And Ireland… the rest of the days!

And then I got back to Dublin… Oh Dublin… I loved Northern Ireland, but Ireland is something else… I loved Dublin! The first day back to the Republic of Ireland, however, we took a tour to the west coast of Ireland to check out the Cliffs of Moher and Galway County. The west coast of Ireland is magnificent – much like the rest of Ireland by the way, with a lot of green, water and lovely cows and sheeps.

This cliffs are a magnificent sight and definitely worth a trip there. I had been to Galway before, but Galway county is lovely. Finally of Friday, the 17th, we finally had some time to see Dublin before my mom’s work started the next day. I spend the next 4 days walking around Dublin, going to some museums and shops, and although is not London, I could picture myself living there 🙂 .

Temple bar is amazing, Trinity College is great and The Book of Kells and the old Library are definitely worth their money.

The music on the streets, the great food and the nice people make Dublin a place to return to and soon. The only downside to Dublin is how expensive everything is…

Other positive thing about Ireland: Guinness! I’m a huge Guinness fan, it’s my favorite beer, so I was in heaven for my stay there… I reached the most amount of beer I ever drunk during a diner… 1.5L of guinness!

We finished the trip with a day tour to  Dunmore Caves, Kilkenny Castle and Glendalough. The caves I could have done without, a lot of steps down and then up and not a lot to see. Kilkenny is absolutely beautiful and Glendalough is breathtaking….

My trip to Northern Ireland

It’s been 17 days since I last wrote on this blog… I’m so sorry… my time just ran out from under me! The reason is fairly simple: I was (still am) away from home… although technically I’m at home right now! I finally got some vacations and went to Ireland :D! OMG, I had been in Ireland before in May, but I love it, I loved it then, I loved it more now. So we got to Dublin on October 13^th and on the very next morning we boarded a train to Belfast, for a couple of days in Northern Ireland, a day of going around Belfast, and a second day of a Game of Thrones tour (and the Giant’s Causeway). Yeah, you read it right: GAME OF THRONES (freaking) LOCATIONS TOUR!!!! =D

Belfast is still a little overwhelming. They are trying really hard to let people know that it’s a safe city, with no more “troubles”, but as you’re walking along the murals and the walls that separated the two religions, you can’t stop thinking that the segregation is still not a thing from the past, and that the “troubles” weren’t that long ago…

Still, it’s a beautiful city. We only did a one day tour and went to the Titanic exhibition – that left me wondering: why are they so proud of a ship that went down?! Also, do you know that the Titanic studios, a.k.a. where the Titanic was built, is now the home where they film Game of Thrones? I have to admit that I was kind of scared of doing this tour, I stopped watching GoT at the end of season 2, and I didn’t know if I would recognize all the places, but yeah, I did.

The Caves at Cushendun

This is the place where Melisandre gives birth to the shadow baby, in the presence of a very frightened Davos Seaworth.

Ballintoy Harbour

This is Pyke Harbour!!! And Pyke’s beaches all around it. Pyke Pyke Pyke! They even have a poster of Theon Greyjoy.

Quarry at Larrybane

Renly’s camp was set there, this is where we first saw Brienne!

The Dark Hedges

A.K.A. The King’s Road… where Aria flees dressed as a boy at the end of season 1.

Giant’s Causeway

Ok, this is not GoT related, but still really impressive, right?

Tomorrow I’ll post about the rest of the tryp =) !

An unexpected trip to Galway, Ireland

Sunday, about a week ago, late at night, I came across the news of a symposium being held in Galway, Ireland, in just a few days (23 to 25 May) and so I was torn between the fact that I really wanted to go, and the fact that the symposium was only 4 days away!

So, I did what any normal person would do: I searched the flights, hotels, prices and so on, and within 24 hours I had all of my trip booked and I was ready to go!

Thursday, 22nd May, after a long day, I got on my way to the airport to make my way to Dublin, where I got around 00:30 AM… Next morning, after 2 and a half hours on a bus seeing nothing but green fields, sheeps, cows and horses, I got to Galway =) !

Galway is such a nice little city, I really liked it. The symposium was well worthed, even if in the middle of a lot of interest things was stuff that I really couldn’t care less about… (sorry Geology!). But all in all, well worth my very long trip to Galway, mainly for Prof. Svante Pääbo‘s public speech on the Neanderthal genome, which had Ireland’s president Michael D. Higgins in assistance.

Prof Pääbo is the director of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the director of the The Neandertal Genome Project.