You cannot imagine how absolutely stunning Ireland is without seeing its sites with your own two eyes. All of us, for all of our differences individually, have agreed on this: we never expected the places we were going to see to actually LOOK like THAT, if that makes any sense.
FRIDAY
1) Depart at 8 a.m.
2) Stop at Moneygall, the ancestral home of President Obama
3) Arrive in Limerick city for a quick lunch stop
4) Stop at Anascaul, a Gaelic-speaking town, for the night. Here we had a two-hour walk around the village before dinner. We got lost, by the way, AND we also got chased for a good two to three minutes by a ginormous St. Bernard who could have eaten each of us whole, I swear it could. Dinner and after-party was at the bar connected to the hostel, and then the rest of the group went to pub crawl the only other two pubs in the village.
SATURDAY
1) Went to gasp at the beautiful Inch Beach! (Can't wait to show you the pictures!)
2) The Rings of Kerry - STUNNING, BREATHTAKING, GORGEOUS, every other adjective along those lines
3) Through the Killarney National Park
4) Killarney for dinner and night activities. Erin and I decided to just go to the Grand Hotel's bars, which promised Irish traditional music. It did fulfill that promise, and we got to talk to nice little old man who was from the town. He talked to us about our program, Obama, the economy, etc. We also had a random drunk man buy us drinks - you know how sexy and hot I look in my track jacket and Timberlands. But it was a fun night nonetheless! Well, excluding the moldy hostel that leaked from the sink.
SUNDAY
1) Bike riding through Killarney National Park! SO SO FUN!
2) The Humble Pie cafe
3) Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone. 106 terrifying steps. You don't get that tired because you're preoccupied without falling down the steep spiraling steps. It still was beautiful, though. And kissing that stone?! What an idea. "Let's just terrify these tourists and make money off of it. BAH HAHA!" Darn. I wish I had such a genius idea.
4) Cashel to see the Castle
5) Dublin. Finally.
I'm tired and glad to be back in Dublin, albeit rainy and cold, unlike the weather we had this weekend - blue skies and sun sun sun! But I'm tired of our group of people and just need some more personal space, a not-so-moldy room, and the company of the Internet.
But oh, how beautiful everything this weekend was! If only the pictures did it justice. Tomorrow, when I'm procrastinating on the paper due on Wednesday, I will upload the panning videos I took so that you can grasp more of how gorgeous everything is to my own two eyes. My photos do them absolutely no justice.
And btw, I apologize if all of my photos look the same. But when you're here, you really can't get sick of the scenary, the coasts and the rolling hills. They are just lovely, aren't they?
Anyway, I'm uber excited that I finally got the guitar machinehead replaced so that I can actually play the thing in tune now.
I did not write everything, but I am so so tired and am hoping that I can have an early run tomorrow morning and then do some hardcore research, as I have barely done any. I need to stop this lifestyle, but I haven't been able to shake it for about nine years now. Too bad.
Two more weeks of this academic vaccum!
As usual, check my FB for all of the photos - I just didn't want to completely discourage you from reading the entry with all the pictures.
