Spring break began as many of my trips have—by rising with the sun in the wee hours of the morning in order to catch a bus to get to the airport everyone loves to hate—Frankfurt-Hahn (it’s not the real Frankfurt Airport but this smaller airport made just for RyanAir that’s located out in the middle of nowhere so we have to take a special bus to get there). As soon as we land in Dublin, Ireland we take a 4 hour bus through the beautifully green countryside to get to Galway where we spend the next 2 days. Galway is a cute little coastal town with plenty of shops (all which close around 5pm, as we learned too late). The first morning we were there Mary and I got up early and went for a run out to the lighthouse. We saw the sun rise over the ocean and it was gorgeous! One of those times when you just feel God all around you. Then it started raining on us so we had to head back to the hostel. That day we all went on a bus tour that went through the countryside of Ireland, through the Burren where we saw 2000 year old tombs and Viking paintings, then ended at the Cliffs of Moher (the cliffs of insanity!!!). Only by the time we got to the cliffs it was completely pouring rain and the cliffs were so foggy you couldn’t see a thing. But it was still a great tour. We stopped for lunch at a pub where I got seafood chowder that had a nice little calamari body in it. Mmm, he was tasty (I stayed away from the mussels though). For dinner we ate at a little place and had some amazing Irish food! I got shepherd’s pie and Bailey’s cheesecake to share for dessert. So good!
We went from Galway to Dublin, which was also a great town. We took a (free!) walking tour with a great guide that looked like a hobbit. We stopped for tea in a cute little café called Queen of Tarts, where, much to my surprise and enjoyment, they were playing Buena Vista Social Club! Made me think of weekends at home. Ahh.
After 4 days we left Ireland for Scotland. We headed to the small college town of St. Andrews. It was on the coast and beautiful. Not a fast food joint in sight (the city wants to preserve the historical value of the town). We stayed on the St. Andrew’s university campus with a friend’s friend (so nice of her to let us crash in her room!) which was right across the street from what’s said to be the oldest golf course in the world, which is also located right along the beach where they filmed part of Chariots of Fire! We spent a lot of time just wandering around the cute little town and drinking tea. We drank a LOT of tea. And because Mary’s friend knew the people in a certain tea shop we got really good tomato lentil soup for free!
We continued our little journey by busing from St. Andrews to Edinburgh, which was an amazing city. Our hostel was in an old church which LOOKED really cool but was actually cold and noisy since our rooms didn’t have ceilings (luckily we were only there one night). We ate the most amazing baked potatoes at this place called The Baked Potato (go figure), saw the Edinburgh castle which sits on top of a hill, and (most importantly) drank coffee in the café where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter! Haha. That night for dinner, though, I had the most unfortunate run-in with “fishcakes” due to my pressuring waiter and the fact that they didn’t have the salmon I originally wanted. These fishcakes I ended up with tasted like, as my friend Nick so eloquently put it, ‘like pulling a shrimp out of the ocean and licking it.’ Yum. I made a quick stop in a cute store to add Skivvies in Scotland to my world-traveling underwear collection (haha), and then we were headed back to Heidelberg!
It was really nice to be able to spend time in both a smaller town and the capital of both Ireland and Scotland. It was a great spring break!
