The Airport Caught on Fire!

The last place Alec and I visited on our own was Rennes, France. It's on the northern coast, and the goal was to visit Mont Saint-Michel. It's a French class staple, and was the only thing really out of the way in France that I wanted to visit. Rennes had an airport, and was not too terribly far away. We got off of our plane and noticed that this airport only had one terminal. After waiting for ages to get my bag, I kind of had to laugh. It's so quick to get bags off of a huge airport, but took forever in an airport with one terminal. 

Sick in London

After a night on the bus, we woke up stiff and groggy. AND it was Alec's birthday!!!! Unfortunately, I had woken up already not feeling the hottest. But by the time we had arrived in Scotland and started finding out way to our AirBnb house, I was rapidly getting worse. Since we'd arrived in town so early, we struggled to find anything open to get coffee and breakfast. We finally stumbled across a teeny tiny (and I really mean tiny) cafe and had a quick fry. Then we started trying to find our way to the house.

The Bushmills Monsoon

This actually might have been my favorite adventure after leaving Dublin. Go figure, we were still in Ireland! But that's just it: it was an adventure. After exploring Giant's Causeway, we came across a cliff walk. The entrance that we were at was closed, but we hopped over the fence and ventured on! It was lightly raining when we started off, but it didn't take long for the storm to start. It was a downpour from then on, and it did not let up at any point.

Giant's Causeway

The hostel also had an ideal location. We were just down the road from the Giant's Causeway, one of the most famous places in Ireland. We were only there for two nights, so our whole day was spent exploring the area nonstop. We started off in the morning with a full English breakfast at the hostel, then headed over to the Causeway. It was beautiful, and really neat to witness such a rare natural occurrence. But I must say, from the photos I'd always seen, I expected it to be much larger than it turned out to be. It's one of those funny things where you have an image in your mind already before you get there, and it's not that reality isn't just as great, it just doesn't fit into that mold you've made. 

Saying Goodbye

The hardest part: Leaving Ireland. Even though we stayed in Northern Ireland for a few days after, it's a whole different world from the rest of Ireland. Leaving Dublin meant saying goodbye to the bank, everyone I'd met there, UCD and everyone I'd met there, and most horribly of all, leaving Sara. My best friend arrived in that last day and we took him out to a pub in Dublin. The next morning we had an amazing breakfast, and then headed up North for a whole new adventure.

Doppelgangers & Dun Laoghaire

Our one last hurrah in Dublin was a Dublin Bay cruise. The cruise started just a couple blocks down and across the Liffey from where I worked. And I never even knew it was there all summer! On this glorious cruise, I was fortunate enough to meet the real life doppelganger of my cousin, Tyler. He knew enough English to communicate with us, but there was a lot of "huh?!"s and "I have no idea what you mean"s.

A Capricious Trip to Cork

My favorite weekend trip was, by far, my trip to Cork with Sara. All of our other excursions had been decently planned out, with at least a general idea of what we wanted to do. But this time, Sara and I just went with it. We got ourselves some bus tickets, survived the creepy kid who looks like he fell asleep on the toilet, and headed south to explore. 

Kilmainham Gaol

On the same weekend that we revisited Wicklow, we took a day trip to check out Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced kill-main-ham jail). It was freaking awesome. I wanted to spend way more time in there than the short tour allows. I would totally suggest anyone visiting go. It's not too far from the city centre. Oh, and the lack of Sara in these photos is because she ditched us for Scotland!

Horseback Riding in the Wicklow Mountains

Next on the agenda was the fun part: horseback riding! Somehow I ended up with the most stubborn horse: Panda. So we spent a lot of time chatting with one of the employees in the back and having stern discussions. Unfortunately a lot of the time we were going pretty fast so there was no way I could take pictures of the incredible views. But I did get the chance to snap a few!