My Month in Europe - Ireland Day 1

Well the trip of a lifetime that I spent all year looking forward to has come and gone!

I honestly had the best month of my life.

I saw so many incredible things, met truly amazing people, and grew personally in more ways than I ever could have imagined!

I am so excited to blog about the whole trip, but you'll have to bear with me as I'm sure it will take quite some time to gather photos and get everything posted!

I'll start here with IRELAND!

We left early on September 23rd for the Salt Lake City airport where we met our group of 32 students that we would be traveling with. I could tell right away that we would all get along and once we were sleep deprived and packed onto a bus for multiple days we would all be super close - almost too close! 

My mom made this cute little banner that had all of the flags from the countries that we would be visiting over the next month!

She sure sent us off in style including a delicious breakfast!

We were just a little excited, that's for sure! 

We had a great view of New York City as we flew into JFK.

This is right over Central Park!

It's been six years since I visited New York, and I would love to go back soon.

Friends were made rather quickly, and we were all so anxious to get on that flight to Dublin! 

This was before the flight to Dublin even took off, and we were in for six hours of complete misery.

It was impossible to sleep on that plane and I just wanted to cry because I was so tired.

But, it was worth it when we finally approached our destination and flew over Ireland, which is stunningly beautiful and green.

Right from the airport we headed out to meet our bus driver for the first part of our trip, Bart. 

I should also mention that our bus was a Mercedes Benz, and this was my first taste of European class! Those people sure know to to dress, eat, and drive in style! 

Bart drove us around Dublin and we were able to get a real taste for the history. 

I immediately fell in love with the architecture.

We stopped at a park called Merrion Square which has a memorial to Oscar Wilde, as it is just across the street from where he lived his adult life.

 Our one goal for this day was to stay awake until bedtime.

We had flown through the night, so by the time we were able to go to sleep we had been up for some 36 hours or the like.

So after the park when we got back on the bus I was so exhausted that I ended up falling asleep without even realizing it.

Katy woke me up when we arrived at this little place called The Kitchen Garden.

I was so confused and had no clue where I was, but it was pretty cute!

We were finally able to get to the hotel, check in, freshen up, and then head out for the evening!

I had my first taste of gelato from this shop on Grafton Street.

Let's just say this was nothing compared to the Italian gelato I would experience a few weeks later, but even this gelato had me never wanting to go back to America!

We walked around and saw some different sights including St. Stephen's Cathedral and St. Stephen's Green.

We weren't able to go into the Cathedral because it was closed, but we went back the next day to see it.

We saw a ton of different street performers just in that first night, and stumbling upon the street performers quickly became one of my favorite parts of the entire trip!

We wanted to find a pub to have dinner at (when in Ireland!), but that proved to be a lot more difficult than we thought, finding a pub that served food... ;)

We finally found The Hairy Lemon where our waitress introduced us to Red Lemonade (Irish Lemonade) after telling her we would not be drinking.

It was nothing special, rather bland, but worth the Euro to try!

We had some really good food and then headed straight back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep for the busy days ahead! 

I was already in love with Ireland, but I was so anxious to see the green countryside that I had always imagined Ireland to be.

More to come!