Day 4: Dublin

We started out the day walking from our hotel to a train which took about 15 minutes.  This was a public train and you bought your own tickets before you even got onto the train.  Today was a free day so I went with Katherine Hess, Peggy Cox and 4 other girls.  We had a great time.

 First we went to the Natural History Museum and wasn't the best because it was a room full of stuffed animals and it was a little creepy and overwhelming!  But it was funny to remember.  Luckily we only stayed there for a little bit which everyone was glad about!

Next our group went to the HRA art museum and it was amazing.  There was so much great art and my favorite painting was of a tree blowing in the wind.  For lunch we went to Munchies and I got an extremely good BLT and we ate at a park.  Then we went to an Archaeology museum and it was really cool.  I learned bout the Bogs and Bogmen.  A bog is like mud with grass growing out of it and if you step in it you sink.  It is kind of like the side of a creek where it isn't totally solid.  At the museum there were people way back in the day who were either thrown into the bog when they died or died in the boy.  Apparently there is an acid in the bog that preserves the body and clothes.  After that we got to walk down Grafton Street and shop a little bit.  As we were trying to look for a place to eat, Katherine was looking through all the restaurants  windows to see the price of the food and one window that we were looking through, there was an Irish family and they thought we were staring at them, it was pretty funny!

Tonight we got to see Irish dancing an singing.  It was absolutely amazing and very good.  When we were about to leave we found out our bus and a flat tire so we ended up waiting for about 30 minutes till a taxi came to pick us all up.

Day 3: Dublin

This morning we have already done so much!  We got onto our tour bus at 8:40 am and met our local tour guide, Shane who told us about many places as we drove to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  He had a very thick Irish accent and it was kind of hard to understand him.  St. Patrick's Cathedral was very interesting.  We learned about a man named Jonathon Swift.  He loved two girls at the same time and ironically they were both named Esther.

 Many of the stained glass windows told stories from their religion.  The local guide really helped me learn about this place because he knew a lot more information than wheat was written in the museum.  Plus he didn't stop at every single description or sculpture, instead he stopped to tell us about the most important parts.

After this we stopped at Phoenix Park and got to walk around.  Phoenix is the largest park in Europe and it was absolutely gorgeous.  The two main sports in Ireland are Football ( in America we call this soccer) and Hurling which is kid of like Lacrosse but the stick has no basket on it, just a flat surface.  There was even a retired Hurling player we saw in the park named Joe Towel who showed us how to play and even let us play with him.  It was very hard and really fun!  I had never even heard of this game before so it was a great new experience.  There was also a cute little ice cream truck and our tour guide said it was considered the best ice cream in town so I got some and our tour guide was correct!

Once we left the park we waited in line for the Book of Kells for about an hour.  Once we got in it was amazing.  I especially loved the longhouse, where the library was.  The room reminded me of Harry Potter and it was very beautiful.  After dinner we had a little bit of free time and our group headed down to a clothing store called Penney's so some of the kids could get dirty clothes to bog dive in.  The store was super cheap,  one of the shirts was only 4 pounds.    

Day 2: Dublin

We landed at the Dublin airport at 8:20 am and got onto our bus and met our tour director Mike.  He is from britain and gives very good information about many places and I've already learned a lot.

First we walked down Grafton Street which is one of the main shopping streets in Dublin.  This so far has been the most interesting thing we've done because their are many street performers and every single one of them have been really good.  Some of my favorite performers was a bass, violin and several other orchestra instruments.  I really liked this because the violin played extremely well and it sounded so pretty and I had an idea of how long and hard he must have practiced to be able to play that well.  another group I really enjoyed was the Leprechaun Stand.  A man had made a card-board stand up and cut holes out where a person could put their head, and arms.  Then once the person was in it he would attach a beard to your chin and then take pictures of you!  Tori did it and she really did look like a leprechaun.  The other street acts I saw included people singing, dancing, playing many instruments I'd never even heard of, balloon animals, colorful hair braids, statue people, people balancing on a cane and much more.  Every single person performing on the streets were very talented and I never heard one person who only sounded "OK".  Everywhere I went I could hear someone playing, dancing, or singing something.  It was really neat and probably one of the top things I like about Dublin.

I even saw a McDonald's there!

After touring Grafton Street we went to a park to eat lunch.  The park was so beautiful and kept up.  I think it was really cool how you would walk into the park and their would be a large amount of people just hanging out with their families.  We had 2 hours of free-time today and my group went to the park and some shops.  The park had clear water ponds, tons of plants and other greenish foliage as you walked through.  A man nd his grandchild were there feeding the birds and there was about 100 birds flying around him, landing on his arm to eat the food out of his hand.  It was amazing and we all thought it looked fun, so we took some of the food we had and put it in our hands and soon enough the birds were jumping onto us to eat the food.  As we were leaving the park I hoped we could go back the next day because it was the prettiest park I had ever seen and it was very enjoyable.     

I have never encountered drivers so impatient!  Even if the walking sign says go, you better watch out because you never know if the cars will actually stop.  The motorcycles and bikes would weave in and out through he cars to get to the front and cars honked nonstop!  If the light is red and even if the pedestrians have started walking if the car saw a space it would go and hope they don't hit anyone.  But I did get to see this pretty cool horse carriage.   

All of the lamppost in Dublin looked like this and I thought it was one of the most intricate and cool lamps ever!

So far traveling ash helped me influence my approach to studies because when I visit a place it gives me a new outlook of how I think about it and the rest of the world.  

Day 1- Travel Day 6/17/13

Right now I'm on on a flight from Portland to Philadelphia.  Yesterday at 11:00 at night my Mom drove me to Pioneer Middle School to get on the Motor-coach which had pretty comfortable seats and a bathroom!  I was feeling extremely excited but was also a little nervous.  On the bus I sat in the back with Tori.  Our drivers name was Chad and he was very friendly.  I hope to have him on the way back to Walla Walla. We arrived at the Portland Airport at about 4 am and I had only about 2 hours of sleep.  We waited in line to get our tickets.  Sadly our crew of 50 people were seated in total different spots on the plane so no one really got to sit by anyone they knew.  Although,  I was able to sit next to Tori.  On the flight I was very happy to have a fruit cup and an egg muffin from Starbucks because I was STARVING!  I'm super excited to land in Philadelphia and then be on our way to Dublin!  We have landed into the Philadelphia airport and I have already gotten a slice of pizza, skim milk, and a Cesar salad.  Our red eye flight takes of at 9 pm Philadelphia time and we still have three more hours to wait.  Hopefully I will sleep the whole ride so when we arrive in Dublin bright and early I will be wide awake and ready to tour Ireland.