Ireland

After our stay in the Scottish Castle, Jordan and I decided (pretty last minute) to have an adventure in Ireland. After a twelve hour travel day, buses and even my first ferry, we made it to Belfast in Northern Ireland where we stayed the night in our first hostel of the journey! We got to the hostel pretty late, so we didn’t get to experience too much of hostel life, but we did manage to get in a game of pool and chat to the guests who had stayed up past midnight.

The next morning, we made our way to a small town, just outside of Dublin, to take care of Woody the beagle. While staying here, Jordan and I managed to catch a pretty nasty cold, but despite not wanting to we both made an effort to go out and see the area.

The first time we made our way to Dublin, we started off by walking around the campus of the stunning Trinity University. In another life I certainly could have gone to school here, the architecture of all the buildings was stunning, and they seemed to form a ring around the green areas of campus, making the whole area feel very safe and secluded from the city that surrounds it. Afterwards, we headed to the archaeology museum, where we found the Irish bog section of the museum fascinating. It had artifacts and remains that had been naturally preserved by the bogs which gave an insight to historic life. Our last stop was a pub nearby to get my first ever Guinness, in the city where the beer hails from!

Our next outing (after a day of napping) was to a nearby town called Howth, where we did the Howth cliff walk that gave us some stunning views. After working up quite an appetite, we went to a restaurant by the sea that doubled as a fish market for some fresh fish and chips!

The next day, we headed back to Dublin for some more sightseeing. First, we went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Then we walked to the oldest pub in Ireland, The Brazen Head. Here we had another pint of Guinness and a steak and Guinness stew. The Brazen head was probably the liveliest pub we have been to so far, which was so nice, it had a beer garden that you had to wade through just to get in! For our last stop of the night, we walked into the town center to see the Dublin Portal, where we caught a glimpse of Lithuania and Poland. Sadly it was quite late at night in both of these places, so we didn’t get to see too many people, but seeing the people on our side having so much fun waving and dancing made it al worth it!

The next day, we made our way down to Limerick for the night to meet up with another one of Jordan’s old gaming friends and get dinner together! Even though we stayed for such a short time, I thought Limerick was very pretty and charming. Jordan’s friend mentioned that along with Dublin, Limerick was occupied by the vikings in the past due to its many river connections.

The next morning, we went to a cafe in Limerick for breakfast and a coffee, before catching the coach bus to Galway, our last stop in the Irish Republic before heading back to Northern Ireland. I really like Galway, if I had to choose, it may be my favorite stop in all of Ireland. The city was extra beautiful, being all lit up for Christmas, all of the main shopping streets had lights strung up that seemed to go on for miles, and all of the restaurants seemed so warm in the glow of the lights. Also setting the scene was Galway’s abundance of buskers sending their song down the long streets until you arrived at the Christmas market. This was Jordan and first Christmas market and it was stunning! It reminded me of the state fair, only Christmas themed. After we had thoroughly explored all of the market, we headed to the Quay’s pub for drinks and live music to end the night!

The next day, we walked the salt hill promenade from our hostel until the blackrock diving board, built in the 1950s. Afterwards, we went to the Galway city museum, where we learned about the Gael, the old Irish people living there before the British took over and colonized in the 1500s. Afterwards, we got some early dinner and headed back to our hostel to chill for the evening. We even managed to get in an episode of the X-Files in bed by connecting my headphones and jordan’s AirPods to his computer and squeezing into one of the tiny twin beds to watch.

The next day, we headed back to Belfast in Northern Ireland, stay tuned next week for what adventures we got into during our time here!

xx abby