{Ireland} Dublin

As I was planning my trip to Europe I was most excited about visiting Ireland. And of all the cities in Ireland, I was most excited about Dublin. Oddly enough, looking back I would say that Dublin ended up being my least favorite city of the entire trip. I found it dirty and rundown, and the down economy of Ireland seemed most evident in Dublin. That being said, I know quite a few people who absolutely love Dublin and would want to live there, so it might just be me. It also didn't help that my one full day in Dublin was the day where my cold was at it's worst.

In total, I spent a day and a half in Dublin. After dropping my stuff off at my hostel I made my way to the Guinness Storehouse to be a classic tourist and take the tour. I've already learned quite a bit about how beer is made in the past, so the tour wasn't incredibly informative for me, but it is very well done.

 

Included with the tour you can either have a free pint of Guinness in the Sky Bar (the top floor room with 360 degrees of floor to ceiling windows and great views) OR you can get a free pint by taking a lesson on how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. I opted to go up to the Sky Bar since I thought it would be cool to get a good view of Dublin, especially because I was still trying to get the lay of the land.

Since I was there on a quieter day in the middle of the afternoon, and since I hadn't redeemed my free pint yet, they told me I could go do the Perfect Pint class as well, so I ended up going back downstairs to get my pint there. There's a very exact process to pouring a pint of Guinness..let me tell you.

 

 

 

That pint of Guinness was actually my first pint ever of the stuff, so I can't tell you if it actually tastes better in Ireland than it does at home. I've been told that it does.

After The Guinness tour I explored Dublin for a couple of hours just to see what was around. I knew I'd go check out Trinity College and some of the things in that area the next day, so I didn't worry about hitting any of those sites during my first afternoon. It was at that point that I realized that Dublin just doesn't do much for me. I can wonder around aimlessly in London and enjoy every minute of it, but in Dublin I just wasn't intrigued for some reason.

During my full day in Dublin I went on a walking tour of Trinity College and then got to see the library and finally, the Book of Kells. The walking tour was great and the tour guide was funny, so I enjoyed that. The Trinity College library is something that appeals to a library lover like myself, but the Book of Kells was a bit of a letdown to me.

One thing that I will say about Dublin is that it does have some great options for shopping. Both Grafton street and the mall there were fantastic and I enjoyed spending time in both of those places.

Something that I learned with the hostel in Dublin is that the mega-hostels can potentially be really annoying when there are large groups staying there. There was a group of high school students from Sweden who were making tons of noise in the hallways at all hours of the night. I've learned that smaller hostels can be much more peaceful and homey. Although the hostel in Dublin was very modern and had individual outlets and lights built into the headboards, so features like that can be nice.

As it turns out, the smallest hostel I stayed in was the one I was headed to next, so the contrast was heightened. More on that next!

{Ireland} Galway

It's been a while since I last posted about my trip to Europe. I still have my Ireland and Scotland blog posts in draft mode because they're waiting for me to add pictures to them. I really need to get rolling on this, so hopefully I'll get the rest of these up in the very near future.

When I started thinking about going to Ireland the top things that I wanted to see were countryside and castles. I wanted to see nature and natural beauty and lush greenness. I knew that getting over to the west coast to see the Cliffs of Moher was a must-do.

Since seeing the Irish countryside wouldn't be possible without some mode of transportation, I decided that a tour bus was the best route. Renting a car for one person wasn't cost effective, plus navigating random country roads by myself did not appeal to me at all. I was a bit leery of the tour bus route since it seemed so touristy and lacking in flexibility, however this specific tour ended up being one of my favorite parts of the entire trip.

I booked a two day tour package through the Galway Tour Company. For a few extra bucks they'll pick you up in Dublin instead of Galway, so that made my life even simpler. It's about a two hour bus ride from Dublin to Galway and I spent the time peacefully napping on the comfy tour bus. I also quickly found out that taking a tour bus is ideal when you're traveling alone. I met two girls who were traveling together and eventually met up with them in another city in Ireland later in my trip. I met a group of six girls who were traveling Europe together for multiple weeks and hung out with them quite a bit. I also met a girl who was staying in Dublin for a month and she and I hung out at the Cliffs of Moher and took pictures for each other. So, not only was the tour company itself wonderful, but it was a great way to connect with other travelers.

Also, after doing all of my own planning for every little detail of the trip, it was really nice to sit back and let the tour company do all the work. I just had to get off at the right times, and the rest of the time I got to sit back and watch the Irish countryside go by while listening to fantastic bus drivers who were immensely entertaining.

I got to see a lot of cool things during the two tour days, way more than I could hope to cover in a blog post. I'll try to cover some of the highlights though.

The most important thing is that I discovered my favorite place on earth during the first day of the tour. It had been overcast all morning, but when we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher in the afternoon we got a glorious dose of sunshine. I only got to spend two hours there, but it was hands down my favorite two hours of my entire trip. I am in love with that place. The natural beauty is stunning and none of my pictures can truly do it justice, but here are some pictures anyway.

 

See those tiny little people in this picture? (click on the pictures to see them larger) That gives perspective to how big these cliffs really are.

Included with the bus tour was a 1.5 hour walking tour of Galway itself. Like both of the bus drivers I had, the guide was awesome and I loved every minute of it. I also loved every part of Galway that I go to see (although I'm sure I saw mainly the touristy part).

I went to a pub that was recommended by one of my co-workers (my company has an office in Galway) and ended up being there on a night with a fantastic band and some great Irish dancers. I absolutely loved the music.

The Burren - amazingly unique landscape.

Cong - An adorable and very tiny town that's completely surrounded by rivers.

Kylemore Abbey - this is a pretty classic Irish tourist destination and it's absolutely stunning.

 

 

Ross Errilly Friary - this ended up being our last quick stop right at the end of the second tour day and I took some of my favorite pictures here.

 

Amusingly enough, the hostel that was included as part of my two day tour ended up being my favorite hostel in Ireland. I spent hours upon hours researching all the hostels for my trip, and the one hostel that I didn't actually pick myself ends up being one of my favorites. Funny how things like that work out.

Next stop - Dublin!

{England} Oxford & C.S. Lewis

When my sister and I planned out our time in London we knew that we wanted to take at least one day trip out of the city. We looked at a lot of different options, but the one that ended up sticking was Oxford. I thought it would be cool to see the university, and my sister was thrilled at the idea of checking out anything CS Lewis related.

CS Lewis' house in Oxford is still there today and it's actually used as a place for university students to come and live in for a year or so at a time. I think there are maybe 4-6 students living there at any given time. If you email the foundation ahead of time you can come and tour the house. My sister managed to get that setup and we did a tour of his house with about 6-7 other people led by one of the students living there.

Now I have to admit that even though I like CS Lewis, I really did't know that much about his life. My sister and this one guy who were on the tour were huge fans and were practically giddy with excitement throughout the entire thing, so that was amusing. If you're a CS Lewis fan and ever end up anywhere near Oxford, I'd highly recommend going to see his house if you have the time. I greatly enjoyed it and the guy who did the tour was awesome. He had a lot of great info about the house and CS Lewis' life and was just generally fun to talk with.

After touring the house my sister and I ended up going back to the center of town and wondered around aimlessly for awhile. We ended up grabbing lunch at what I would call a Chipotle equivalent. I've discovered that these exist in every place you go. While I was in Boston there was one, in Philly there was one, in Dublin there was one, in Oxford there was one. Sometimes they're small chains and sometimes they're a lone entity, but the restaurant concept is everywhere. It's somewhat become a tradition of mine to try them in every city that I go to. So far nothing has lived up to my beloved Chipotle.

Oxford is a beautiful city, but having done zero research about what to see there left us a little bit underwhelmed after lunch. We ended up walking by a sign for a guided walking tour and jumped on that idea. I'm so incredibly glad that we did as it's one of the most enjoyable things I did during my entire time in England. The next timeslot almost got cancelled because my sister and I were the only ones signed up, but at the last minute two other girls showed up. We got to do the entire tour with just four people and our tour guide.

As soon as the guide learned that my sister and I were interested in CS Lewis he pointed out anything that he could in the city relating to Lewis, so that was pretty cool. What I really loved about the walking tour was that we'd pop into a doorway that I almost hadn't noticed and then suddenly we'd be in a gorgeous courtyard of one of the colleges. And then we'd pop through another doorway and we'd be in a stunning chapel. If it weren't for the guide I think we would have missed out on some of the real beauty of the university, not to mention I never knew how the colleges all worked to make up the entire University and it was cool to hear about that from someone with a lot of knowledge.

To end the day my sister and I stopped for a beer at The Eagle and Child. For anyone familiar with Lewis and Tolkien, you'll know that this is the place where those two (and others) met to have drinks and discuss their writing. My sister was so excited about being there that she almost couldn't drink her beer.

Oxford ended up being the only true trip outside of London that we managed to do, so it was my only real taste of English countryside. It was a nice contrast to the hustle and bustle of London and I'm greatly looking forward to seeing more of England's beautiful countryside next time I can get over there.

{England} Mind The Gap

I looked at my calendar today and realized that I arrived home from my Europe trip over a month ago. It feels like it was just yesterday but at the same time I feel like a year's worth of stuff has happened since then. I had intended to blog about the trip either during the trip or right after, but that obviously didn't happen. But nonetheless, here we go...

I have to admit that going into my trip that England was actually the least exciting for me of the three (technically four) countries that I was going to visit. I knew I would enjoy seeing London, but I saw it as something basic that you really should do on your first trip to Europe. It wasn't something that I was giddy excited about. Little did I know that I was going to fall in love with British culture and just London in general. It's an amazing city with an endless list of things to do and lots of fun quirks. Even though they speak English like us, British English uses fun words in place of some of ours and I find those differences amusing. I also found the stereotypes about Londoners being reserved and unfriendly to be largely inaccurate. It didn't hurt that every single guy had a hot British accent, since you can't really go wrong with that.

I spent four and a half days in England, about half of which I actually spent in London itself.

Some of the highlights and/or things I did in London itself were:

(click on pictures to see them larger)

The Tube - I loved it! I've decided that living in a city with mass transit is something that I need to make happen at some point in my lifetime. I love figuring out the best way to get from point A to point B, I love maps, and I loved spending a lot of time walking around a city instead of driving. It's no wonder that a lot of Londoners are quite slim.

 

A bike tour - I wanted to find something to help me stay awake that first day when I arrived in London. My sister went to Edinburgh for 24 hours, so I was on my own as far as keeping myself awake. The night before I the trip I stumbled upon the idea to take a bike tour and I'm so incredibly glad that I did.
It was a "night tour" (however, it wasn't dark until after 10 PM) that covered most of the major sites south of the Thames. I loved exploring the city on bike (left side of the road anyone?), the tour guide was awesome, and it was just me and a family of four so it practically a personal tour. It was a fantastic way to orient myself with the area (my hostel was by the London Bridge) while also keeping me awake. Plus, the tour ended with a stop at a local pub where I got to have my first beer in Europe. It was a house ale that was utterly fantastic and I'm incredibly bummed that I can't get it again.


Big Ben - Of course I had to go see him. I got some better shots of just Big Ben, but this is one of the only decent shots I got that actually has me in the picture.






Speaking of classic pictures...

Continuing on...

British Museum - I've concluded that I'm not much of a museum person. As much as I can appreciate the fact that this museum has some pretty awesome stuff in it, I was over it in about five minutes. The wall to wall people didn't help matters either.

Science Museum - However, I did greatly enjoy the Science Musuem. I guess it's just the engineer in me. The Google exhibit in the basement was fun, so make sure to check that out if you go.








Buckingham Palace - I happened to accidentally end up around Buckingham Palace about 20 minutes before the changing of the guards, so I decided to stick around and watch. I ended up squeezing into a front row spot when someone left, but it was on the side that seems to be further away from most of the action. While it's fun to be able to say that I've seen the changing of the guards, I actually left partway through it because I got bored. And then I couldn't cross the street to get back to the Tube station because of course that was when the horse procession went down the street. But it is cool to be able to say that I've seen it. One more touristy thing that I can check off!

Thames River - There were multiple times during the trip where I got to walk (or bike!) along the Thames and I loved it every time. When I go back to London I want to rent a bike and just bike along the Thames for a good long bit of time. You can see some major landmarks along the way, not to mention that at night you see all of the locals hanging out at various pubs and you feel like you get a true idea of what life is like in central London for the locals.

 

Kensington Palace - I was trying to avoid doing too many things with entrance fees since there are so many free things to do in London, but I'm glad that I went ahead and paid for this one. I felt like it was a deep dive into the royal history of England. The garden was beautiful!

 

Hyde Park - One thing that I wish I had spent more time exploring while in London were the parks since they seem to have so many amazing ones. I only got a small taste of Hyde Park, but it was fantastic. Next time I'm in London I want to rent one of the bikes and just spend a couple of hours exploring around Hyde Park.

 


Westminster - I had intended to actually go inside of Westminster, but as things turned out it ended up only being something we stopped by briefly. Someday when I go back I want to see the inside of it, since I'm sure it's as stunning inside as it was on the outside.





More about the rest of my time in England to come soon!