Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Ireland-Post 5

I cannot believe my time in Ireland is almost over. It feels like I just got here, but it also feels like I've been here forever. I'm excited to go home, but I'm really going to miss living in Cork, especially after visiting Dublin last week. Dublin is just crawling with tourists, and it's a really busy city. Cork is the second largest city in the country, but it feels smaller and quieter than Dublin did. Dublin was great for museums though. There's so much to do there. On Wednesday, after arriving and checking in to Trinity College, we went to see Christ's Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. After that, we split off into groups to go out and see some of the other sites of the city. We were given a list of things that we 'had' to see for class, and anything else we had time for. We used our afternoon on Wednesday to go to the Guinness Storehouse. It was a cool place, but there were way too many tourists to really enjoy the experience. Also, Guinness is NOT good. I almost choked on the tiny amount they gave us to sample. I am not a fan at all. On Thursday we got in line early to see the Book of Kells, which was so cool. After that, we went to the Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced jail), which was a sobering experience since we had just talked about what went on at the jail in class the previous week. After the jail, we went to an unfortunate museum of natural history and then on to Dublin Castle, which was beautiful. We found a bar that had relatively cheap cocktails and Irish dancing, so we ended our day there. Friday, I wandered around Dublin until it was time to go to the airport. I spent my weekend in the Netherlands, visiting friends in Amsterdam and family in Friesland (northern province). That was an amazing experience, and I'm so glad I got to go and do that. Yesterday was our last day of lectures and today was our last day trip. We went out to the Dingle Peninsula, which is the westernmost point in Europe. It was absolutely beautiful. It was also gray and rainy, which is what an Irish summer usually looks like. Tomorrow and Friday we have presentations and then our program is over! I'm going back to the states on Sunday. It's crazy.
Loves
(and here comes an obscene amount of pictures. I'm sorry)
Christ's Church

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Guinness Storehouse

Trinity College

The Long Room (library at Trinity where the Book of Kells is held)

Kilmainham Gaol

Museum of Natural History (awkward photo)

ballroom at Dublin Castle

Friesland

Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)

Museumplein (if you look closely, you can see me in front of the 'r')

On the Blauwbrug over the Amstel River(Amsterdam)

Dingle Peninsula

Dingle Peninsula

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