Ireland - Round 2 (Day 1&2)

It has been 4 days since I left my parents in Ireland, and I still can't really believe I've just seen them. It weirdly felt like I was just home from Wofford for a weekend, not like I hadn't seen them since January. Instead of them coming all the way to Austria, I met them "halfway" in Dublin. Even though I went earlier, I was glad to be back...especially since the weather was much nicer this time around! After their plane flew in Friday afternoon, my parents waiting in the Dublin airport for my plane to arrive. We met up just outside of baggage claim and it was so exciting to see them again. We roamed around our hotel a bit the first night, but due to the expected jetlag - we called it an early night. On Saturday morning we all woke up early and started our day. One of the first things we saw, was "Litton's Store" My middle name is Litton, and it is my mom's maiden name, so we were both pretty excited about it. The people working told us it got the name from Litton Lane, which was right around the corner, and has one of Dublin's famous recording studies-U2, Van Morrison, and The Cranberries have recorded there.

Since I had been to Dublin earlier, and my parents were going to be in town a couple more days after I had left, we decided to spend a large amount of our time outside of Dublin. The countryside, etc and then my parents could do the "Dublin stuff" after I'd left. We first headed to Howth (pronounced Hoe-th). It's only 30 minutes outside of Dublin, and if you don't have time to go far outside of the city, it's a great way to see the coast of Ireland. It was so lovely. It was a obviously a large fishing town, so there were great big boats everywhere, people cleaning recently caught fish, and of course good restuarants. We mostly enjoyed the view and walking around. A lot of people come to the area to hike, and we unintentionally went on a hike as well. We tried to find a castle, that is now a cooking school, and we found it, but we also walked up to a golf course that was much farther than expected. The route and view though were worth it.

After we finished up Howth, we headed back to Dublin and toured the Jameson Factory. It was a fairly short tour, but it was still interesting. Right as we were leaving, it started to rain. Not a sprinkle, but a massive down pour of rain. We got some Jameson plastic ponchos and grabbed cab as fast as possible. We ended the day with a wonderful dinner in a local pub.

Our first(real) day in Ireland was so fun, but exhausting!