Vacation Time!

The past week in France was a vacation week for my school and for most of the country, thus I took advantage of my week off of classes to go places I had never been! My itinerary looked like this: Dublin on October 23rd until the 26th, Madrid from the 26th until the 28th, and Barcelona for the remainder of my trip until the first of November. In a few words, this trip was epic.


First stop: Dublin. I had never been to Ireland before and did not really know what to expect. I must say now that Ireland was one of the most memorable trips I know I will have for a long while. The island is truly amazing. Dublin itself is an interesting city with a lot of pride. Everyone drinks Guinness with meals or at the pubs and so naturally, we chose to visit the Guinness factory right when we got there. The place was really big. We learned a lot about the process of how beer is made and got to taste Guinness beer, as well. Money well spent, I do recommend it if you find yourself in Dublin. The city was expensive and so the plan was to get off the beaten path to go to the countryside on the other side of the island, where we would find the wee town of Kilarney. Online, we found that train ticket should have been around 30 euros so we had our hostel booked in Kilarney and planned out our trip accordingly. When we got to the train station, however, we found that the tickets were 78 euros roundtrip! We were torn as a group but I knew that I did not want to spend over 100 US dollars if there was a way to avoid it. So in the end, three of my friends went to Kilarney and three of us stayed and made other plans. Honestly, it worked out way better than we could have ever planned. The hostel in Kilarney did not charge us for cancelling, thankfully, and my two friends and I were also able to find a hostel in Dublin that allowed us to stay in a full apartment for only 5 euros more per night than we were paying before! This place was phenomenal – full kitchen, fireplace, family room area, balcony, bedroom and full bathroom. For 20 euros a night! We knew that we didn’t want to stay in Dublin the entire time, though, so we bought day passes on the local rail to explore the nearby coast. 4 euros for unlimited rail pass the first day, and 8 euros the next – what a deal! First up was Howth, the gorgeous suburban, countryside city along the northwest coast of the island. Howth is amazing. At the docks you can buy fish to feed the seals which congregate near the edge and wait patiently. They are amazing animals! The city itself is very pretty and around every corner is a new photograph waiting to be shot. We first visited the weekend market which supplied fresh baked goods, farmer’s fruit, and other knickknacks for cheap. There, we bought our dinner for that night since we had a full kitchen to cook it in. Next, we hiked up a trail to the peak of the hill overlooking the city and there we had a ¾ view of the entire ocean. Breathtaking is the word to describe the moment when we reached the peak. Utterly breathtaking. Looking back on the pictures, I realize now that they do nothing to truly give an accurate visual of what we were seeing. The cold wind blowing at the top of the hill over the tall grass and stone cottages which lined the streets below, the warm sun shining over the bluest ocean I have ever seen with nothing but green landscape behind us – this was honestly a highlight of all my travels. We enjoyed Howth a lot and all recommend it to anyone making their way to Dublin or Ireland. The next day we went on the other side of the northwest coast below Howth to a city called Dun Leary. On this day we felt a little more adventurous and wanted to get the most out of our unlimited rail pass during the day (and that we did). We started in Dun Leary but walked through four different towns before we realized that there was no turning back, so we caught the train in Dalkey where we ended up. Between Dun Leary and Dalkey, we had a lot of photographic moment, as well. The coast was cold but we lucked out again with the sunny weather. At one point of the bay there is a small beach called 40 Point where every day of the year, even on Christmas, you will find people swimming. They had to be crazy! The water felt extremely cold and they were only wearing small bathing suits! I was impressed. Dalkey was a city a little farther inward from the coast but had a very cute town center with small restaurants and shops in cozy stone buildings. I found a restaurant that we planned to visit again for dinner but when we finally did, it had closed. Eager to finally try traditional (but cheap) Irish food, I convinced my friends to continue onward on the rail to find a place to eat dinner. I remember I had seen pretty postcards from a city named Killiney, so I figured hey, they must have cool places to eat. It was a couple stops over and so we went for it. My friends, tired and hungry had high expectations and it was all on me if we didn’t find anything. So when we got there, there was nothing. It was a very residential area that was hard to navigate at night. Some young teens passing by (they had to be 13 or 14) luckily helped us out a bit. We asked them where the ‘city center’ was and they said ‘well, there’s a wee village down there, just follow the lights’. When he said ‘wee village’, he meant it. Two pubs and a gas station. I wanted to be like a local and believe me, we were amongst only locals at the pub we chose. It was one of those situations where we walked in the pub and everyone looked toward the door (likely because they know everyone in the town), saw us and thought, hm, they aren’t from around here. The people, nonetheless, were friendly and we had some good food. I did forget to mention, though, about our first night in Dublin. The first night (after the Guinness factory) consisted of us making our way to the Temple Bar pub where there was amazing live music and tons of smiling faces having a jolly ole time. Really, it was like one big family in there all belching out the lyrics of the songs in unison for the whole night. Nothing beats great music with great company! So right off the bat, I knew I would love Ireland.

It’s getting late here and I need to make dinner! Thus keep posted for my blogs about my trip to Spain, where I visited both Madrid and Barcelona. The trip only got better as it went on!