Ireland

This past weekend, two other friend and I took a short trip to Ireland. After the eruption of the volcano, our flight left the day they started letting flights leave. It was kind of frightening to be flying in the sky after all these particles had been floating around in the air.

We spent the first two nights in Dublin. Dublin was such a beautiful city with a lot of old and new mixed in together. One thing we definitely noticed was the nightlife in Dublin. At 6 p.m., people were already in the pubs singing along to live bands and yelling out of windows.

On the second day in Dublin, we took a tour to the country side in a very small tour bus with 3 other girls. We visited all the typical fields of Ireland, the part of land where Mel Gibson died in "Braveheart", the bridge where Gerard Butler and Hillary Swank meet in P.S. "I Love You" and a lot of other beautiful places.

We also visited the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. There, we learned a lot about the process of making beer and how to pour your own pint. The museum did an amazing job showing the whole process in a creative way without getting too pouring. Seeing all of that definitely makes you appreciate beer more and the people brewing it.

The next day, we took a bus to Belfast. On the bus, we met a lady who was originally from Germany but had been living and being a tour guide in Ireland for 26 years. While Megan and I slept on the bus, Erin talked to her and got a lot of useful information about Belfast. She also did a conversion from Euros into Pounds for us since we didn't have any British Pounds.

In Belfast, we took a long day tour to the north coast and Londonderry because our hostel offered the free tour if you booked two nights in a row. The tour was very VERY well worth it and other than being poured on by rain for 5 minutes in the middle of the cliffs, it was the most beautiful scenery I have seen in a long time.

Londonderry was a very sad town because they're divided between the Ireland side and the British side. There are still bombings and conflict to this day, so being there was very eery and sad.

Coming back to Spain after this short vacation was definitely bitter sweet. Every place I've travelled to that hasn't been on my plans to visit (Ireland, Germany) has become one of my favorite places. I guess it's all about taking a leap and going, even if you don't know much about the place you're going to. It's so easy to fall in love with everything you see around you, the people, the food...all of it!

As of yesterday, the SOS 4.8 Music Festival has started in Murcia and we went last night and are going tonight too. At midnight yesterday, right before Franz Ferdinand started playing, my group of friends started singing happy birthday in Spanish to me and overall, it was an amazing way to ring in another birthday.

The next post will be Ireland photos.