Dublin, Ireland

For my next trip, I had the rare privilege of having my brother in town to accompany me!  Alex visited me in Europe for a week during his spring break.  He flew into London and stayed with me in my flat for several days and then we travelled together to Dublin, Ireland for a long weekend.  Dublin was then where he flew home from.  To top it all off, it was St. Paddy's Day weekend!

 

 

We really wanted to see the Irish countryside as well, so we decided to take a bus tour that went to the west coast of Ireland.  This is a picture of the Cliffs of Moher on the Atlantic Ocean.  The cliffs had amazing views and also very strange weather.  While we were there, for less than two hours, two storm systems came through.  They appeared just as abruptly as they passed.  After a brief moment of high wind and rain, the skies cleared and the sun came out.

 

Myself near the cliff edge...

This is the Burren.  The Burren is a huge limestone rock-covered area on the Northwestern coast of Ireland.  It was originally the bottom of a tropical ocean before the tectonic plates shifted.  We had the opportunity to walk on the rocks, all the way out to the coast.

Alex and I by the Burren coast

A little leprechaun house!

This is Galway Bay, in the town of Galway.  We had a brief stop here on our way back to Dublin on our bus tour.  We also made a stop in the town of Doolin, where we ate lunch in an Irish pub.  We both had Irish beef stew served over mashed potatoes.

This is the outside of Trinity College in Dublin.  Since we were there for St. Paddy's Day, all the major monuments were lit up green as you can see here.  Trinity College is also Ireland's oldest university.

This is a picture of Alex and I pouring "the perfect pint" of Guinness.  We visited the Guinness Factory in Dublin, where we learned how to pour a perfect pint and then we did it ourselves!  There is a specific way to pour Guinness and we both mastered it.  And then we got to drink it!