So do you just click your heels together?

Well, I must say, the Irish are more on top of their Dorothy jokes than anyone else so far.  But they were also some of the nicest people I have met yet while abroad.  The Spanish are friendly, but the Irish go above and beyond it feels like.  Except during a rugby match, then it's every person for themselves.

I spent the 23rd-28th of February in Belfast, North Ireland with my friend Sam Greif.  We had a lot of fun, and did a whole lot of walking.  On the 23rd we spent the rest of the day I was there getting me settled into her room, after finding coffee and a brownie of course, and then we met some friends for homemade dinner and went to The Bot, a local pub.  There we all had free pints, courtesy of the girls who had won the pub quiz a few days earlier and had 16 pints to get rid of.  I think they still have some tickets left.

The 24th we hit up Dublin pretty early in the morning and caught a very late bus back to Belfast.  We had to stop at the border on the way down to Dublin and show passports, as we were crossing into Ireland, and we all know how these two countries don't get along, but everything went well.  We did the bus tour in Dublin which was a hop-on-hop-off so we could visit anywhere we wanted and jump back on the bus when we were finished and go somewhere else.  First, we visited the Dublin Zoo, which was really cool.  They had a student price too, which was good.  Then we went to the Guinness Factory, which also had a student price, but after me not having my student ID card (but having my student visa, which he wouldn't accept) I paid the adult price.  But all in all it was a cool tour and we got "free" pints at the top of the brewery, in the Gravity Bar.

This is the view from the Gravity Bar, a panorama of Dublin.  Pretty cool, you could see 360 degrees around, and this is only part of it.

Later that night we went and did the Ghost Bust Tour.  It seemed really scary at first, but as the tour went on, we had a lot of fun and learned a lot and heard a lot of good stories about Dublin and it's former inhabitants.  We got to go into St. Kevin's Church, which is closed to the public and we got a lesson in body-snactching and learned about the early anatomists in Dublin.  Pretty cool stuff.

I did the Belfast Bus Tour and got to see where the Titanic was built, but I didn't get to see where it sailed from, as the slip-way was closed due to a bunch of construction.  I had forgotten the Titanic was built in Belfast, so it was pretty cool when I found out all of this.

All in all, the trip to Ireland was very relaxing and very well needed.  I had a lot of fun and now that I am back in Spain, I am a lot more relaxed and ready for my test tomorrow.  Let's hope it goes well!!

Thanks for all the support I've gotten from everyone.  I really appreciate it!

Miss you all and love you all,
Erin