{"id":3379,"date":"2017-04-05T22:43:52","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/?p=3379"},"modified":"2017-04-07T10:33:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T14:33:09","slug":"student-shares-her-spring-break-experiences-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/?p=3379","title":{"rendered":"Student Shares Her Spring Break Experiences in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blog by Eiyrn Reynolds<\/strong><\/p>\n

During Spring Break, I had the incredible opportunity to road trip Southern Ireland with my mother.\u00a0 Starting in Dublin, I traveled to Kilkenny, Killarney, Galway, Leitrim, and then back to Dublin to celebrate St. Patrick\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first day, we arrived at an adorable Bed and Breakfast called Mena House<\/em>.\u00a0 The Mena House <\/em>was run by an older lady named Kathy; she had an incredibly strong accent and she found our southern mannerisms (\u201cyes ma\u2019am\/no ma\u2019am) hilarious.\u00a0 After taking a quick nap to get over the jet lag, we set off to explore the town.\u00a0 There was a walkway beside the river leading to town and in the very middle there was an enormous castle.\u00a0 Castles were everywhere <\/em>in Ireland.\u00a0 For them it was just a normal part of life, but I was amazed to see how a modern town was so casually wrapped around such a historical structure. After exploring the town, we had dinner at a pub that had live traditional music playing.\u00a0 Everyone was talking and laughing, and listening to the talented musicians. The environment was incredibly friendly and laid-back, so it made a great start to the trip.<\/p>\n

The next day, after doing some shopping, we drove two hours to Killarney, which was probably my favorite town of the trip.\u00a0 The city was filled with cyclists and horse drawn carriages, and was surrounded by beautiful mountains.\u00a0 We spent two days in Killarney, and the next morning, we rented bicycles and road the streets to a castle, and then to Killarney National Park.\u00a0 The national park was surrounded by lakes and had a Manor, an old cemetery, and many other attractions to explore.\u00a0 We rode around and did some mountain biking in the park, and around four hours later, we road back to the city to visit a local cafe. (Side note: If you are a coffee junkie, Ireland is a must. The espresso is extraordinary. I genuinely could have spent the entire trip going to cafes and sampling coffee.\u00a0 It was that good.)\u00a0 After grabbing espresso, we visited the local shops to grab souvenirs for family and then grabbed dinner at another pub.<\/p>\n

\"Eiryn<\/a>Wednesday we experienced our first bump in the road.\u00a0 If you have ever traveled abroad, you know that inevitably something is going to go wrong, but honestly these small inconveniences make for the best stories.\u00a0 We were headed to Galway, but took a detour to the coast to visit the Cliffs of Moher. \u00a0The Cliffs of Moher are a must-see if you travel to Ireland.\u00a0 Although it may be out of the way, make the trip!\u00a0 You won\u2019t regret it.\u00a0 The sights are incredible; the initial park is surrounded by protective barriers, but visitors are able to hike out to the edges of the cliffs to experience all of it.\u00a0 Not only are you able to experience the mountains, but you are able to see the waves crashing against the mountains below. Afterward, we were headed to our next B&B in Galway, which was when we found out that they weren’t expecting us and that the travel agency had changed our destination without notifying us. We then drove three hours out of the way, down one-lane dirt roads (it was incredibly sketchy), when we finally got to our destination.\u00a0 We were staying in an old, refurbished castle.<\/p>\n

The next day was incredible.\u00a0 We were able to explore the castle and the castle grounds.\u00a0 There was moderate walking path that wrapped around the river next to the castle.\u00a0 There were farm animals along the grounds; it was a secluded haven.\u00a0 After exploration, we traveled to Leitrim.\u00a0 Town wise, this was probably the worst stop of the trip.\u00a0 This was the only place we experienced that wasn’t necessarily \u201ctourist friendly\u201d.\u00a0 The locals weren’t very friendly, and we honestly, I didn’t feel particularly safe in the area.\u00a0 However, there was park nearby that allowed us to escape the town and be out in nature (we like to hike).\u00a0 The thing about Ireland is that everything is green\u2026like really <\/em>green.\u00a0 With the amount of rain they get, there is a reason it is referred to as the Emerald Isle.<\/p>\n

Our final full day was Saint Patrick\u2019s Day.\u00a0 We didn’t plan this, but it was a happy coincidence that we were able to experience this because the Irish take this day seriously.\u00a0 We woke up early and made the trek to Dublin to catch on of the biggest St. Paddy\u2019s Day parades in the world.\u00a0 According to the radio, there were more than half a million people in Dublin that day.\u00a0 When we got there, there were so many roads blocked off and it was so packed, we weren’t even able to make it to our hotel.\u00a0 We eventually decided to just park on a random street and follow the crowd of green to the parade.\u00a0 I genuinely don’t think I\u2019ve seen that many people packed into one place before.\u00a0 There were so many people, it was hard to see the parade but the experience was really awesome. Watching everyone come together to celebrate this day was really interesting. People acted like they had never met a stranger before and they were having a great time.<\/p>\n

Ireland was one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been to. The food, the scenery and the people were all new and exciting. If you love the outdoors, this is definitely a place you need to visit. It is beautiful, and you will without-a-doubt learn a ton about yourself when explore places and things that you’ve never experienced.\u00a0 My advice: try to travel abroad at least once in your life – you won\u2019t regret it.<\/p>\n

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Blog by Eiyrn Reynolds During Spring Break, I had the incredible opportunity to road trip Southern Ireland with my mother.\u00a0 Starting in Dublin, I traveled to Kilkenny, Killarney, Galway, Leitrim, and then back to Dublin […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,889,640],"tags":[842,315,941,940],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-feature","category-guest-blog","category-opinion","tag-eiryn-reynolds","tag-guest-blog","tag-ireland","tag-spring-break-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}