A Kaleidoscope: Visiting Friends & Ireland

We have had a busy couple of weeks!! Robyn and Brian came to stay with us for a week and we got the chance to hang out together exploring Den Haag, Delft and Amsterdam together, it was fantastic! We also had a lot of time to relax and catch up with one another, it was wonderful to spend some time with them after a year away from each other. We took a bike ride to Delft and showed them around the town and went on a tour of the mausoleum for the royal family and climbed the huge tower of the church. SO many stairs in a curvy, tiny tunnel of a stair case. Pretty sure we were all a little dizzy and tired by the end of that climb, especially after the long bike ride to Delft (20km from our place so 40km once we had biked back). We then spent some time hanging out in cafes, shopping, and going to a dueling piano bar in Den Haag before we went to Amsterdam for a night where we stayed in a Bostel!( a hostel on a boat) it was cool, but very, very small as you will see in some of the pictures. Overall a really great week together!!

And then on to IRELAND! Robyn and Brian left for their cruise last week Wednesday and then on Thursday we flew to Dublin. We met up with Alicia there (she had arrived a few days earlier) a spent the week exploring Dublin and some areas of the country side, we made it to Galway and the Cliffs of Moher and Dun Laoghaire.

In Dublin we went to the Guinness storehouse to see where and how Guinness is made and of course it was complete with a pint of Guinness at the top in the Gravity bar, which has some of the best views of Dublin. We visited Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison, Trinity College, the Chester Beatty Library and the St. Patricks Cathedral. We even had the opportunity to attend Evensong at St. Patricks which was a service on Sunday with a choir from England singing mostly with some readings and a brief sermon from the Archbishop of Ireland (Anglican Church). It was really cool!

On Monday we took a bus to Galway (about 2 hours outside the city) and went on a tour of the countryside complete with a visit to the Cliffs of Moher, which was absolutely amazing!!!! Ireland is such a beautiful country, with so much to see! The pictures do not do it justice, but they give you an idea of the beauty we witnessed. We were a bit sad that we did not have more time and are thinking that we might go back at some point so that we can see more of it. We also had really great weather while we were there and so that was awesome, given that this time of year Ireland is normally very rainy and we actually just missed some severe rain storms only a few days before we arrived. A gorgeous country in all weather though, I would highly recommend it.

On our last day we took the train to Dun Laoghaire (P.S. I Love You reference here ladies;), which is a super cute town on the coast with some beautiful ocean views and nice areas to walk around. Unfortunately we did not run into Gerard Butler, but it was a nice place to visit, much less busy and more relaxed than Dublin (which is crazy by the way, so busy, although we were there during reading week for universities and a bank holiday weekend). Also another note in Ireland children trick-or-treat for money (in pubs no less) instead of candy...very interesting to say the least.

We walked a TON, drank lots of Guinness, ate bangers and mash (Joel's new fave food) & irish lamb stew with soda bread (a fave for Alicia and I), searched for irish wool sweaters with success, and heard live music every night! A fantastic trip!