Ireland

Finally, Ireland arrived! We packed up our one backpack full of clothes including our camera in it, only ONE backpack for the 5 days we would be gone. 5 days worth of clothes does not fit in one backpack, plus a jacket, and your camera. It was not fun trying to figure out what to bring, but I think I just brought one pair of jeans, yoga pants and leggings and that did the trick. Wore a couple shirts the twice but what can yah do.
We hopped onto the Ryan air flight, the flight was only a little over an hour, very short, but very early.

We arrived in DUBLIN, Ireland and got to our hostel. Our hostel was RIGHT around the corner from Temple bar area, there’s an actual temple bar, but the whole area is great. We were only steps away from some crazy nightlight, which was pretty awesome if you ask me. It really came in handy when having to walk home from the Pubs.

We were pretty much on our own the entire time at Dublin, we did some shopping, got a tour bus where we could hop on and off, and just walked around mostly.

Shopping was okay; they had the typical, H&M, Top Shop, Accessories, and Urban Outfitters and so on.

We actually ate at McDonalds our first meal in Ireland I believe, the girls and I had been craving it for a couple days, (I don’t even eat there at home) but we wanted a cheap quick meal, they actually had different food than we do, of course the same food items are there but there were also some different ones too.

We went to see the typical cathedral, castle, parks, and monuments and so on in Dublin. What I really enjoy the most about these trips are more of the experiences and not what you see. I can’t tell you how many cathedrals I’ve seen since ive been here, don’t get me wrong they are all very beautiful, but if I look back through all my pictures, I couldn’t tell you which one is which cause there’s just so many. That kind of goes the same for castles and their remains, I know some of them, but there’s been a lot. I enjoy interacting with people, meeting people, going out, being on the streets and just enjoying the Dublin environment.
Which then leads to the Dublin pubs, which I’ve already talked about in a previous “good times in the UK” Post, so I won’t go too much into them, but let’s just say they are a GREAT freaking time. There is a lot of tourists drinking, but there’s also some locals. I’m pretty sure I’ve met people from ALL over the world, literally. One thing I loved about Dublin is that there’s live music EVERYwhere. Pretty much every pub had live music or a live DJ, and there were even live music on the streets, just everyone singing, playing guitar or whatever it may be and enjoying life. Loved it.

This picture is of the president of Irelands home!

While in Dublin we ofcourse went to the Guinness brewery which was pretty cool, i wish we got to see more machinery that actually does the work and less mueseum like stuff, but it was still awesome. we also got free beer ofcourse, and i actaully dont not like guiness surprisingly, i dont like beer that much, ill enjoy one on a hott day sometimes a cold brew sounds great, but dark beer i never really have wanted to try, but guinness actually has a lot of flavor. :)

Here are a couple night shots from Dublin the 2nd night

We also took a day tour through the outskirts of Ireland, on a big bus by a family owned tour company, they took us to their own farm out in the country, did a wee bit of hiking, watched a country cow chase a girl (she wasn’t in our group) laid in the mountains for a couple minutes with everyone being quiet, saw a castle/remains, pretty landscape etc.

Then we went to Galway Ireland. When we got there, we had already known there was a little festival going on, but we did not know our Hostel would be right there in the middle of it. There is a main street where all the food, shops and pubs are on and where the festival was, and literally our hostel was RIGHT in the middle of it. Which was fun cause we didn’t have to walk far, but also trying to sleep it was pretty damn loud. We didn’t par take to much in the festivities because most of the people were pretty beat and exhausted from all the traveling the past few days, I was ready to go out and have a good time but I wasn’t going to go out by myself. Taylor and Britt went out the previous two nights so that was fine they didn’t want to go out again, I only went out one night in Dublin and the 2nd night I did night photography. I think it was a Latino festival or something like that, lots of salsa dancing, lots of live music. The second day in Glasgow we did some shopping, walked the farmers market and just relaxed. There wasn’t too too much to see in Glasgow but it was pretty regardless.

After Glasgow we headed back to Scotland, but we took a bus that was privately hired for us and the driver (Michael) drove us through the Country Wales. I really wish we had more time in Wales but we just didn’t, we got to spend a few hours there though in 2 or 3 different towns. It was beautiful there and the people were very friendly. We stopped in a smaller town by the river where the huge castle was, probably biggest castle I saw the entire trip. We got ice cream there and it was SOOO good, I got toffee fudge, probably one of the best ice creams I’ve ever had 
Then Michael drove us through England (not out of the way, that’s just the way you went to get back to Scotland) which was cool. Really pretty, lots of farms and just open land. We stopped for Dinner there as well.

SO that day we departed from Ireland, Stopped in Wales a couple times, Stopped in England and ended in Scotland, that’s FOUR countries in less than 24 hours. Pretty crazy! Don’t think to many people can say they were in four different countries in one day, just something I can jokingly brag about down the road 

Here are some more just random pictures from Ireland and the trip!


PICTURES FROM GALWAY AND WALES COMING SOON! TAXI IS ABOUT TO BE HERE AND I SHOULD GO BRING MY LUGGAGE DOWNSTAIRS AND GET READY :)

The highlands!

May 27-29th my time was spent in the beautiful highlands in Scotland. We were apart of a 3 day bus tour through macbackpackers which is located out of Edinburgh. It was more time I would have liked to spend on the bus, and literally my knees were jammed into the seat infront of me, so it was more than uncomfortable. But it meant I got to share the mountains with the sheep and see breathtaking scenerary and climb a mountain and all that fun stuff.

We stayed at a hostile in the Isle of Skye which was where most of tour was based out of, it was in a really great area, not much there but it was really pretty. Sail boats, sunrises, mountains in the backround. There was a pub we went to called Saucy Marys, which our whole group went to for dinner which led to drinks and dancing at night. Dinner..wasn't great, drinks were! A few of the people went back but we stayed for a nother round as soon as DJ Double D came on and turned on the disco-like lights. We were just singing along to the songs, drinking and having a good time and I guess I thought it was necessary to bring it to the dance floor, so i went out and started a team shannon dance party. After the song (ET Katy Perry ofcourse) I sat back down, then right away the girls pointed to a new girl dancing on the floor and so I obvs had to join her. She asked why the girls were'nt dancing with me, she literally went to the table, grabbed Brittany by the waist and dragger her out of the table, it was pretttty unexpected, but hilarious. Then the other girls followed and we danced for a bit, and the asians were taking videos and pictures of us, kinda weird. But then I went n dragged one of the asian girls on the dance floor, after a lot of fight she joined us. We danced for a good bit. I Was drinking Strongbow cider all night, i think 2 or 3, and while I was dancing I just felt it rumbling in my stomach and was like umm I need to step outside to make sure I didnt vom. By then the other girls met me outside and we went back n fell asleep.

Here are some pictures of the trip!

this is the uncomfy bus.

This is the sunrise in Isle of Sky--this was right outside of the Hostel. I woke up early before the group to go rent a pair of big boots to wear hiking so my feet dont get soaked, and I saw this outside and ran back to get my camera, which I was happy about :)

Couple more from that early morning sunrise!

..annd a couple more!

this is The old man of Storr, its a big (well technically its not an actually mountain cause it doesnt meet the height cut off) but to me, it was a mountain, and we climbed it. At this point my 18mm lens was broken, so I couldnt get a whole shot of the mountain cause I didnt have a wide angle view, and my range was limited with my 55mm so this is a more up close shot

The hike up was so beautiful!

this is just me in the highlands around another place we hiked around

pretty rainbow <3 there were lots of rainbows because it would rain on and off a ton, then the sun would make a quick appearence, then itd rain again, and so on

This is LOCHNESS. Its a big lake, Loch means Lake, so technically you cant really say lake lochness. Bit its pretty well known around the world!

this is what a lot of our time there looked like, curvey, winding roads through the highlands, just a lot of pretty landscape. I really did love it here!

Overall I really enjoyed the highlands, I wish we spent less time on the bus, but we really did see a lot of sights. It was just so pretty there, and the highlands go for miles and miles, we drove for like 3 days and saw different parts of the highlands the whole time. I would deffinitly recommend it to anybody heading to Scotland :)

Good times in the UK

We’ve had some pretty good times here in the UK. I haven’t talked to much about them. I may have touched on a few stories before so if repetitive, ignore them!

I have done two Pub crawls here in the UK, one in London, and one in Edinburgh. A pub crawl is where you pay a flat rate, say 15 Euros or pounds or whatever, and you go on basically a tour of a few of the best pubs in town, like 5ish or so. You don’t have to pay a cover charge at any of the bars or pubs, and they give you a free shot at each pub that you go to either when you get there or before you leave. But, you do have to pay for your drinks other than that, which is never good.

The London pub crawl gave us a T-shirt to wear during the crawl, and then markers that people can write on each other’s shirts throughout the night, which in the end was a bad idea cause obviously things are written on your shirt that you wouldn’t allow you to wear it in public, though I found out that the marker came off first wash, perfect! Most of the bars in the London pub crawl were in Piccadilly circus (its an area in London) which was Amazing! I had an absolute blast and danced and drank the night away, met some really cool people and didn’t even need to get really drunk. I stopped drinking about 2 hours before we went home, so that was good because usually I am not very good at the, stop drinking when drunk thing, but so far on the trip I’ve been doing great with that :)
Heres some pictures from the London Pub crawl!The last one is on the way back to the hostel with our pizza in the cab :)

The Edinburgh Pub crawl didnt give us T-shirts, but that’s okay because it was for my girl Taylor’s 20th birthday! The whole group of girls on the trip went out for her birthday which was super awesome; we went to dinner in Edinburgh first then headed to the bar! It was on Memorial Day which was a Monday, so the bars weren’t super crazy, but still a good time. I met a few good people, few boys and had a good time with the girls.! Half of the group left a little bit earlier, but we still all had fun, and no drama! Here are some pictures!

The first one if of the whole group on the abroad trip, minus the only boy with us

Brittany, Taylor and myself <3

Taylor and I

Britt being her crazay self that i love!

These are some Jag Bomb shots, they put like tons on the bar, the redbull n jag, put the jag shot on time, and then taylor flicked the first cup and it had a domino affect and all the jag shots fell in the redbul and we all drank them :) Yum!

some of us girls at one of the pubs!

Rachel and I

this is me infront of the place that "Harry Potter" was written!!

this is only funny becasue our check out check in list for the pub crawl was writtin in Crayola Crayon haha

Then there is Dublin, which I haven’t blogged about yet, but while I’m on the subject ill talk about the night life there, which I must say was a-mazing. Our hostel was right around the corner from the “temple” area of Dublin and Temple bar and such, the whole street is just extremely wild, crazy and fun at night. We didn’t even have to walk a block to have a good time. Our first night out a couple of us girls went to a first bar which had a really great bar but was super packed and we wanted to explore around some more. Then we went to another bar which was fun, lots of people, cute boys and drinks flowin! We decided to pre-game that night because we knew drinks were expensive, so I drank a half a mini bottle of vodka (just a little purse size bottle, was like 6 shots total or something) and I just was NOT getting drunk I felt completely immune to the 6-7 shots I had just taken, so that itself was kind of a buzz kill itself. The 2nd buzz kill was that I finally toughen up and decided to get a drink at the bar and I order a “rail” vodka soda, she pours a shot into it and hands me a small bottle of tonic water to pour myself, I hand her a 5 euro bill, and she basically says “honey, its way more than that” I was like WHAT holly, how much? It was like 8 Euros which is over $10 USD, I apologized and said I’m sorry but I can’t pay for that because threes no way I’m paying 10 dollars for a shot of rail vodka when I just paid 10 dollars 2 hours earlier for a bottle of vodka haha. Then I ended up leaving the bar with Rachel to walk a block or two back to the hostel to drink the rest of the bottle, (the bottle really isn’t that big, it was like 4-5 shots more) So we got back to the bar and it helped a bit, I didn’t get really drunk at all, but it was a perfect little buzz I guess you could say, at least it got me on the dance floor where my and 3 of the girls spent the next 3 hours dancing, screaming songs at the top of our longs and having a damn good time with everyone else at the bar.

this is us after the long night of dancing and drinking in dublin :)

Dublin and Piccadilly Circus in London have amazing night lives and I would love to go back some day, but then again there are so many other places around the world I want to go to as well :)

We obviously have gone out more nights then these, but these were the major drinking nights instead of more casual drinking, I guess I’ve only gone all OUT these three nights, but I can’t say I haven’t been drinking at dinners and lunches and stuff! I hope to go out with the girls another night in Edinburgh before we leave, and then there is still Amsterdam, which is self explanatory!

PS this is Taylor Britt and I eating the BEST icecream ever, its called "99" or something, really good icecream with some sort of chocolate flake stick in it. YUMM--