn’t really talk to them before like I did the others) but then when the dancing started we all got into our little Paddywagon group)
Seems like enough for now. Will Get in a Part 2 soon.
Andy In Scotland 