My Month in Europe: Preston, England

From Ireland we ventured on to England!

We drove our bus onto a ferry and took the ferry across the Irish Sea to Wales.

It was a beautiful ferry ride, but what awaited us on the other end was beyond beautiful!

I was in heaven as we drove through Wales to get to Preston, England, our next destination.

I wish I could describe Wales, but it's something you just have to see. Let's just say that it definitely made my list of places to return to and explore later in life! 

Once we got to Preston we headed straight to the Preston temple to do some work.

They aren't accustomed to such big groups at this temple, so it was quite an adventure getting over thirty of us through the baptistry!

Afterwards we were fed a traditional meal in the cafeteria. 

There were some parts of it that I wasn't such a big fan of, like the rhubarb pie, but everything else was pretty delicious!

The temple workers were all so welcoming, and it was a truly great experience.

The rest of that day was spent back at the hotel resting up from jet-lag and a crazy two days we spent in Ireland.

A big group of us took over the lobby with some fairly intense games of Egyptian Ratscrew and Catch Phrase.

It was a great day :)

The next day we met a church historian, Peter Fagg, who took us on a really incredible walking church history tour of Preston!

We saw so many amazing things, including the home where Gordon B. Hinckley stayed on his mission in Preston, and the River Ribble where the first church members were baptized.

It was an amazing experience to spend the day learning about the early Latter-day Saints in Preston.

River Ribble, Preston, England

This is the home where President Gordon B. Hinckley stayed on his mission in Preston.
He was sitting in his room in the top right hand window when he was feeling a little discouraged about his mission and why he was there spending so much of his family's money for such little reward.
He opened a letter from his dad and in it read, "Forget yourself and go to work," which we heard President Hinckley quote so many times throughout his time as a general authority for the church.

That is such a powerful lesson that we can all learn no matter our situation, whether as a missionary, a mom, or a mechanic.
Just forget yourself and go to work.
Serve one another.

Our stay in Preston was an unexpected surprise and I am very thankful I had the opportunity to visit a city so rich with the history of this gospel! 

My Month in Europe - Ireland Day 2

This was the day I got to see the Ireland I always dreamed of seeing!

We ventured outside of Dublin to the Irish countryside and I immediately fell in love!

Rolling green hills, fog, and sheep!

We started our day off by spending a few hours at the Powerscourt Estate and Gardens.

This was rated the third best gardens in the world by National Geographic.

I was super excited to see it because we would be seeing number one, Versailles, just a couple weeks later!

I should probably stop and apologize right now for the lack of pictures I will have from here on out.

I really focused this entire trip on being in the moment rather than worrying about ISO, f-stop, and whether or not I was able to capture something exactly as I was seeing it.

I used my DSLR only a handful of days I spent in Europe, the rest were taken with my iPhone, and I definitely do not regret it.

While the memories might fade faster than pictures, I am truly happy that I spent those photographic moments etching them in my mind and truly being in it.

Now, let's carry on :)

After Powerscourt, we took a very scenic drive through the countryside to get to the Glendalough Monastic Settlement in Wicklow.

This settlement was founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century!

This was some seriously historic stuff we were seeing!

After Glendalough we headed back to Dublin where we finally got to see the inside of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

I was a little disappointed because there were students from Catholic schools there doing some sort of program, so for me it kind of ruined the atmosphere a bit.

Overall though, this place was stunning!

The rest of the day went as follows...

Dublin Castle - The Chapel Royal

We then walked around the corner from this castle and stumbled on a TV set!

I asked one of the crew members what show they were filming and they said Penny Dreadful.

Turns out, my dad loves this show!

I immediately asked if Josh Hartnett was there filming, but he unfortunately didn't fly in for a couple days to start filming his scenes.

Too bad ;)

Our next mission was to find the famous Temple Bar!

 This place was so much fun with the live music!

We wanted to stay and eat here, but one of the locals caught me looking at a menu and advised us otherwise.

I still think he just didn't want a bunch of tourists in there :)

So we headed off to find a famous fish and chips place called Leo Burdocks which was pretty good!

We wanted to find some live traditional music and a place called O'Donohughes had been suggested, but once we got there and walked through we quickly learned that there wasn't any live music, and there was only one woman in the entire place.

I'll let you make your own conclusions on that place!

We stopped to ask a few dapper looking men if they had any places they could suggest, so they walked us back towards Grafton street all the while trying to convince us to go out dancing and drinking with them.

They were a ton of fun, but we obviously declined :)

After a few attempts at finding some live music most of us girls settled for gelato and an early night in, still suffering from jet lag. 

It was such a fun day, and I loved being able to spend some time in the countryside.

I would definitely travel back to Ireland to experience more of those gorgeous green rolling hills.

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!