Doobleen! (Day 1)

So my first European backing adventure has come and gone. It was a huge success and I highly recommend visiting Dublin, actually Ireland for the matter. My excursion began on Thursday afternoon. One of my friends, Kristen, and I left for the airport after class and met up with 4 of our other friends once we got there. We hopped on a plane for Madrid, had a short lay over, then arrived in Dublin at 11ish that night. We caught a cab over to our hostel, Kinlay House, on Dame Street next to Christ Church Cathedral and ended up not getting settled until like 11:30 or 12 though. We went straight to bed to get some much needed rest for our PaddyWagon bus tour across the country to the Cliffs of Moher (west coast) at 6 AM the next morning!




Our first stop on the tour was a little castle in Limerick, located on the Shannon River. We hopped out for a quick break to stretch our legs and take a few pics. The castle was really cool and looked straight out of the Medieval times. The picture below is of my little travel group from Valencia.. Molly, Caroline, Taylor, Kristen, Me, and Joe.



Our second stop was at the Bunratty castle.. yet again, more of a pee break but it was nice to see a couple cool things on the way!



Finally we came into the little town a Doolin where the Cliffs of Moher are located. Please make note of what a beautiful day it was. Our tour guide, Don, told us that we were seeing Ireland one of the 30 sunny days in the whole year. Guess we caught a little luck in Ireland! What are the chances.



We were going to buy postcards in the gift shop, but the lady told us that our pictures were better because the weather was so beautiful. But really, these pictures don't even do the cliffs any justice. They are, as we say in Spain, 'in-cre-EEEE-ble'!







The picture below was of my first Irish meal in my first Irish Pub that we went to after leaving the cliffs!



After stuffing ourselves on turkey, mash, and veggies, we traveled along the ocean for a little bit as the sun was setting and ended up pulling over on the side of the road to check out the coastline. Our tour guide said that all of the rocks that we were standing on used to be part of the ocean floor.



The pic above was really scary to take.. it was very windy on that little slab of ocean floor. And it was like a 50 foot drop to the water below!



Saying goodbye to this beautiful day on the Irish coast line was VERY hard, but once we got back, we treated ourselves to fish and chips at the famous, Leo Burdock's! There is a huge list of celebrities who have eaten here including Sandra Bullock, Bruce Springsteen, Russell Crowe, Liam Neeson, Charlize Theron, just to name a few..



To finish off a wonderful day, we went out to Temple Bar, one of the more popular bars, which was about a 5 minute walk from our hostel. It is kind of a touristy area but we managed to have an awesome time. All in all, our first day in Dublin was a huge success!