HELLO, IRELAND.

July 6th, 2018

A 4 day road trip.

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Last week my parents and I went to Ireland. We had a car, a map, and the sunniest weather I’ve experienced in a long time!

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My parents came from Venice; I arrived alone from London, and we met at the Belfast airport.

The plan was to grab our rented car, and make our way out, following the Giant’s Causeway.

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On the way there, we stopped by this rope bridge, which was recommended to my dad by a friend of his.

It was a nice first activity to do, yet we didn’t expect such a long line to cross it!

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On the other side there was a lonely fisherman cottage.

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And stunning views.

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Not too far from there, there was the Giant’s Causeway, which was something I was really looking forward to see.

I did not realise that the rocks were actually tilted, not straight.

Walking on them was interesting, making me wonder about their shape and formation.

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From here we kept on driving into Londonderry to spend the night. We arrived quite late, and our hotel had cancelled the booking (I hadn’t noticed) – which was not fun – but luckily we found a lovely boutique hotel nearby.

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We woke up early, walked around the city, and then left towards Sligo.

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There wasn’t too much to see there, but we wanted to stop to have a break from driving, since our destination for the day was Galway (4h20m drive).

I looked up what to do in Sligo and found this Abbey.

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So of course we took a quick look. I also realised I cannot smile with these sunglasses on. I don’t know why.

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So here is a cuter photo of my parents!

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After that, we went straight to Galway.

By the time we finished dinner it was 10.30pm, but we are lucky that the sun stays up for so long in this period, giving us some time to walk around before it gets completely dark.

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City-wise, I actually think Galway was my favourite to see. It was small, but cute.

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The following day we had one thing planned: The Cliffs of Moher.

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So again we left pretty early, and stopped by whatever we saw on the road.

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I asked my dad to pull over a couple of times as there were some ruins (I liked this tower up here; my mom pointed out that it looked like Rapunzel’s tower).

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We took each day casually, knowing we had a destination to reach, but without stressing over what we needed to see.

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But I am sure glad that I made sure to plan our trip around reaching these cliffs, cause they were really breathtaking.

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We spend a few hours there, taking in the view and having lunch, but then we got back into the car and reached Longford, which nobody recommended visiting, but if we wanted to make it back to Belfast in time, we needed to stop by it for the night.

 

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And so as we suspected, Longford did not have too much to see, not even the locals seemed too impressed with what the place had to offer (or at least our B&B host, which strongly recommended us to avoid going to the centre) but they directed us to this little harbour, which my dad and I enjoyed seeing.

It made for the perfect evening, just walking around a cute village, looking at the pretty fields dotted by sheep and cows.

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So on our final day, we had to reach Belfast.

As we were driving, my dad stated that in this trip we didn’t see any castles, other than their ruins, and how we definitely all expected to see more of them popping up.

Just as he said that, this castle showed up.

We stopped in front of it, but unfortunately it wasn’t open, so we admired it from the outside and then quickly left again.

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In Belfast, we stayed in the Titanic hotel, and since I’ve always been quite fascinated with the Titanic, checking out the museum was very cool.

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We also of course strolled around the centre, although I would have to say that the best bit was this one road – pictured above – with quirky pubs blending together to create a colourful alley.

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The next day we had our alarms set at 3am, so we went to sleep quite early, and even thought it was a quick trip, I felt like we had the perfect amount of time in each location, and I got to see everything I was curious about (of course we missed a lot of the south, but for the time we had, I’m happy we managed to stop by these places).

If you want to see more, head over to my channel as I’m about to post the vlog!

 

Marzia