Ireland: It's been awhile....

Okay, so I've totally been slacking on keeping this blog up to date, but I'll just fill you in on the past couple weeks now :)

The week after Dublin, we decided, against the warnings of pretty much everyone we talked to, that we would take a day trip to Ardmore, which is a coastal town a couple hours away from Cork. We started the day by walking around a peninsula that looked over the ocean, enjoying the relatively warm weather and the beautiful scenery. It was a gorgeous day, and it felt wonderful to be near the ocean. After our walk, however, we realized we had a good four and a half hours until the bus came back to pick us up from the middle of nowhere. Our plan was to grab a long lunch and linger in the town, but we quickly came to the realization that the entire town shut down for the winter. Apparently, we had missed the grand re-opening of the restaurants and shops by one week, so we not so reluctantly succombed to our only option; spending the afternoon in the only open pub. The frequenters were not to happy with the four American girls giggling and playing cards in front of the fireplace, but...we had fun! It was a day none of us will soon forget.

The weekend after that, we headed off to the Galway area. This was the only trip we've taken that was organized by the school, and although we saved a lot of money doing it this way, I much prefer traveling independently. We left early on Friday morning, and reached the Cliffs of Moher by mid afternoon. They were pretty, but not as extravagent as I had expected. It was nice to see, but I wouldn't go back. After that, we went to the Ailwee caves, which were really interesting. The caves are under a giant rock foundation called the Burren, and used to be the place where bears hibernated in the winter. Inside were waterfalls, both moving and frozen, as well as many other fossils and rock formations. This was one of the reasons I was really glad we went through the school, because we otherwise would never have made it there. Saturday took us to the Aran Islands, which has been my favorite part of Ireland so far. On the island we went to, we were able to climb to the highest point on the island and look over the ocean. It truly was an amazing view, and it felt as if you were standing on top of the world as you stood on the edge of the cliffs and stared at the ocean before you. The island itself was beautiful as well, many of the shops still maintained by the families that owned them, and the people working were very friendly and interested in making conversations with their customers. On our way back to Cork on Sunday, we stopped in Galway city, which was nice. We didn't have a lot of time there, and hopefully I'll have the chance to go back and explore it a little bit more.

Last week, Caitlin and I ventured to Cashel and Cahir, which was a lot of fun. We explored the Rock of Cashel, where St. Patrick practied, and then spent the night in the city. Somehow, we once again found ourselves as the only two patrons of a supposedly popular pub, but it wasn't so bad when the musicians found out we were American and immediately began playing some of Springsteen's greatest hits. The next morning we went to Cahir Castle, which has probably been my favorite castle so far. The grounds were beautiful, and the actual castle was still restored enough so that some of the rooms were furnished and you can still imagine the way the castle would have been set up in medieval times.

This weekend we'll be in London, which I'm pretty excited about. We were originally going to head out to Stonehenge, but we decided against it in favor of exploring the city more in depth. So I'll be back next week with updates and pictures from London!