Alec and I both celebrated our birthdays on this trip. We're a year apart in age, but only a week apart in birthdays. I chose to be in Cinque Terre (pronounced Chink-Wa Tehr-Ay) for my birthday. If you don't know where this is, google it before you even see this post. I wasn't on a boat, so I couldn't capture beautiful pictures of the colorful buildings on the coast. But the pictures that are out there are fantastic!
We arrived in Nice in the morning and set off to check into the hostel. Unfortunately, said hostel was not so close to the train station. And my suitcase was definitely broken, but still as heavy as ever. It was too early for check in so we dropped off our bags and changed into some clothes that were much more appropriate for the new climate.
After a massive rain storm, we took a little "day trip" over to Monaco while we were staying in Nice.
Before we left Paris, we made a quick side trip over to Versailles. I had always heard so much about the amazing grounds, so I was excited to see for myself.
In the previous post, we started exploring Paris. While we were so central to everything, we decided to see some of the main sights. Which meant starting off with a better view of the Eiffel Tower in its entirety. So we crossed headed across the Seine. Then, we decided to hit a few more well-known sites while we were in the central area for it all. Which meant accidentally coming across the Arc de Triomphe. How were we even stumbling across these massive landmarks?? Right before our second stumbling it started to rain. And then, it started to pour. Which made me smile pretty hard because one of my top three fave movies of all time is Midnight in Paris. In the film, Owen Wilson's character talks about how much he loves Paris in the rain. And I gotta say, it was pretty awesome.
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.
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.
Our next stop was Scotland. Early in the morning we left from Derry to Glasgow. Eating weird fish and touring the highlands.
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.