Greetings from the beautiful island of Ireland!

It is now my fifth and final day in this incredible country. The people here have been beyond friendly and the views are extraordinary. Not to mention the food is delicious and very fresh. There is an unbelievable amount of history throughout the country with its castles, abbeys, and old sites in general. Let me walk you though day by day.

Day 1- We arrived in Dublin around 9am after a flight that was a little over six hours. There is a six hour time difference between here and the Midwest so that made it hard to adjust at first. I was quite tired after not sleeping much on the plane, and the fact it was 3am back home didn’t help either. When making a time zone change, such as this one, it is recommended to stay up as long as you can because napping will only make it harder to adjust. We rented a car so we could travel around the country as we pleased. I slept a little in the car ride from Dublin to Kilkenny so I would have a little energy, but that was it.

In Kilkenny, we visited the Kilkenny Castle which was built in 1195. The architecture was incredible and very elegant. It was on the smaller side for a castle, but it had an art room with a multitude of portraits of people who had lived there so that was very fascinating. It makes one wonder what living there must’ve been like. I was most interested in the library and all of the old books on the shelfs. The books were in very good condition given their age and I think there is something truly beautiful about an old book. There was also a chest in the the middle that locked and we were informed it was a tea chest where the expensive teas were sorted and kept. The grounds were beautiful as well, with a rose garden and a courtyard.

After walking around the castle, we headed to grab a bite to eat at a local gastro pub, Left Bank. This pub happened to be an actual banking hall that was turned with a nightclub upstairs. The decor within had a Victorian style to it and added to the lively atmosphere. I had a salmon dish, which was very fresh and made for a great first seafood meal.

One thing that is different from the U.S. is tipping. In Europe, tipping is not expected or as common. The credit card slips don’t even have the line for an option to tip. After waitressing this summer, this was something very different for me, but I knew it ahead of time.

Next, we headed down to Cork, where we would be staying the night. After taking a walk along the docks and landings, we headed to Bosun, a local pub, for dinner. This restaurant had a very quaint and snug feel to it, yet it didn’t feel cramped. The decor was a lot more costal, but still classy. The food, again, was excellent. I had a seafood medley, which consisted of prawns, mussels, shrimp, and four different types of fish. The freshness and quality of the food here is not to be beat. Everything is sourced locally and a lot of the produce is labeled as organic, homemade, or farm fresh and it definitely shows. After every meal, tea or coffee is the cultural norm so while my parents split a dessert, I was content with my cup of tea. Our hotel was a modern place called Rochestown Park Hotel.

Day 2- We headed towards Doolin, but made a pit stop at Limerick for a bite to eat. We stopped at a local fish and chips shop called Donkey Ford’s. It was a fast food set-up, but you could tell that the food was fresh. After that visited Dromoland Castle. This castle, first built in 1014 and rebuilt in 1543, underwent some major renovations in the 1960s to be a luxurious hotel with a golf course and spa. Although the public can only walk around the common areas on the first floor, one can tell how marvellous the place is in all its grandeur. There is a gated garden that is home to a small green house and a multitude of “garden fairies”, made craftily of wire. The property had some very old, very big trees that were unique to what I see in northern Wisconsin. After this short hour or so break, we were back on the road to Doolin.

Side note about the roads. As many people know, Europeans drive on the other side of the road. Here, that is also the case, but the roads are a lot narrower than I would’ve expected. The speed limits are a lot higher than what would be acceptable for such roads in the U.S. which made for some very, shall I say interesting, drive time. All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t have to drive; however we didn’t see an accident the whole time so that says a lot about the drivers here.

Now, getting off track for a moment, one of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride. It was released in the late 80s. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It is very cheesy, but oh so good.

How does this relate to Ireland might you ask? Well let me enlighten you. In the movie, there is a place called “the Cliffs of Insanity” and just as you might suspect, they are in Ireland. However, their true name is the Cliffs of Moher, but they are insane. They span for approximately 9 miles and at their highest point they are about 214 meters (or 702 feet) high. So of course, being a fan of the movie, and of breathtaking nature, this was a stop we were for sure going to make.

Let me tell you, they did not disappoint. At first we went to a little pier just North of the Cliffs and looked out at them from a distance, before going to the actual Cliffs. Then we headed to the more commercialised site. There is an admission fee of €8 to get in, which wasn’t bad considering the amazing views that waited for us. It was only a short walk to the initial look out and then there are guard-railed paths in either directions. We headed South first and made it to the end of the guardrails and then you can continue on (most people do). The path is a little tighter and it is no longer part of the vistor center boundaries, but there are still large stone slabs to be a boundary. Once we got a little further there was less of a barrier and you could get closer to the edge, with caution. I think this was one of my favorite parts of the trip because it showed the true splendour of Mother Nature and the beauty of the Earth. After having our moment on the edge, we made the trek back and headed a little further North than the starting point to O’Brien’s Tower. Once we had checked out the tower, we decided it was time to grab dinner. We put our name in at Glas, a small upscale place in Doolin, and went to Fitzpatrick’s Bar to listen to some live music before dinner. The local live music was fabulous between the vocals, keyboard, guitar, and fiddle. After about 45 minutes we headed to our dinner, which again, was excellent. This was my first none seafood meal of duck. We finished with a dessert of an almond brittle and ice cream which was absolutely delicious.

Day 3- We got an early start to the day to get to our hotel in Oughterard, a little outside of Galway to the North. The hotel, Fiddle and Bow, we stayed at the night before offered an amazing included breakfast with a totally charming set up. Then we started on our way. After arriving at the Ross Lake Hotel, a home from the 19th century that is similar to a bed and breakfast. We quickly got settled and headed to our afternoon activity of coasteering. Stick with me now, it’s not something random I made up. We booked through Real Adventures Connemara and according to their website, “Coasteering is a combination of adventure swimming, climbing, scrambling and cliff jumping where you will be exploring gullies, caves, cracks and different rock formations created by the sea.” We met our guide and followed him to a beach in Ballyconneely to get geared up with wetsuits, gloves, helmets, and life vests. We walked a bit across the hills until we reached the entrance point and he went over some safety tips. From there, we made our way into the water, climbed multiple rock formations and were able to jump off about five different cliffs; the largest one being about seven or eight meters high. I did this jump twice and I absolutely loved the adrenaline rush. This experience, although I couldn’t actually document it, will always be something I will remember due to its uniqueness and challenging activities.

Our guide, I’ll call him S, was very helpful and overall just a chill guy. We were able to learn a bunch of interesting facts about the country from him. Such as sheep have the right of way on the roads, and some of the land is the public’s and everyone shares it so the cattle and sheep just roam around. If the herds go too far or one strays aways, then someone will call the owner, but otherwise the locals just leave them be. When we asked S about sports he said that two of the biggest sports were Hurling and Gaelic Football, which are traditional Irish sports that had previously been banned in the country. I hadn’t heard of either sport, but they both sounded fairly intense.

Next was dinner and we headed to a local seafood place that S had recommended to us called Mitchell’s. It was a small, quaint place with two levels, but it was wonderful. I had a traditional fish pie and it wasn’t like anything I’ve tried in the states before. After dinner, we retired back to the hotel. It has been owned by the same couple for almost thirty years and they were some of the nicest people I’ve meet. In the evenings, the sit in the library/sitting room and talk with their guests about the history of the place, or Ireland, and anything else.

Day 4- We took this day a little slower and mainly drove around site-seeing. We started off by having a very fresh, home breakfast at our hotel and then headed Diamond Hill to do some hiking, but it ended up being too rainy and foggy to do the two hikes we wanted to. Instead, we briefly walked around the little museum with different rock types found in the area. We then left to go to the Kylemore Abbey, but we just viewed it from afar and didn’t pay the admission. The Kylemore Abbey, previously Kylemore Castle, was established after a group of Benedictine nuns fled Belgium during World War I (Fun fact, I have some Belgium heritage). After that we just drove around Connemara looking at all the hills, lakes, and landscape formations that this part of the country had to offer. We had dinner at Powers Bar in Oughterard. It was an authentic Irish bar with excellent traditional food. We finished our night off by sitting and talking with the owners of the hotel.

Day 5- Today we left the West coast of Ireland and went back to Dublin. We started our morning off in Howth, a village outside of Dublin along the coast. We walked out on the pier and to a little lighthouse before it started raining. We took cover in a local food joint called King Citric that had fresh lobster, fish and chips, and more seafood. After that, we headed to the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. This is building holds the scrolls of the four gospels of the Bible and other famous medieval texts. There was so much history and old text in the one small building on campus it was amazing. After finishing up there, we went to drop off our checked bags early at the airport and then went to our hotel to relax before our early flight tomorrow morning to Amsterdam.

Now to address the endeavours to come. I am so excited, but also kind of nervous. I think I am most excited for our first stop in Poland because I will be doing a South to North tour that will be so full of history. I am Lithuanian and German, which are two of Poland’s neighbors, so I may have some Polish as well, but mainly I think there will be some overlapping history that I will find intriguing and relatable to my heritage. I am also looking forward to meeting people from so many different backgrounds both on the ship and in ports. In addition, this will be such a unique learning environment that I’m curious to see how everything will work, as well as what the similarities and differences will be compared to a traditional classroom setting.

As far as nerves go, I think what I’ll struggle with most is a lot of different culture exposure that I’m not familiar with. What I mean by that is I’ll be in a lot of different places that I don’t know a lot about and it’ll be eye-opening in regards to what life is like. I think that’s also what I’m looking forward to though because I will be able to learn so much about the world in general. I also am a bit nervous about life on a ship, because although I don’t get sea sick, it will be a lot different than a dorm where I basically have free roaming on and off campus. Since I will be able to get off in ports though, I think that will help.

Anyway, next I’m off to Amsterdam for a few days before embarkation so stay tuned for the Netherlands and a beginning to life at sea!

With Bated Breath, Abby Lynn