This will be one of my last posts as I head back to CT May 19th :( This semester has flown by! But I made sure to squeeze in a trip to Ireland before I left, and i´m SO glad I did. I´ve always wanted to go because of how beautiful it looks in pictures and because my Irish heritage, but I did not realize how much FUN it is there. However, I did go in with the mind set that my trip would be almost identical to the P.S. I Love You movie... Gerard says hi to everyone! I went with one other girl from the UConn in Granada group, Becca, over our long weekend due to the Labor Day here (May 1-5) and we stayed with one of my friends, Melissa, from UConn who is studying in Dublin. We also ended up meeting up with other kids from the UConn in Granada group after they went to London and some other friends from the UConn group in Dublin. It was one big and fun UConn group taking over Dublin basically :)
Dublin was an excellent taste of home for the end of the semester as everyone spoke english, there was green grass, Starbucks, food i've missed, and multiple beers on tap.
Becca and I arrived in Dublin on Thursday, May 1 in the late afternoon. We spent the afternoon and early evening exploring the city and getting some burgurs, fish ´n chips, and Guinness in our system. We spent that night in a hostel because Melissa was making her way back from Munich and we then woke up at quarter of 6 to catch our bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and other stops along the way and back.
Our bus tour was excellent, and took up our entire first day in Ireland. Leaving from Dublin, our first stop was in Limerick to view King John´s castle and the treaty stone. The treaty stone was between the Irish and the English, and was later broken by the English. Or atleast according to the Irish... ha.
The next stop was at the Cliffs! I´ve seen gorgeous pictures of the Cliffs from friends who have come, but they really don´t do them justice. It´s very much like the Grand Canyon that way. My favorite part of the cliffs was walking into the ¨Danger - Continue at your on risk zone¨. There we were able to walk to the highest points of the cliffs where there were no fences. There we were able to sit and put our legs over the cliffs. Ireland is one of the prettiest countries i´ve visited and the cliffs defenitly highlight that.
After the cliffs, the pub stopped at a pub in Doolin for lunch. The pub was right on the water and known for their fresh fish daily, so I made sure to get fish ´n chips. Doolin is famous for being the birth place of many of Ireland´s most famous folk singers and bands. From lunch we drove to the Burren and then to Corcomroe Abby. Burren is a National Park on the coast that is basically on giant sections of limestone. Within the limestone however, there are some beautiful flowers. Corcomroe Abby, is an early 13th century Cistercian monestary. From there, we headed back to Dublin where Melissa met us. We spent the night catching up and not got up the next morning to venture to Howth.
Howth which is a village of Dublin that is on the water. It was absolutely gorgeous. We hiked into the hills along the coast, which gave us some amazing views of the islands off of Dublin. It was also one of the best places i´ve had a picnic lunch. Green grass, yellow flowers, and ocean views... can´t get much better than that.
Friday night after a day in Howth is when the pub crawling began! We to dinner with everyone from UConn first and then hit up two bars (both with live music!) and popped into the famous Temple Bar (just to say we did) in between the two. I loved that Ireland is all about multiple beers, ales, and ciders on tap like back in the States. Trying different types of those is defenitly something i´ve missed in Spain. Spain normally only has one or two beers, one non alcoholic beer, and possibly a sangria on tap. The first pub we went to was a microbrewery, so there was no Guinness in sight (for the first time in Ireland) because they make all their own brews there.
After stopping in Temple Bar, we moved on to O´Niels. This pub was so much fun! I took lots of videos there but I still haven´t figured out how to get them onto Facebook. The best part was that the band took my request to play ¨Galway Girl¨. This is the song that Gerard Butler plays for Hillary Swank in P.S. I Love You, so yes everyone, dreams really do come true :)! One of the bartenders came out towards the band and started to step dance. He then grabbed one of the girls in our group and began dancing with her and the rest of the bar danced around them. It was pretty epic. I have this on video as well as ¨Galway Girl¨, I just have to figure out how to get them online ha. This night of pub crawling was one of the funnest nights i´ve had in Europe.
The next day was a pre-celebration of Becca´s 21st birthday as we would be traveling all day on her birthday the following day (Sunday, May 5). After sleeping in, our first stop was a tour of the Jameson Factory. Jameson is the ¨True Irish Whisky¨. Melissa and I were one of the 4 female volunteers who got to taste test 3 different types of whisky at the end of our free tour in addition to our free whisky with ginger and lime. Yes, I proudly volunteered as tribute and earned a certificate for doing so.
From there we made our way to the Guinness Factory, where we met up with the rest of the UConn in Granada crew that was in Dublin. Guinness was self guided unlike the Jameson Factory. I defenitly prefered having a guide especially because ours was hillarious. The best part of Guinness was learning to pour our own perfect pint of Guinness. And of course for this, we recieved certicates. So now I have two to bring home that I´m assuming will be hung proudly in between the high school and eventually college diplomas.
That night we had hit up a few more pubs before leaving beautiful Ireland at 4 am. The best part was coming back to a sunny and warm Granada! I can't believe it's less than 2 weeks before I leave such a beautiful place
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment