Woah! My two and a half week European adventure was incredible! I am so fortunate and grateful that I was able to take such a trip. I know it is something that not everyone is able to do and I am very humbled by that fact and by all of the things I saw, did, and learned abroad. I was gone from January 7th and returned on January 25th. I traveled with my roommate Olivia from Key West and we met many people along the way! I’m just a little jet lagged now but catching up on everything including blogging, sleep, and all things life.
It was a little bit of a rough trip on the way over: we had to leave my house at 3am (thanks mom for driving us to the airport!!!) and flew to Chicago for a 12 hour layover… Please don’t ask how that happened, I’m still trying to figure it out. Anyways, while we were in Chicago, we left the airport and grabbed lunch in the city with my cousin. With the windchill, the temperature was -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Ohhhhhhh my goodness!!! It was soooo cold. We chose the nearest place off of the subway to eat lunch! Then we went straight back to the airport.
We got into Dublin around 9 am on Thursday morning and didn’t waste any time exploring. We checked into our hotel right away to drop off our stuff so we could hit the town. We stayed very close to Trinity College so we were really right in the heart of the city. First, we checked out Trinity College: we walked around the campus and went to the Old Library where they have an exhibit on the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a very famous illuminated manuscript of the four gospels which was created around 800AD. One of the reasons that this was so important was because Christianity was what brought literacy to Ireland. The exhibit was downstairs and upstairs was a beautiful old library (hence the name I guess).
The Old Library
From here, we walked around the city a little bit more and stopped for some fish and chips for lunch. Next stop was the Dublin Castle which was comprised of three different areas of interest: the excavation room, the chapel, and the staterooms. The excavation showed where the old foundations and walls of the castle stand but also how they were built on older foundations of a previous castle. The chapel was very pretty and the staterooms were too. There was even a throne room. Being exhausted from our time change and travel, we took a short nap and then went to the grocery to grab some food for dinner.
Dublin Castle
Day two started off with the National Gallery which had works from Caravaggio, Monet, Rembrandt, and Diego Velazquez, as well as many others. We then went to check out the National Library which wasn’t really anything too spectacular and then on to the National Museum of Archeology. Here, there was a lot of Irish garb, items from the Vikings, and a lot of gold and amber jewelry.
National Museum
For lunch, we went to the grocery again for some soup and then made the trek out to Kilmainham Gaol which is the old jail. It was pretty cool to see and learn about. We took a bus back into the city center and went to a dinner show with traditional Irish food, music, and dancing. This was a really fun show to watch and we really enjoyed the food too! After, we went to an old church called “The Church” which had been converted into a bar and got a Bailey’s coffee. It is pretty common for old churches to be converted into new uses and we saw a lot of that in Scotland as well.
Irish Music at the dinner show
“The Church” Bar
On the third day, we took a bus tour on which we saw one of the ladies we were sitting next to at the Irish dinner show. Small world! The trip took us out to County Wicklow and we stopped first at Glendalough National Park. We took a little walk around the valley where there were two lakes and saw a wild goat! It crossed the path right in front of us and I will admit, it made me a little nervous being so close!
County Wicklow
There is also an area where St. Kevin ended his pilgrimage and created a small settlement with a monastery and chapel. Though some of it is in ruin as it was abandoned a couple hundred years ago, we could see the cathedral, kitchen, tower, and cemetery. The tower was originally created to be taller than the trees so people who lived in the land around or who were traveling could see the tower and know that there was a monastery there. The scenery was so beautiful here!
County Wicklow
We got back in the bus for about five minutes and made a pit stop at the Wicklow gap which was extremely windy. It was a small pass between mountains that sat between the midlands of Ireland and the coast. It was a great lookout spot. On our way before the stop, our guide pointed out where scenes of P.S. I love you, Braveheart, and part of the TV series Vikings were filmed.
The next and final stop of the bus tour was a small town called Kilkenny. Our guide took us on a small walk through the city and pointed out a couple of important features and gave us some background on some of the places we saw. We ended the walk at the Black Abbey which is called that because it was an abbey of the Dominican Monks who wear all black. This city was settled by the Norse people and was one of the first towns that was settled and wasn’t on the water.
Kilkenny Church – we climbed to the top of that tower!
After we ended the walk at the abbey, we had about two hours of free time before we got back on the bus. Olivia and I went to the old medieval church and climbed the tower to the top and got some great views of the town of Kilkenny. We grabbed lunch at a cozy pub on our walk back before we had to get on the bus again. On the bus ride itself, we saw tons of sheep (they basically spray paint a mark on the females to show if they are pregnant or not!), farmland, and cute stone houses and churches scattered among the rolling green pastures. We even passed through a small little town called Hollywood. They even have their very own Hollywood sign!
More.. https://emilytheexplorer.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/eurotrip-2015-part-one-ireland-and-scotland/
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