I know it seems from my blog posts that all I do is travel, but again, school is too boring to write about, so I just skip over it and write about the fun things. After two weeks of hard work (including an insane differential equations test.... don´t even get me started), it was time to travel again for Easter break. I´ll let you guess where I went based off of the next two clues- I flew in a green plane with a four leaf clover painted on it, and my pilot´s name was Daryl O´Connor.
Yeah, if you guessed Ireland, you are right. On Thursday evening, I flew to from Frankfurt to Dublin and met up with Corey, Nicky, and Kate, who all took different flights there. Corey and I both arrived around the same time pretty late in the night, so we ended up heading to the youth hostel and hitting the hay so we could get up early the next morning and sightsee in our one day in Dublin. Of course, when we got to our room in the hostel, we were greeted by the most loud, disgusting snoring that I´ve ever heard in my life. When I looked over to see where the sound was coming from, I saw a old fat white guy wearing nothing but a speedo laying in the bottom bunk. Needless to say, the ensuing night was pretty rough, and I was glad to leave the next morning. At around 9 the next morning, Corey and I set out into the town to sightsee. We visited all the must see locations in Dublin, like the Trinity college and St. Patrick´s cathedral. Since it was good Friday, we were not able to do a tour of the cathedral, but we still went inside and sat in the pews, admiring the beautiful holy decorations. Afterwards, we walked over to the Temple Bar district to meet Kate and Nicky, and ate a traditional Irish meal in one of the pubs there. I ended up not getting a Guinness with my food, as I thought we were going to do the Guinness tour later in the day, but we found out afterwards that it was sold out. Thus, instead of doing the Guinness tour, we went to Dublinia, a highly rated museum about Dublin´s Viking and medieval history. It was a very interactive museum, and I really enjoyed getting to learn a part of history that I knew close to nothing about. After the museum, it was time to head back to the hostel to get our bags and head to the airport to grab the rental car. Dublin was fun, but I was most looking forward to the next couple of days of hiking. That night we drove three hours north into Northern Ireland (which is actually apart of the UK), where we stayed the night in an Airbnb with a really nice lady named Louise.
We woke up on Saturday morning, and after having a traditional Irish breakfast with Louise, we drove on another 15 minutes to reach Giant´s Causeway, which is an area along the northern coast full of weird rock formations. For the entire morning and early afternoon, we explored this area, jumping between rocks in the coastal waters, and marveling at the unique rocks.
After we were finished exploring, we drove to the neighboring coastal town to eat lunch, before heading to another short hike. The next hike we did was a short 1 km hike to this rope bridge, which connected the mainland to a little small island in the middle of bay. The water in this area of the coast was crystal clear, with colors ranging from royal blue to turquoise to emerald green. After taking thousands of pictures in mine and Corey´s normal fashion, we ran back to the car, where the girls were waiting (they decided not to do the second hike). We had to leave this area fairly early in the evening, as we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us down to Connemara National Park on the rugged west coast of Ireland. It was a full moon the night we drove in, so I could see the outlines of the mountains and the lakes nestled in between- I could see just enough to wish we could have witnessed the drive during the day. We arrived to our hostel, which was located in the heart of the national park at around midnight. When we got there, the owner had already gone to bed, so we let ourselves in and picked a room to sleep in. It was a little strange that anyone could just walk in and sleep, but hey, we were in the middle of a national park in the most uninhabited part of the Ireland. What´s the worst that can happen right?
We woke up on Sunday morning to a very rare sight- sunshine! To take advantage of the rarity of the occasion, we got ready as fast as we could so we could head out and hike Diamond Hill, a tall peak right out the back of our hostel. Staying in the hostel turned out to be a really neat experience (other than having to take cold showers), and we ended up meeting a lot of interesting people the next morning at breakfast! As I mentioned above, after breakfast, all 4 of us embarked on a 4 hour hike up to the top of Diamond Hill. The views from the hike were spectacular, and reminded me of pictures I have seen of the Scottish highlands. When we reached the top, we were able to see both the ocean off to one side, and the foggy mountains off to the other side. We didn´t spend too long on top of the mountain as the wind almost blew all of us off the cliff, but the views from the top were definitely worth the climb. Once back down the mountain, we hopped in the car (I know, we did a lot of driving this trip) and drove down to the Cliffs of Moher, the famous green cliffs that are a must see for anyone who visits Ireland. Unfortunately, we didn´t have much time to spend at the cliffs, since we had to be back to Dublin by 8 to drop off the rental car, but the views from the cliffs were spectacular. I can see why these cliffs, which rise some 200 meters out of the deep blue ocean are such a famous landmark.
After a three hour drive back to Dublin, we dropped off our rental car and headed into the city once again to spend our last night. Since we had such an early flight the next morning, we decided to just stay up all night instead of paying for a hotel, and go to a bar/ club. Before going to the club, we tried to grab fish and chips at one of the pubs, but all the pubs had already stopped serving food. Thus, we ended up eating Subway and KFC as our last meal in Ireland. As disappointing as that was, I finally got to have my Guinness in Ireland at the club that we hung out at for the rest of the night. I was exhausted the next morning on our plane ride back to Germany, but it turned out to be a fun way to spend our last night in Ireland. I definitely want to come back and spend more time here (just like about every other place I´ve traveled to this semester), and maybe come in the summer time, when its a little warmer!
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