Nicky and I arrived in Ireland on Thursday night and after
dropping our stuff at the hostel, I had my first ever fish and chips in a little
pub nearby. It was amazing, I think fish are starting to grow on me. We were
sitting at the bar when this lady comes up to us and asked us if we thought she
was sober enough to get home on the bus by herself and that her friends had
told her no, she had to take a taxi. We told her yes and she ordered another
drink from the bartender. Those ladies were hilarious, they were all getting
absolutely trashed on a Thursday night, I hope I can still hang when I am their
age. We wanted to find a pub with a younger crowd to meet some locals, so we
asked the bartender where to go. He recommended this pub named McGowans. When
we made it to the “pub” it was really more of a pub/club hybrid the door guys
found out we’re American and start giving us shit. One of them starts to sing “Oh
say can you see…” salutes us and told us to have a great night. We met some fun
people that night and made plans to see them again on Sunday.
Saturday Nicky and I met up with Corey and Mitchell who had
flown in later the night before. We ate lunch at another pub, (surprise
surprise). I had an amazing Guinness soup. Then we went to a Viking museum,
which was really interesting. That evening we went to pick up our rental car.
Driving on the left hand side of the road really takes some getting used to. It’s
hard to line the car up in the lanes because you feel like you’re driving
really close to oncoming traffic when, in reality, you’re about to go off the
shoulder. I only hopped the curb once though, oh and Ireland really loves their
round-abouts. We took off for Northern Ireland and arrived at our Airbnb late Friday
night. The next morning, we met our host, she was so sweet and had breakfast
for us! We ate breakfast with her I got to pet her pet rabbit. Then we headed
out to the Giant’s Causeway! We spent the afternoon exploring the area, I
almost fell into the sea trying to climb onto a rock (this seems to happen
quite a lot) and we got whistled at for climbing a cliff we weren’t supposed to
be on, but it was worth it the view was amazing. The Causeway is really cool,
the rock formations don’t look real because some of them are so perfectly symmetrical.
After visiting the causeway Nicky and I had coffees in a café while the guys
went and hiked a suspension bridge. Then we loaded back into the car and took
off for Canamara. By now I’m pretty much a pro at driving on the left hand side
and I think I’m scaring everyone a little less often now. My dream of being
stuck in the middle of the road surrounded by sheep almost became a reality,
there were little groups of sheep wandering all around the roads for most of
the drive into the park. We drove pretty late into the night and reached our
destination, a little monastery that they turned into a hostel. This has been
my favorite hostel In Europe so far. The next morning we met our roommate, a
really nice guy from Austria, we bonded over Nicky letting him borrow her
shower gel and he let us in on the showers that have the shortest line in the
morning. He’s been hitchhiking through Ireland and wants to move there to be
near the sea. We had a traditional home made breakfast and met some other
people staying in the hostel, one that has biked the whole coast of Norway and
a nice guy from Spain. They recommended hiking diamond peak, so we finished up
breakfast and headed out. Climbing Diamond peak was my favorite part of the
trip, the peak was at around 1700 feet and the view from the top was incredible.
You could see the entire Irish countryside and the ocean. The wind was so
strong at the top of the peak you could almost lean back into it and it would
keep you upright. We ran into even more sheep on the way down. Next, we headed
to the Cliffs of Moher, they were breathtaking. We hopped back into the
car and headed back to Dublin for the night. Being the thrifty college students
we are, we decided to spend the night in a pub and didn’t book anywhere to stay
Sunday night since our flight left at 6 am on Monday morning. We met up with
our friends from Thursday night and they tried teaching us Gaelic words, that didn’t
go over so well. The stereotype is true, the Irish know how to drink. When the pub closed our friends offered to let us hang out at
their house to kill some time and then we headed for the airport!
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