Ireland

So we made it to our first stop: Dublin, Ireland. We were obviously pretty jet lagged for the first couple days but still managed to get a hostel booked and figure out what we wanted to do while we were staying there. We were in Dublin for 3 days and we had a great start to our trip. Dublin is a great city, mostly because of how compact it is for being such a big city at the same time. You can easily walk to most places within the city, which made things really convenient for getting around.

We'd spend most of the day adjusting to our new surroundings and exploring some of the closer sites to get a feel for things. We got some groceries, utilized the fully stocked kitchen that our hostel had, and began to settle in. After some amazing bangers and mash (and Guinness, of course) we decided to come up with a game plan.

We knew we wanted to visit either the Jameson Distillery or the Guinness Brewery, and after seeing how close we were to the Jameson Distillery we decided to check it out.

It ended up turning out to be a great tour and we learned all about the Whiskey making process and got a free glass of Jameson along with some other whiskey tasting as well. 

After visiting the Jameson Distillery we decided to check out one of the pub crawls that night to see what the night life had to offer. Most large European cities offer various pub crawls that you can do nearly every night to get a good feel for the night life. These are awesome things to check out and I highly recommend them, especially on a weekend. We did this on our second day which ended up being a Friday night, so the turnout was great and we had a big group of really fun people with us. We all went out to Temple Bar, the area in the city known for its nightlife, packed with pubs and clubs, and it was an amazing time. We had a ton of fun on the crawl and met some awesome people which was a great start to the trip.

After that night we still felt like we needed to see more of the city, and we had decided to go to Galway and the cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland the next day, so we saw a poster for a free walking tour of the city (also common in many big European cities) and we decided to check it out. It ended up being just Alex and I on the walking tour so we had our own personal tour of the northern end of the city. It was a great tour and Peter (our tour guide) really knew what he was talking about. We felt much more accomplished with how much we had seen of Dublin and spent the remainder of that day walking around a bit more, checking out Trinity College (the local University, which we fell in love with) and then calling it a night.

The next day we woke up early to catch a tour bus to the cliffs of Moher and Galway, where it would drop us off. It was a completely guided tour which was really cool, since the guide had a ton of good information to share. About halfway through the 3 hour bus ride to the cliffs of Moher we stopped in Moneygall, which is apparently where Barack Obama's ancestors were originally from.

It was one of the most random things ever and in this super small town off the highway there was Barack Obama Plaza, which was basically a really nice gas station. I thought it was hilarious and I'm glad we stopped there randomly. 

After some more driving we got to the cliffs of Moher. These cliffs are absolutely amazing. I couldn't believe how large they were, and there was a long hiking trail you can take right along the cliffs with some sections that didn't even have any handrails! It was terrifying but we survived. We walked around the cliffs for a bit and then hopped back on the bus and headed to Galway. 

Galway is a cool little town. What's really cool about it is the young student population that exists there. I heard something around 40% of the population being people under 25! So there were a lot of students walking around. We did a little walking tour of the city when our bus dropped us off and then we checked in the hostel, stalked up on groceries, and figured out what we wanted to do. Galway was a nice place to relax, and because it's of course smaller than Dublin there wasn't as much to see there outside of the main road in the city, which is full of really cool little pubs and shops leading from the main square to a river.

Cliffs of Moher

We checked out some of the pubs, saw a really nice cathedral, and walked around one of the universities there. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the hostel playing Gin Rummy, which we are now obsessed with and use it as our main source to kill time. We also like to play this game in pubs over a Guinness or Irish Coffee, which has become our new favorite activity. 

Apart from some quick walks around town the only big thing we did there was check out an absolutely amazing show called Trad on the Prom, which was an Irish music and dancing show featuring some of the top Irish musicians and dancers in the world. It gave us the best taste of Irish culture we could have had, and it was one of the best shows I think I've been to. Overall, we did like Dublin better but the atmosphere in Galway was really nice and I definitely enjoyed my time there.

This was definitely a good first trip for us and a great start to our adventure. I really picked up on a lot of travel related stuff that I remember knowing back when I was studying abroad, so a lot of it really came back to me. This trip definitely gave me the confidence I needed to continue to travel as much as I can, and knowing I can still be around Alex all the time is pretty refreshing too!