Last week was a week of adventure, a lot happened. Angie and I took a plane to Ireland from Monday through Thursday, then we met up with Ashley in England for Thursday through Sunday. However, we really didn't travel by ourselves on the planes a whole lot, Danny was on the same plane on the way to Ireland and Michael and Ashley (of course) were on the same plane on the way from England back to France. There were so many things that happened, it'll be hard to get them all down, but here goes!
On Monday, it was hot and sticky in Tours, so we were glad to get to Ireland and cooler weather. We met Angie's friend Martin at the airport and his friend Graham (sp?). They took us for a walk through Dublin, showing us the sights on our way to our hostel. The hostel was nice, it was clean and there was free internet and nice common rooms. The only thing that bothered me was that the rooms were co-ed. So the first night Angie and I were in a room with 4 other guys. It wasn't that bad since they didn't come in until after we had gone to bed, but it still bothered me. The second night it was just the two of us, the third night there were two other guys in our room.
We saw the main sights in Dublin and took a lot of time to go shopping, it was really nice just to take our time to see the city. The main sights we saw were the Spire, the General Post Office (where the Easter Rising took place in 1916), Trinity College (where Oscar Wilde attended), and the National Gallery (art museum) and the National Museum (history museum), all free. The second day in Ireland we took a bus tour of the countryside around Dulbin, including the Wicklow mountains, Loch Tay and the Guiness estate, and Glendalough (where there are ruins of ancient Celtic churches). It was really interesting because the tour guide gave an overview of Irish history, and how those places played a part in that. It pieced things together for me since I knew a little bit about Irish and English history, just not how they coincided and all the details.
The next day our flight left at 5 in the evening, it was gross and rainy, and we had to check out of the hostel at 10 in the morning. So we spent a couple hours in a cafe at a book store on the main street before going to the airport and spending most of the day there looking at all the stores and things. We met Ashley at the London Stansted airport, where she had been waiting for 6 hours since her flight arrived that afternoon. The transport to the hotel was kinda hairy, since it was an unmarked van with a crazy driver who was either German or Austrian or something. The staff at the hotel didn't speak much English either, which was strange seeing as we were in England. But the room was nice and clean and I got a great night's sleep there.
London was kind of a blurr, we tried to see as much as we could in as little time as possible and still couldn't see all we wanted to. In two full days we saw: Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben (actually St. Stephen's Tower, Big Ben is the name of the bell within the tower), the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Chinatown, St. Paul's Cathedral (where Angie climbed over 500 stairs and Ashley and I climbed over 300 because we were too scared of the last set of stairs), and the Tower of London. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London on Saturday, which was the 4th of July. It was a very strange feeling to be spending Independence Day in the country from which we declared said independence.
All of my photos are up on facebook now, so you can go see 'em. I just have to finish adding captions and fun history facts about all the places I saw and all that. I know that this is an awfully long blog post that is not really that entertaining, but I promise to recount some fun stories later on. Right now, I just want to keep everyone updated on what I'm doing.
Au revoir!
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