Dia duit! That's "hello" in Gaeilge, or Irish =] As you know, I spent this past week in Ireland with some other students in the Honors Program...it was absolutely AMAZING. I shall attempt to describe some of the amazing-ness of the experience for you over several blogs, that way you can see more pictures. We left Boston (after a thrilling 6 hour layover) on Sunday for Ireland at 7pm (EST) and arrived in Dublin at 7:30am Monday morning, which was a little weird...while on the plane I saw the sun set and then rise...within 3 hours of each other. Crazy. We had some time before we were supposed to be at our first stop, so our wonderful tour guide Jerry took us to a beach in Howth, a small town just outside of Dublin and right on the west coast of Ireland. We stretched our legs and enjoyed the fresh air after 7 LONG hours stuck on a plane, and me and a friend even stuck our bare feet in the Irish Sea! It was reeeeaaaally cold! Jerry then took us to "the summit," a huge hill near Howth where you could see for miles from the top; it was beautiful walking among the flowers and seeing the water and everything. [picture included] It made us excited for the rest of the week when we would get to tour the countryside! After that we were off to Malahide Castle, a small little castle just outside of Dublin where we had tea and scones for breakfast. yum! We returned to Dublin for lunch in a pub (really the only good places for meals all week: good food and great atmosphere!) and to do some walking around before heading back to our hostel. The girls crashed and fell asleep around 5:30pm after nearly 36 hours without sleep, but we were really confused when we woke up and it was light outside -- had we slept through until the next morning? Nope! It was 9:45 at night, and still the sun was shining! Ireland is so far north that it stays light from 5:30/6:00am until 10 or 10:30 at night, it was wonderful because you could cram as much stuff into the day as you wanted! I'll leave Day 2 for the next entry so as to share as many pictures as possible =]
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