The adventure has begun! And it began in such a special way.
My mom, grandma, and myself, landed in Dublin around 11:30am, all a little tired and a little grumpy, but ready to start our trip! We first headed to our airbnb where we dropped our things off, and headed out into the city.
BUT not before we met up with a very special friend.
Followers of this blog may recognize this person from previous posts, but we were able to meet up with a longtime friend of mine named Niamh (pronounced Nee-ve). We became friends when we both did exchange semesters in Austria, and we traveled all over together – there was rarely a weekend we didn’t have a trip planned together. Niamh is from Ireland, south from Dublin, but she took the day off work to take the bus to Dublin to spend the day with us.
And what a fun reunion!! It was so awesome to see her again, after only kept in touch through snapchat and facebook. We were sad our third friend Hazel (also Irish) couldn’t be there too, but scheduling can be difficult sometimes.
Anyways, Niamh met us at our airbnb, and even brought me a present!
Inside were a bunch of Irish sweets and drinks, all things Niamh picked out for me, which was so sweet!! I felt bad I didn’t bring her anything too, but it was really thoughtful of her to do that!
We took the train into town to get some lunch, as we were all starving. Niamh was a gracious tour guide and host, and we ended up getting some delicious fish and chips.
Because we were still fresh off the plane, we decided an easy activity would be to take a “hop on/hop off” tour bus ride to see parts of the city.
It was really fun to ride the bus around. Me and Niamh spent most of the time chatting and catching up. At one point, as it usually does in Ireland, it started to rain. We were tough and stayed on the top of the bus, but at one point we did have to seek shelter under Niamh’s coat!
While it was a great way to kill 90 minutes, after a while my grandma and mom were feeling a little drowsy and bored and wanted to get off. So Niamh took us walking through the central areas to do a little sightseeing.
While prepping for this trip, my mom went and bought guide books for the different places we went, and in the Dublin section of her Ireland book, so read about a store that apparently sold amazing pastries and tarts. She was telling us about this as we walked around.
Well, as we were walking down a street, we looked up and found the shop right in front of us! It was crazy! Obviously we had to go in and buy some tarts to eat later. My mom was so excited that we found this, she couldn’t stop talking about it!
We made our way to Trinity College, which is a beautiful campus. It was at the end of the road from where we found the tart shop, so it was an easy stop for us.
of course, Niamh had to photobomb at least one of my pictures. It was a running gag among our group of friends back in Austria – everyone was always trying to get in one of my pictures haha!
Aren’t we a cute group!?! I would say so!
Eventually, Niamh had to make her way home, meaning that we had to part. Even though it was kind of a slow day, it was so nice to see my friend again. This ended up being a running theme over the course of my trip, which you will notice later as I keep writing.
Me and my mom and grandma made our way back to our airbnb where we turned in a little early (traveling is exhausting!), but not before we ate our tarts, which were simply delicious.
We also had to get up extra early the next day to go for our first bus tour – which was so exciting!
BUUUUTTTT you’ll have to read about that one in the next post – it was so good, it deserves it’s own post.
Wandering Miss Emma.K 