Ireland Travel Diary: Welcome

My first couple of days in Ireland are over, but it has been so much fun! I flew into Dublin and met the group that I would be on tour with. We went to a lot of pubs, saw some amazing live music, and was blown away by the beauty of Dublin.

First Things First

Once I landed, I met with my tour group. We transferred to our hostel, and immediately went to get some food because everyone was starving. Our tour guide had made some suggestions as for where to go, and we ended up eating at The Brazen Head, which is a pretty famous 800 year old pub and apparently the oldest pub in Ireland. I had a traditional Irish meal, lamb stew, and it was delicious. The pub atmosphere was really fun, exactly what I pictured an Irish pub to be, and it was a great way to get to know some of the people on the tour.

After the Brazen head, we had a walking tour of Dublin and a little welcome mixer now that everybody had arrived. After the mixer I watched a live band at our hostel, and then called it a night. The next day we had a tour on the bus of Dublin to be able to see more of the city! It is a really fun city with a lot of charm and a ton to see and do. We stopped at Phoenix Park, Trinity College, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and a lot of other places as well. Then we took a drive to Glendalough.

Glendalough

The drive took about an hour, and it was gorgeous the entire way. Glendalough, is also known as the Valley of Two Lakes. It is home to a Monastic City that dates all the way back to the 6^th century. The remains that are there are very impressive, and really bring you back in time when walking around them. After walking through the remains, you can take a walk up to the two lakes. The walk was gorgeous, and the weather was perfect, but the views when we got to the Upper Lake were breathtaking.

Back to Dublin

Once we left Glendalough, we headed back to Dublin and took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. It is something that everyone should take a tour of when visiting. Guinness is a hard and heavy beer to get down! The next day, there was an opportunity to drive up to Belfast and tour the Titanic museum. I decided I wanted to stay behind and explore more of Dublin. A couple of other girls on the tour decided not to go as well. We walked around the city and found some amazing places to visit. All the locations were random that we wouldn’t have found had we not been walking around aimlessly in a city we knew nothing about.

The second night in Dublin, our tour guide took us to some of the pubs that he liked to see some live music. It was a great night, with great music, but it was also our last night in Dublin before heading to Killarney.