Weekend in Ireland

Kelly, Cort, Andrew and I on the coast of Ireland.

At Malahide Castle, aka my new house =)

Mommy and I at Kutna Hora
I really have not been that great and keeping this thing updated but life has been kind of crazy the past week or so.  So I will try to do a quick update which hopefully won't bore you too much and I'm going to try and put pictures into this one as well.  So here it goes....

So the picture above is of my mom and I when we went to Kutna Hora and it is taken in the St. Barbara's Cathedral.  It truly is a beautiful city and the Cathedral was amazing as well.  The beginning of last week was spent in classes and hanging out with my mom and Auntie Debbie some more.  We went to the Opera on Monday night where they played a few songs from "Carmen" with an orchestra and there were ballet dancers as well.  This is when I started to realize that I don't think that I am cultured enough for the opera and do not have a great enough appreciation.  So my goal is to work on that while I am here.

The most random part to last week came on Tuesday night when I went to my friends room just to pick up a notebook and then ended up booking a flight to Dublin which left early Thursday morning (I think that is what I am going to miss the most about being here, is being able to book a ticket to another country with that short of notice and that fast).  So I said my goodbyes to my mom and auntie Debbie on Wednesday and then jetted off to Dublin on Thursday morning.

The first day in Dublin was spent walking around the city center, O'connell square and beautiful St. Stephens Greens which is a truly beautiful park.  We called it an early night that night and got up early the next day.  We then hopped on a hop-on-hop-off tour bus and went all around the city!  We stopped at Dublin Castle and got a tour there.  After the Castle we found ourselves at beautiful St. Patrick's Cathedral and were able to walk around there.  I think my favorite part about the entire cathedral was the floor.  It has such beautiful designs and patterns and used such beautiful colors in the entire floor.  I found this to be very interesting because in quite a few older cathedrals and churches the floor is usually just a cement or grayish color so it was beautiful to see such beautiful designs on the floor.

After that we found ourselves at none other then the Guinness Storehouse where we learned more about beer then I ever cared to know!  I had no idea that the Irish were truly that excited about their beer.  We went through the seven floors of the tour (yeah, way too long) and then it ended at the top of the building at the gravity bar where we got to look out all around the city and enjoy (or at least try to enjoy) a glass of Guinness (I am really not that big of a fan of it).

We then walked around and found a little restaurant place to eat some fish and chips.  Then we made our way to a irish pub which was quite an enjoyable experience.  We found ourselves a table and were just hanging out playing cards and talking and then around 10 a true Irish band came and they played some great Irish tunes!  That may have been one of my favorite parts about the entire trip was to hear some true Irish music at the pub.

The next day we decided to venture out to Malahide Castle on the coast.  We got a tour of the castle there and it was quite beautiful.  We then made our way to the irish coast where it was truly beautiful!  It was so great to just walk around on the sand and look out over the ocean.  Really, you can just never go wrong with being on the beach no matter where it may be.  That night we went back into town and found some more fun Irish pubs and then left at 4 in the morning to catch our plane.  While Dublin may have emptied my wallets quite a bit (it was a VERY expensive city) it was truly worth it to go and see everything that is there.  

Ok, so there is a kind of long updated on my life.  Sorry the pictures didn't work out so well but my computer is having a hard time uploading them and then they are formating weird, but I will figure that out soon.  Much love and more updates soon!